It’s Tuesday again so The Broke and the Bookish are hosting Top Ten Tuesday.
This week it’s Top 10 Books I Really want To Read But Don’t Own Yet. I’m really bad at impulse buying when it comes to books, so my wishlist is 122 books long (on amazon alone), that made it quite hard to choose just 10 books. The list is in no specific order, title links are to amazon, and synopses come from amazon too.
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord- Louis de Bernières
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord is the sequel to The War of Don Emmanual’s Nether Parts which is one of my favourite books.
“Dionisio Vivo, a South American lecturer in philosophy, is puzzled by the hideously mutilated corpses that keep turning up outside his front door. To his friend, Ramon, one of the few honest policemen in town, the message is all too clear: Dionisio’s letters to the press, exposing the drug barons, must stop; and although Dionisio manages to escape the hit-men sent to get him, he soon realises that others are more vulnerable, and his love for them leads him to take a colossal revenge.”
Moranthology-Caitlin Moran
I basically fell in love with Caitlin Moran when I read How To Be A Woman, so of course I want to read Moranology
“In MORANTHOLOGY Caitlin ‘gets quite chatty’ about many subjects, including cultural, social and political issues which are usually left to hot-shot wonks and not a woman who sometimes keeps a falafel in her handbag. These other subjects include…
Caffeine | Ghostbusters | Being Poor | Twitter | Caravans | Obama | Wales | Paul McCartney | The Welfare State | Sherlock | David Cameron Looking Like Ham | Amy Winehouse | ‘The Big Society’ | Big Hair | Nutter-letters | Michael Jackson’s funeral | Failed Nicknames | Wolverhampton | Squirrels’ Testicles | Sexy Tax | Binge-drinking | Chivalry | Rihanna’s Cardigan | Party Bags | Hot People| Transsexuals | The Gay Moon Landings”
A Recipe for Bees- Gail Anderson-Dargatz
I want to read this one after rather enjoying The Cure For Death By Lightening, although it doesn’t appear to be in print in the UK
“Augusta Olsen is a woman with passions and desires who has inherited three things from her mother: a wayward heart, a talent for beekeeping and the very dubious gift of second sight. These are legacies just too big for a young wife who finds life on a remote farm with shy, awkward Karl and his detestable father almost unbearable. But farming husbands and wives are married to their land as much as to each other. From that kind of necessity, a different sort of love is made – and remade…”
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close- Jonathan Safran Foer
Again this is one where I have enjoyed a different book by the same author, in this case Everything is Illuminated
“Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, computer consultant, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, amateur astronomer, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, origamist, detective, vegan and collector of butterflies.
When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father’s closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace…”
Ape House- Sara Gruen
I will probably actually like Ape House more than I enjoyed Water for Elephants, because monkeys are my favourite animals.
“These bonobos are no ordinary apes. Like others of their species, they are capable of reason and carrying on deep relationships – but, unlike most bonobos, they also know American Sign Language.
Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesn’t understand people, but animals she gets, especially the bonobos. Isabel feels more comfortable in their world than she’s ever felt among humans . . . until she meets John Thigpen, a very married reporter who braves the ever-present animal rights protesters outside the lab to see what’s really going on inside.
When an explosion tears apart the lab, severely injuring Isabel and ‘liberating’ the apes to an unknown destination, John’s human interest piece turns into the story of a lifetime.”
Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time- Courtney E. Smith
I read about this one on another blog (don’t ask me where, it was several years ago). I always like to find new music.
“Mariner Books Record Collecting for Girls is an invitation for all of you stereophiles (who happen to be female) to make your own top-five lists. and then. witharmed and ready with the book’s fun facts. to argue their merits to the ever-present boys’ club of music snobs in your life.”
Night- Elie Wiesel
“Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor’s perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust.”
Graduates in Wonderland: The International Misadventures of Two (Almost) Adults- Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale
I read an article by one of the writers of this book which made me add it to my wishlist, although I’m not sure which author it was
“Two best friends document their post-college life in a hilarious and relatable epistolary memoir. Friends since they met at Brown University freshman year, Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale vowed to keep in touch after senior year through in-depth and brutally honest weekly e-mails. After graduation, Jess moves to Beijing while Rachel heads to New York. Each spends the next few years tumbling through adulthood and reinventing themselves in various countries, including France, China, and Australia. Through their messages, they swap tales of teaching classes of military men, running a magazine, and flirting in foreign languages, along with the hard stuff: from near-death run-ins, breakups, and breakdowns.”
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage- Haruki Murakami
Yay, Murakami!
“Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine’, and Oumi, ‘blue sea’, while the girls’ names were Shirane, ‘white root’, and Kurono, ‘black field’. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it.
One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s friends announced that they didn’t want to see him, or talk to him, ever again.
Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago.”
