TTT: 10 (+1) Books I Could Reread Forever

I reread books often and people ask me, “Why reread? What can a person get out of something they have already read?” I reread books because people change over time. I am a different person every time I read a book, so each new read allows me to explore my changing self and gain new insights I didn’t catch the first time… or even the 10th time. And, sometimes, stories are just fun romps that need to be enjoyed multiple times. Here are my favorites:

Top Ten Tuesday is a theme from That Artsy Reader Girl's blog.

They set the topic, we make the lists. Visit their site to see more on this topic

• Magic’s Pawn – Mercedes Lackey
o This is one of my favorite books of all time. I reread this book every couple of years… and tear up every time. In the first book in "The Last Herald Mage" series, Vanyel, an uptight, snobbish heir who doesn’t want to rule, is sent to the capital to “learn how to govern.” In reality, he is being sent into exile. In his banishment, Vanyel finds heroism, magic, love, and tragedy in the unlikeliest of places.

• Magic Bites – Ilona Andrews
o In a dystopian world where magic alternates with technology, mercenary Kate Daniels has to deal with shape-shifters, magic, murderous vampires and necromancers, and the threat of a empire-ruling father who wants her dead. Urban fantasy (with a little paranormal romance) at is best.

• Time of the Dark – Barbara Hambly
o History grad student Gil Patterson and biker Rudy get pulled into a medieval world being terrorized by the Dark: amorphous creatures who strip humans of their flesh and blood. Gil and Rudy team up with wizard Ingold Inglorian to attempt to save Darwath from the horrible creatures. This is one of my all-time go to books.

• Written in Red – Anne Bishop
o Humans are not the dominant species on earth, the Others are… and the Others have been known to eat a human or two when annoyed. When the Others meet human Blood Prophet, Meg Corbyn, who is on the run from the people keeping her in Benevolent Ownership (i.e. legalized slavery) everything changes. I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a great read.
 
• March Upcountry – John Ringo
o Roger MacClintock, third in line for the Throne of Man, has been sent on a diplomatic mission (mostly to get him out of the way). When the spaceship he is traveling on is sabotaged, Roger and his marine guard crash on Marduk. Now, the marines need to get the spoiled prince across a hostile planet filled with horrific alien creatures determined to kill all things human in order to return him to his Empress mother. Let the march begin. I love spaceship war. Add in bad boy princes and it only gets better.

• On Basilisk Station – David Weber
o Spaceship captain, Honor Harrington, has been given an impossible assignment. She needs to patrol and protect an entire planetary system with one ship. But Harrington has never been one to shirk her duty, so she is going to protect the system, no matter how many enemies she may make or the cost. And... it will be costly – not only in money, but in lives. My go-to sci-fi recommendation. No one who loves science fiction should miss this one.

• With the Lightnings – David Drake
o Interplanetary War! Daniel Leary, a military political appointee, wants nothing more than drink and women on his first real deployment. Librarian Adele Mundy just wants to get her new library up and running. Unfortunately their plans are derailed when Kostrama, the planet they are on, erupts in civil war. Spaceship war and a deadly librarian! What more can one ask for?

• Iron Duke – Meljean Brook
o This steampunk paranormal romance is one of my favorites of the genre. Mina, a detective inspector with Scotland Yard, is called to a suspicious death at the Iron Duke’s manor. Who would threaten the Iron Duke, the person responsible for England’s freedom from the Mongol Empire? Mina will need all of her detective skills to find out.

• Moon Called – Patricia Briggs
o Mercedes Thompson is an ordinary VW mechanic. What’s not so ordinary? She also happens to be a coyote shape-shifter. In a world full of vampires, werewolves, and fey, what is one lone coyote shifter to do? Get in trouble, that’s what. Urban fantasy/paranormal romance at its best.
 
• Angel’s Blood – Nalini Singh
o Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux has been hired by the dangerously beautiful Archangel Raphael – to track an evil archangel. As a human, Elena is dangerously outclassed, by both her employer and her prey. Urban fantasy + paranormal romance + adventure = awesome. Add in angels and vampires and you get an outstanding read.

• To Ride Pegasus – Anne McCaffrey
o People always tout McCaffrey’s Pern series, but I find I have more appreciation for her Pegasus and her Tower and Hive series. I mean dragons are cool and all, but the everyday life of psychics in a near future where they are struggling for respectability has always struck a chord with me. All of Anne McCaffrey’s writings are awesome and well worth (re)reading, but this one and its sequel Pegasus in Flight are my favorites.

