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May 5: Ten Books I Will Probably Never Read

When I was in school I hated the really vague "write something generally related to this topic" type assignments. I like my restrictions. I like to know what rules I can stay within. Due to this mentality surviving into my twenties I placed the restriction on myself to choose from the "Popular 100 Books to Read Before You Die Shelf" on Goodreads, specifically from the first two pages.

(As always; no particular order here, other than the order in which they appeared on the list.)

1.) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: This is one of those books I missed out on reading during High School. I'm not 100% sure what this book is about, maybe one day down the road I'll crack the spine. As for right now, it's not anywhere near my TBR list. 

2.) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: I feel like I should have a stronger desire to read this than I do. I have a vague memory of testing out the first book freshman year of high school but didn't really feel connected to it. Perhaps I'm past the age to read this one now.

3.) Ulysses by James Joyce: I dislike modernist writing and I dislike pretentious English Major boys with their head so far up James Joyce's behind they can't talk about any other author but him. Both these elements have led me to not want to go near this anytime soon.

4.) On the Road by Jack Kerouac: I'm beginning to realize most of my dislike of novels comes from having to hear about how amazing they are by pretentious English Major boys. To be honest, I don't care for the beat generation which I feel like is pretty strong in the pretentious English Major boys spectrum of acceptable novels to live by because they like the sense of purpose it gives their academic pursuit. Anyways, if someone can tell me the difference between this and Catcher In The Rye I might give it a chance.

5.) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback: I kinda feel bad for Steinback, by the time most kids reach high school they hate his guts. I read The Pearl, attempted Of Mice and Men; you do you Steinback but I'm gonna chill somewhere else.  (Another one I think I might have out grown.)

6.) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: Saw the movie, I'm good. (How did this get on this list?)

7.) The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom: I feel like I heard Oprah talk a lot about this book. Also, a lot of the girls in my high school who also read "A child called It" read this book and it was about the only books they read so that fact kinda drew me away from it. (That's another book I intend to never read. Also, did anyone else's high school have more copies of that book than students?)

8.) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: I swear, I saw other students reading this in high school and yet I was never required to read it. This one I'm a little closer to reading than the others just cause it actually intrigues me over the others, but at the moment it's not near my TBR pile and I don't know when I'll be in the mood for it. 

9.) The Call of the Wild by Jack London: I had to read Jack London for my American Lit class in college and this dude really likes wolves. I mean he really likes wolves. Someone should have checked into this. At this point, I'm pretty sure I just don't like 1900s Manly American Writers who like to compare stuff to trees.

10.) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman: I WANTED TO LIKE YOU DUDE. But sadly he blasted C.S.Lewis and I haven't been able to forgive him. I found this out when I was still in the age range for these books and held onto that grudge long enough to grow out of it and now I know life without reading these books and it's pretty okay so I think I can survive.

What books do you think you'll probably never read? Any of the same? Any of these I should give a second thought to perhaps?

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April 21: Top Ten ALL TIME Favorite Authors

So, for my favorite authors I didn't want to focus just on writing ability. A true favorite author of mine will have my attention outside of their bodies of work. I might not have read everything they've ever written, but I enjoy them as a person. Additionally, I've decided to document when this author (to the best of my memory) became one of my favorite authors.

1.) J.K.Rowling: It was 2001, I had just seen this movie my mom forced me to called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" I was nine. Until this point I hadn't really ever read a "real" book. It was after this movie that I read my first lengthy book...and the rest they say is history. J.K Rowling as a special place in my heart not just because she wrote my first ever love, but because her story hit close to home. I was raised by a single mother. I myself have bouts of depression. She inspired me above all to be a writer. Because the moment of realization that the "J" in JK Rowling stood for Joanne is a revelation. My favorite by her is Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

2.) 8th grade, after a disastrous section on "The Diary of Anne Frank" our literature teacher passes out "The Outsiders". The majority of my class was moved by the book. I remember vividly it being the first time I ever saw my friend Ethan cry, and he was crying in the middle of class while we read it so it was a big deal (he was also really popular and a jock so). This was a turning point for me because I had found my second author. I wasn't just a one trick pony, there were other novels out there that I loved. I proceeded to force my mother to buy me the movie, and three more of S.E.Hinton's novels. My love for S.E.Hinton would continue long into high school where I unashamedly attempted to try and copy her writing prose while coming into my own. My favorite by her is still The Outsiders, but I also recommend That was Then, This is Now. 

