Check out my free ecourse Ignite Your Passion for Reading: Fall in Love With Books!
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Better Than Dreams

  • About Me
  • Archives
  • Courses
  • Newsletter
  • YouTube
  • Unlucky in Lockdown
  • Christmas Book Finder
  • Navigation Menu: Social Icons

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter
    • Vimeo
    • YouTube
You are here: Home / Archives for Recommendation Lists

Recommendation Lists

Top Ten Books I Feel As Though Everyone Has Read But Me

21st September 2011 By Julianne 3 Comments

Okay. It’s Wednesday. But I feel as if I need to participate in some book blog memes! I can’t do In My Mailbox, at least at the moment, as I don’t get that many books through my letterbox. Or letter flap. Do that many people in the UK have actual boxes for their mail? Anyway, I digress.

Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) struck me as being perfect, because lists I can do. Lists I can definitely do. I love lists. They provide the perfect framework for rambling on about one topic without spending too long on it. Unfortunately I didn’t check the book blogs section of Google Reader yesterday, so I’m doing it today. Late. Shh. This week’s topic is:


Top Ten Books I Feel As Though Everyone Has Read But Me

I’m going to mostly interpret ‘everyone’ as ‘every other (YA) book blogger’ because I know plenty of people who have read none of these books, coming from an unbookish family as I do. I’m the black sheep. Or the purple sheep, to be more accurate.

1. The Hunger Games
I know, what have I been doing? I really want to read this but probably won’t get around to it this year as I still have so many books to read to complete my reading challenges.
2. Actually, anything from the recent wave of YA dystopia fiction
I want to read quite a few of these, especially Divergent, but again, reading challenge reading is the priority. On that note, are there any British YA dystopias? I need more books for the British Book Challenge.
3. New Moon
No desire to read this at all. To get myself to finish Twilight, I counted the number of chapters left and was like ‘Right. If I read three every day, then in x number of days, it’ll be over and I can read something good’.
4. The Confessions of Georgia Nicolson books
This series started just before my teens but it passed me by. After devouring several Jacqueline Wilson books and all the Ros Asquiths I could get my hands on, I went through a long phase of being convinced that I was too intellectually mature for teen comedy books.
5. The Princess Diaries
Another series which passed me by when it was new. I’ve read Nicola and the Viscount, also by Meg Cabot, which was quite fun, and Avalon High, and I watched the first film years ago. I want to give it a go, but it’s really low priority at the moment.
6. The Morganville Vampires series
I have heard increasingly good things about this series and I want to try it, but I’ve been delayed by a couple of years because my library only stocked book 6. I may have to give in and buy a copy!
7. The Southern Vampire Mysteries
I’ve known about the existence of Charlaine Harris’ mind-reading heroine Sookie Stackhouse since before Ottakar’s was taken over by Waterstone’s! Ottakar’s used to produce a science fiction and fantasy newsletter booklet with reviews and author interviews, it was called Outland and I used to pick up copies in my local branch. Anyway, one issue they reviewed Dead Until Dark and I thought, ‘I’d quite like to read that’, being a big Buffy fan. Still haven’t picked up a copy!
8. Angel by L.A. Weatherly
For some reason, I feel like this book has had a particularly large number of reviews. Perhaps it just feels like it’s had more than most books because I actually own a copy and it’s on my TBR.
9. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
I’ve heard good things, and bad things, and I watched the film, and the film was enough for me. I don’t think I could stomach the book.
10. Nineteen Eighty-Four
I know, ‘How can you have a Master’s degree and not have read Nineteen Eighty-Four?’ Dude, I didn’t read To Kill A Mockingbird until 2009! I have read Brave New World though. And Animal Farm. And most of Keep the Aspidistra Flying – I got bored fairly close to the end, decided I’d got the point, and scan read the rest of the book.

There we are! I do plan to do future Top Ten Tuesdays actually on Tuesday. Do you think I should make any of these a higher priority? No promises, but I’m always open to persuasion – New Moon excepted.

Filed Under: Recommendation Lists Tagged With: blogging, book chat, books, memes, TBR, Top Ten Tuesday

Three Non-Fiction Suggestions

1st August 2010 By Julianne Leave a Comment

Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self, edited by Sara Shandler, various contributors

Ophelia Speaks is a response to an earlier book, Reviving Ophelia, and contains short essays, poetry, and other pieces of writing by American teenagers. There are two chapters about body issues, ‘Media-Fed Images’ and ‘Eating Disorders’. The pieces are very short but it’s interesting to see a range of snapshots from different lives, and what real teenagers think about their bodies. The rest of the book features pieces of writing about other issues affecting teenagers today, on subjects like abuse, depression, death, friendship, sex, racism, religion, and academic pressure.

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women, by Naomi Wolf

I’ll confess I haven’t read the whole of this book yet – I read the first chapter, the last, ‘Culture’ and ‘Hunger’ for an essay I wrote whilst studying for my first degree. I do intend to read the rest soon. The Beauty Myth is a look at history, politics and advertising that shows how false the idea of beauty is and how it stops women from achieving as much as they could. It’s not perfect, it has received a lot of criticism for only really looking at how the beauty myth affects middle-class, white, heterosexual and able-bodied women, and the accuracy of the statistics is often called into question. I’m aware that there are books and articles that go a bit more in depth and up to date, but as an intro to the ideas it presents, I think it does a good job. The third to last paragraph of the ‘Hunger’ chapter, beginning ‘What if she doesn’t worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do?’ (p179-180 in 0701134313) is one of my favourite paragraphs of all time. I wish I could quote the whole thing here, but it’d probably go beyond fair dealing.

Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher

I’m reading this book at the moment and will post a full review when I’m done. It’s a memoir by a recovering bulimic/anoretic. The author first decided that she was fat at the age of five. It’s well written, but quite heavy going. My head was aching earlier today as I was reading it, just trying to imagine how a child so young would develop these ideas and become so ill. Also, although it’s not a thick paperback, the font is quite small, so it’s not ideal for reading with contacts in. I might have a better time tomorrow when I can just take my glasses off and hold it closer!

Filed Under: Recommendation Lists Tagged With: body image and self-perception month, feminism, Marya Hornbacher, memoir, Naomi Wolf, non-fiction, Sara Shandler, teenage, teenage writers

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 30
  • Page 31
  • Page 32

Primary Sidebar

Hi! I'm Julianne and this is my book blog. Click my picture to read more about me.

Explore By Category

Explore By Date

Search

Footer

Privacy Notice
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2025 · Foodie Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in