Happy rereading everyone!

Mary P.

TTT: Books I Loved But Will Never Re-Read

In creating today's Top Ten Tuesday list, I realized that these books I loved, but won't re-read were mostly the books that made me cry. Now, I'm a sensitive reader and tend to become invested in my books, so it's not really that unusual for a book to hit me right in the feels, but most of these did so in a way I just can't bring myself to re-visit. All great books that you should definitely read though!

Top Ten Tuesday is a theme from That Artsy Reader Girl's blog.

They set the topic, we make the lists. Visit their site to see more on this topic

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
I enjoy historical fiction and I really did enjoy reading this story, but parts of it were so gruesome I can't read it again. The book has multiple perspectives, including a Nazi doctor and a young woman experimented on by the Nazis while in a camp. Someone in my book club recently suggested it and I told them, "I guess we can read it if you guys are really really interested, but it'll be hard for me." (So hopefully they don't choose it!)
The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes
Same as above, really. This book has two stories, both sad. The first story is in Occupied France during WWI, the second story is in the early 2000s London. (see here for more on it.) I loved this book, but I became far too invested in it while reading and it ripped my heart out many times over. So for that reason, I cannot re-read it. Ever.
The Returned by Jason Mott
Deceased people return to the world, unaware of their own deaths, and wanting to resume their lives with their loved ones. You may start to sense a trend here...this book was so good, but just so incredibly sad. Because of that, I don't know if I could go through it again.
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
Again with the grim historical fiction. This tale was about a young white woman who had been raised as a slave, with the slaves on a plantation. As a child she's one of them, but as she grows, her place on the plantation changes. This was an incredibly well-written book, but there were some parts that were just so dark, I don't know if I could revisit it again.
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
This book was my mountain to overcome. It took me a year to read, on and off. The book is really two books in one, and as I was nearing the end of the first story, I became far too invested and worried about the characters living in the space station after the assumed destruction of Earth. It was a book to tackle.
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
I didn't think I'd enjoy this tale of a college professor who slowly succumbs to early onset Alzheimer's, but the author really hooked me with the writing style. The book was written from Alice's perspective, which allowed me as a reader to be just as confused as Alice was. However, I don't think it's a book I'd enjoy revisiting.
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

I'm starting to realize that well-written sad books are apparently my downfall. This story is about two high school students that meet at the top of the school's bell tower. Both are going through a difficult time and they come together to help each other cope. But again, sad sad book that totally made me ugly cry. I can't go through that again.
Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore
I really enjoy Christopher Moore's books; they're incredibly complex, intelligent, and funny. This book was a continuation of his book Fool which I had also loved. I enjoyed both books, but they just weren't the type of books I felt the need to re-visit.
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
I loved Laurie Halse Anderson's previous books Speak and Winter Girls, so I was very excited to learn she had released a new teen novel. This book hit me at a time when I related a bit too much to the main character's struggles, so again with the tears. Well-written and definitely recommended, just not for re-reading.
Sweep series by Cate Tiernan
As a teen, I was a little bit obsessed with this book series. I was fascinated by the witchcraft, the love triangles, everything. I don't think I could ever re-read them because, as an adult, I'm kind of afraid of what I'd find in these books. I can't imagine I'd be as hooked on the magic of the stories now, and I don't want to taint my memories of these books I loved.

So that's my list. What books did you love, but won't re-read?
~Cailey

Top Ten Tuesday: Books that take place in foreign countries

Top Ten Tuesday is a theme from That Artsy Reader Girl's blog.

They set the topic, we make the lists. Visit their site to see more on this topic

Okay, this is a challenge because, as some of you will recall, I did a post on bookish locales a few months ago and went through a lot of the obvious choices. Still, this post isn’t so much meant to be about variety of places, as much as about a variety of books, so I’ll probably end up doubling up here and there. Once again, the reason this is interesting (at least to me) is that I really love books that have a pronounced sense of place. This is why, for instance, I’ve talked about Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind in a number of these posts. Zafón’s books (and that one in particular) are intimately connected with Barcelona in Franco’s Spain. Anyway, that’s what I’m looking for, so let’s see if I can find some other good stuff.

1. Kate Atkinson, Started Early, Took My Dog

This is the fourth of Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books. They’re all set in the United Kingdom, although Atkinson likes to shift things around. The first in the series, Case Histories, was set in Cambridge, while the next two (One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News?) are set in Edinburgh. The Brodie novels all have an air of melancholy, and this is the darkest of the lot. It’s set in and around Leeds, one of the bleaker industrial areas in England, but even when Brodie gets out into the country things are dark. Still, Atkinson has an almost unmatched talent for weaving complex stories that manage to come together without feeling the need to tie up every thread.

2. Colin Dexter, The Way through the Woods

Many people know Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels through the television versions, in which the eponymous detective is played with perfect grumpiness by John Thaw. The books have a little different flavor, but the essentials are the same, particularly the setting: the Thames Valley in and around Oxford. As you might expect from the university connection, there is a pronounced literary element to this series. In The Way through the Woods, Morse and his partner DS Lewis are brought in to look into a cold case in which a poem has been found among the effects of a missing woman. There is some literary interpretation to be done, but also a lot of good old fashioned detective work and Dexter’s ability to combine the two kept people coming back to the Morse books through thirteen volumes.

3. Patrick Taylor, An Irish Country Doctor

Taylor’s series is set in the small town of Ballybucklebo in Northern Ireland. They begin with Barry Laverty, a newly qualified MD, taking up a position in a small town and learning its people and its ways. There is a passing similarity to James Herriot’s All Creaturs novels, substituting life in small town Ireland for that of the Yorkshire dales. But Herriot’s books focus on the relationships between people and animals, while Taylor’s books are about the ways, sometimes tense but more often than not heartwarming, that people relate to each other. Taylor’s writing is straightforward and unassuming, and his characters are as well. This is not to say that the plots are bland, but rather that he gives his characters a lot of credit for breadth of spirit and warmth of soul.

4. Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

This the first in Ferrante’s series of novels about girls growing up in Naples in the 1950s. They made a big splash a couple of years ago, and rightly so. Ferrante’s writing is beautifully crisp and conveys with precision the lives and conflicts of people in the very inward looking communities of postwar Sicily. Ferrante’s characters struggle with school and boys, but also with violence both inside and outside the family, with the dangers posed by organized crime (even if it’s only organized at the neighborhood level) and with the need to find one’s way in a world in which girls are mostly being groomed for marriage at the earliest possible point. Ferrante mixes interesting and varied storylines with an expert eye for detail and the result is gripping and beautiful.

5. John LeCarré, The Constant Gardener

LeCarré cut his teeth in the British Foreign Service in the days when the sun was finally setting on the empire. It clearly left its mark. Throughout his books, from his series centered on the MI 6 operative George Smiley to his freestanding works, LeCarré makes place crucial to his stories, from London, to Cold War Berlin, to the Far East. The Constant Gardener starts off in Africa and then moves all over, all the while harkening back to the problems of the less developed world and the role of countries and corporations in making them worse or better. The main character’s search for the reasons behind his wife’s murder are told in a number of places and time frames and LeCarré lends the whole story the feel of a spy novel without it being about an actual spy.

6. Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

This book is set in a foreign country both in the sense that it’s set in Germany and that it’s set in Nazi Germany (see David Lowenthal’s The Past is a Foreign Country for the meaning of that gag). Written in the space of a month or so, Fallada’s novel is inspired by the exploits of a married couple who left anti-Nazi propaganda in public places as a means of resistance. Their goal was to overcome the isolation that totalitarianism forces on people and, given that doing so was punishable by death, it took incredible courage to do so. It’s worth reading for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the way that it lets the reader in to the connections between the topography of Berlin and the flavor of life in Nazi Germany.

Small Screen Reads: An Uncommon Grace

If you’ve spent any amount of time around the reference desk, you’ve probably figured out that I have a great love of mediocre television movies, Hallmark channel in particular. I’m not sure where this fascination came from, probably watching a lot of TV movies with my mom in high school. So this has led to the blog's newest series. 

Where Meredith reviews books and the 

made for TV movies they have been adapted into.

The Book

To kick off this series, I’ve chosen An Uncommon Grace, a 2012 book by Serena B. Miller that was turned into a Hallmark movie last year. An Uncommon Grace is just one entry in the incredibly extensive Amish fiction genre. I have a soft spot for inspirational historical fiction, usually books set in the Western frontier. These are in a related but different subset than Amish fiction, but they both fall under the general umbrella of Inspirational fiction. That being said, I rarely read Amish fiction so, frankly, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I didn’t realize until I was finished, but Serena B. Miller was also the author of a trilogy of books set in the Michigan Northwoods during the Civil War that I liked quite a bit.

Levi Troyer lives with his family, members of the Schwartzentruber Amish, in Ohio. Tragedy strikes when an armed intruder storms into his home, an encounter that leaves his stepfather dead and his mother gravely injured. The incident greatly shakes Levi and causes him to question his commitment to the incredibly strict church. Also forcing him to rethink his life is Grace Connor, an Englischer woman and army nurse who helped save his mother on that terrible day. Their paths continue to cross while Levi’s mother recovers and despite their best efforts, they can’t help but be drawn to each other.

The Movie

An Uncommon Grace, produced under Hallmark’s Movies & Mysteries banner is an impressively faithful adaptation of Miller’s book. Personally, I find that the Movies & Mysteries channel movies tend to be slightly higher quality than those on regular Hallmark these days, especially in the time since shifting their popular Signed, Sealed, Delivered film series to Movies & Mysteries. The movie stars Jes Macallan, an actress who is also currently enjoying a guest starring role on the CW series Legends of Tomorrow and is someone I can believe as having been in the military. I think that goes a long way toward making An Uncommon Grace extremely watchable.

Left on the Cutting Room Floor

Throughout the book, Levi and Grace get into a few friendly arguments about faith, family, and society. These intellectual debates end up challenging each other’s point of view and it explains how these two incredibly different people end up falling in love. The movie lacks most of these exchanges which ends up being a detriment to their relationship.

Adapted for the Silver Screen

Apparently, Hallmark found the end of Miller’s book a little too dark. In the book, Levi is shunned by the members of his church when the bishop’s daughter, Zillah, makes an accusation that Levi has gotten her pregnant out of wedlock. This becomes the final straw for Levi who then makes the decision to leave the Amish church completely. The movie wraps things up more neatly, Zillah admits her (less serious) lie and Levi and his family choose to attend the less strict Old Order Amish church together.

Book/Movie/Both/Neither

This is one of those perfect lazy Sunday afternoon movies that is nice to watch without being completely mind numbing. The actors are all capable and the story is entertaining; it’s more or less exactly what one expects from watching an above average Hallmark movie. I didn’t think I’d get much out of reading the book, but I was absolutely wrong. Miller fleshed out the relationship between Levi and Grace and there was at least one romantic sequence (Levi rescues Grace from a flooded river) that was absent from the movie. I also learned some things about the Schwartzentruber Amish; that they exist, for example. Having grown up in Pennsylvania and living in Ohio for the last five, I was kind of shocked I have never at least heard about them. (For more info, click here.) So I felt like I came away from this book with more knowledge than before.

Keep an eye out for more book to movie posts in Small Screen Reads here on Mentor's Reader. 

~Meredith

TTT: Favorite Book Quotes

One of the best things about reading a lot is coming across some passage or turn of phrase that sums things up in a way that hadn’t occurred to you before. Some of them, like the quote from Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky, are the kind of thing that really turn your world upside down. Others, like the passage from Amis’s Lucky Jim sum up little moments in life in a way that I wish I only wish I could. Each comes from a work that I think is worth reading as a whole, since it’s rare that someone comes up with one good line without a bunch of others to set it up. And so, in no particular order…

Top Ten Tuesday is a theme from That Artsy Reader Girl's blog.

They set the topic, we make the lists. Visit their site to see more on this topic

1. Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

This is, as far as I am concerned, the absolute finest line in the history of hardboiled detective fiction:

The eighty-five-cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.

2. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

My mom sent me a copy of this book when I was working as a bike messenger and living on day old bread. I really found this passage comforting.

It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

3. Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies

A friend lent me a copy of this a couple of years ago and I just couldn’t put it down. Lahiri is an absolute master of taking the little details of life and making them strange and beautiful.

Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

4. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I find I’m always sharing this quote with friends, especially in periods when things are going badly. I usually try to disguise the source, since people tend to be a bit hesitant about taking life advice from a book about hobbits.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

5. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

I know it’s sort of bad form to include two quotes from the same series, but I love this particular line. It comes when Aragorn is deciding that he and two of his comrades are going to try to chase down about 200 orcs in order to save their friends. It’s a great one line statement of what the character is all about: this is something we’ve got to do, and if we catch up to these guys we are going to seriously light them up no matter what the odds.

With hope or without hope we will follow the trail of our enemies. And woe to them, if we prove the swifter!

6. Herman Melville, Moby Dick

There’s a moment in Moby Dick when the main character, left alone on a night watch, falls into a dream in which all the other denizens of the ship are transformed into demons. He becomes so caught up in this that he nearly capsizes the ship because he has accidentally turned around to face the stern. Having righted himself and the Pequod, he then meditates on the human condition in a passage that is one of the most lyrical and moving ever written, and which culminates in the lines below. This, in a nutshell, is the wisdom of Melville’s greatest book. You have to look at the bad things in the world, but you can’t let them devour you.

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

7. Albert Camus, The Plague

The Plague was Camus’s attempt to come to terms with totalitarianism and the ways people coped with it. This line is one of those “here I stand, I can do no other” moments that I find really moving. It’s as if the character is saying, “Well, I can’t fix the big problems of the world, but I can live by a moral principle that I choose.” This is a perfect example of why Camus was one of the most humane and brilliant writers of the 20^th century.

I have decided to reject everything that, directly or indirectly, makes people die or justifies others in making them die.

8. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky, is just one of the most stunningly beautiful novels ever written. Paul Bowles’s writing is rich and compelling throughout, but there are moments when he puts his finger on something fundamental about the human condition. I remember reading this for the first time and it absolutely took my breath away.

How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

9. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Austen gets my vote for the patron author of librarians. It’s not just this quote, although when I read it in college I immediately thought, “Yeah, that’s the kind of life that I want to live.” There’s just something about the style of life in Austen novels that is fundamentally attractive and I think that this is one of the things that gives them their continuing appeal.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

10. Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

No one has ever summed up the lifestyle of a person in a dead end career as successfully (and poignantly) as Amis did in Lucky Jim. Jim Dixon is a university lecturer in 1950s Britain, locked in competition with his fellows and paralyzed by the feeling that his life’s work is trivial. This line, which comes at the end of a passage in which Dixon’s supervisor has nearly involved them in a horrific car crash while nattering on about something trivial, is the perfect expression of the combination of boredom and terror of being stuck in a life that’s going nowhere.

Dixon, thought on the whole glad at this escape, felt at the same time that the conversation would have been appropriately rounded off by Welch’s death.

What is your favorite quote?

~John F.

Top Ten Tuesday: YA Love Stories

For today's Valentine's Freebie topic, we've chose to talk about Young Adult Love Stories. There is certainly no shortage of these, because so much YA features love stories. These are our top ten picks.

Top Ten Tuesday is a theme from That Artsy Reader Girl's blog.

They set the topic, we make the lists. Visit their site to see more on this topic

 Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor is new in town and she’s not made to be popular. Overweight and into weird music, she doesn’t fit in. When she sits next to Park on the bus, their lives both change forever. The book is set in 1986, and has some pretty awesome music references throughout. (Meredith loves this one too!) 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

This has to be on the list because it is one of those tragic love stories and it totally breaks your heart. Two cancer patient teenagers fall in love through the ups and downs of their illnesses. If you somehow haven’t managed to read this one yet, you need to.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Benjamin Alire Sáenz is basically a poet. His writing is naturally gorgeous and this book about two teenage boys discovering love is wonderful. Ari and Dante are unlikely friends who meet at the local swimming pool. After that, they are inseparable, even as everything around them changes. Oh, and this was an AMAZING audiobook--read by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

I have a thing for heartbreaking love stories. A teenage boy and girl meet when one of them is about to jump to their death. These two discover they have a lot in common; both are depressed and anxiety-riddled. Their bond tests both of them, making them stronger together.

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

I adore Sarah Dessen and could have added several of her books to this list, but I chose this one in particular because it’s the one that really stuck with me. A teenage model is in a rut, not feeling anything about her life and keeping a lot of her anger inside. She has a secret, something that happened to her that changed her. She meets Owen, a guy on the fringes of everything, super intimidating to her, but he’s everything she needs.

The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman

A non-traditional love story: Jen and Wes don’t have any sort of lightning bolt attraction. The two are friends who sort of dance around each other and wind up in an unlikely romance. It’s a sweet, funny tale. 

Meredith's picks (that Cailey hadn't already stolen)

Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard

People who know Pen wouldn't describe her as a girlie-girl. She doesn't act or dress like other girls, but she doesn't see anything wrong with that. However, she's stuck dealing with parents and friends to have certain expectations about how she's supposed to behave. Pen's friend Colby often makes her chat up girls for him, but when he moves his sights on Blake, the girl Pen has a crush on, Pen decides she won't be a part of his games anymore. It's time for Pen to stand up and take charge of her life.

Meet Cute by various authors

An anthology of romantic short stories all about couple's first meetings. This collection includes some of the most talked about YA authors including Nicola Yoon, Sara Shepard, and Meredith Russo. The settings of the stories vary from contemporary to sci-fi. My top pick: "Print Shop" by Nina LaCour, an incredibly lyrical tale of a girl dealing with a disgruntled customer. LaCour's newest novel, We Are Okay​ was just announced as the 2018 Printz Award winner.

Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

Fandom is a powerful force. Eliza Mirk, the author of one of the internet's most popular webcomics, knows this. Uninterested in engaging with the real world, Eliza spends almost all of her time online or drawing. Her life is upended when Wallace Warland, one of her comic's biggest fans, transfers to her school, although he may help her discover life in the real world is worth living.

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

​Molly of the twenty-six crushes is nothing like her outgoing twin, Cassie, who never has a problem getting dates. But when Cassie gets her first girlfriend, Mina, she thinks its time for Molly to finally act on her crushes. She introduces Molly to Will, crush twenty-seven and one of Mina's way-too-cool hipster friends. While Molly is dealing with what she assumes will be rejection, she may not see crush twenty-eight sneak up on her in the form of Reid, her nerdy co-worker.

~Cailey and Meredith

Top Ten Tuesday: Books that have been on my to-read list for awhile

Today's topic tackles books that we've been reading to mean for far too long. Meredith's list of books she will read (really, she totally will read these someday) is listed below. Which books have been on your list for a long time?

Top Ten Tuesday is a theme from That Artsy Reader Girl's blog.

They set the topic, we make the lists. Visit their site to see more on this topic

1. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami– This, like a few books on my to-read list, is actually a book I need to finish. My thesis partner wrote her paper on this Murakami novel, so at the time I read some of it to get a sense of what she was writing about. But I also had way too much of my own work to do which prevented me from reading the entire thing book. It’s always been one I’ve wanted to go back to.

2. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley– I think I got this book for Christmas one year when I was in high school, back when I was way more ambitious. I was intrigued by the idea of the King Arthur legend told from a female point of view, but eventually was put off by the almost 900 page length. I still have that copy, thinking that maybe I’ll get to it.

3. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin– My dad and I watched the not very good miniseries adaptation of this book back in 2004. Earthsea is one of his favorite science fiction/fantasy novels and always suggested I should read it. It skipped to the front of my mind with the recent passing of author Ursula K. Le Guin.

4. A Confederacy of Dunces – Another pick from my dad, I could not count the number of times he’s told me to read, what he considers, the funniest book ever written. In fact, he literally gifted me a copy of it this Christmas, so I guess I have to read it now.

5. Deerskin – I read Robin McKinley’s Beauty and I really liked her retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I’ve often considered reading another of her fairytale adaptations, although given the mixed reviews of Deerskin on Goodreads, I’m not exactly sure why I decided to put this on my to-read list.

6. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis– This is one of the more frustrating entries on my list because I’ve read about half of Connie Willis’ book, but put it down at some point. When I went back to it, I had forgotten some characters names and couldn’t manage to get back in. What I had read, I thought was really excellent, so I hope I eventually return to it.

7. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers– I snagged this book from a guest room I was staying in when I was visiting a friend’s family. I cannot figure out why I’ve had such a hard time generating the necessary enthusiasm to start reading this book. It’s a modern American classic written by a female author, there’s nothing about that I don’t like.

8. The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende– Back in 2014, I mentioned having only read Daughter of Fortune from author Isabel Allende after she visited Washington, DC when I was a senior in college. My roommate mentioned The Stories of Eva Luna as her favorite Allende book and guess what, I still haven’t read it.

9. I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed by Kyria Abrahams– I was trying to read memoirs written by people who grew up in various types of religious households, but I appear to have petered out at this book about girl who was raised Jehovah’s Witness.

10. The Sweet Trade by Elizabeth Garrett– Probably the most recent entry on my to-read list, I’ve included it for the sheer number of times I’ve checked this book about female pirates out of the library and never started it.

~Meredith T.