3.) Oh, my darling Jane. Once again, thanks to my mother, I was dragged into a movie theater where I, at the tender age of 13, watched Matthew Macfayden tramp through a foggy moor like a wild stallion in the morning. My mother then bought me a 3 set of Jane Austen novels. This was another monumental moment in my reading history; my least favorite teacher caught me reading Pride & Prejudice in class and told me to stop reading it, that I wouldn't be able to understand it, and I needed to read something more appropriate. Lets just say, that by that point Jane's sass had completely influenced me. I will defend this Lady until the day I die (against every last chauvinistic Salinger bro in the English Department, and Mark Twain). She has dragged me to Bath, England and given me more than one quote to live by ("I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive."). My favorites by her are Sense & Sensibility and Northanger Abbey

4.) This is Daniel Handler. Don't know who that is? You probably know him as Lemony Snicket (Yeap that's what Lemony Snicket looks like). Just the mere thought that this entire series came out of this man's mind astounds me. Relatively speaking I was a bit old for the Series of Unfortunate events, but I think that allowed me to appreciate it more. I really got into these books right before the movie came out, but it wasn't until The End in 2006 that I appreciated them. It was the first series I was around for The End for. My favorites by him are...just read the entire series. And every companion book he's written for them. (I mean the man wrote an entire page with the word "ever" repeating and instead of describing down an elevator shaft just had two pages painted black.)

5.) I'm not going to ramble about how Lord of the Rings was my first fandom in 6th grade and how some of my favorite memories of middle school was pretending to be Legolas with my gang of guys. After Return of The King came out I decided it was about time I tried actually reading what this guy wrote. And me being me had to start with the beginning, The Hobbit. I have no idea how long it took me but it was awhile and I was so confused through most of it. What makes JRR Tolkien one of my favorites is not just his writing abilities or his world building abilities (arguably he's the best at this) it was reading all the stories about him. From his time in the war, to his relationship with C.S.Lewis. He's like everyone's little English grandpa. My favorite by him is The Hobbit.

6.) This. This was another one of those moments. I started getting into my musical theater phase in high school. I had the Wicked Soundtrack, but had never seen the musical. I heard it was based on the book so I got my hands on it. And Wow. This was my first "Adult" book. It was my first time I read any of the themes presented and it was amazing. You can see Gregory Maguire's personality in his words, this sassy man. I love his wit. I love how he does this genre SO much better than OUAT. He's so unafraid and manages to keep his writing beautiful. He has a way with very pointed statements, which I enjoy. My favorite by him is Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Alyssa this is not William Shakespeare, you say. I wanted an excuse to look at Joseph Fiennes' face I reply. (plus he' better looking come on.)

7.) So, it's around this point in High School I  was known as the "reader" girl for awhile. I'm not even kidding. Even teachers knew this was my title. (My high school had a whole of 400 students, so this isn't that big of an accomplishment.) 12th grade English was "British Lit", after the painful year of 11th grade "American Lit" I was home. For the first time we read a full Shakespeare play, up until this point we had only ever read bits and pieces of them. Ultimately I was pissed off we hadn't read a full play before then. Why do I enjoy Shakespeare so much? So many people have so many opinions on him and they're mostly wrong. Not to mention 95% of his work is dick jokes. My favorite by him is Taming of the Shrew.

8.) EVIL SANTA! How you pain me and entertain me! I got into Game of Thrones about midway through the second season. If you don't read the books, do yourself a favor and read the books. George RR Martin is so amazing at writing against cliches. All his characters are so real and so fluid and so fleshed out it's beautiful. I pride myself on calling stuff in books/movies/tv shows before they happen and this guy gets me. I have cried. I have throw my book. I have almost fallen asleep cause he really loves describing stuff. He will make you hungry describing every course of a meal. Personally, you can tell he's a nerd. You know he was one of those nerds who got made fun of. He loves the power now, and while I often joke he's going to die before he finishes the next book he has recently made me very happy by cancelling all his plans and writing! My favorite by him is A Feast For Crows (FIGHT ME I LIKED IT SHUT UP). 

9.) Look at him. How can you not love this face. Look at this sassy Irish face. Oscar Wilde is beautiful. I'm pretty sure he knew this, but I'm stating it. "Portrait of Dorian Gray" was a pretty good read, but it's really his personality that makes him on this list. He's hilarious and I suggest looking up his quotes before even reading. Just read his quotes daily for confidence. My favorite by him is "Portrait of Dorian Gray".

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April 14: Top Ten Inspiring Quotes from Books (anything that inspires you, challenges you, makes you think, encourages you, etc.)

I gave myself some guidelines with this list. No quotes from memoirs because those are designed to be inspiring. And have a reason for picking the quote, not just because it sounds inspirational.

You might notice a pattern with a lot of these quotes. I assure you it wasn't an intentional pattern, there's just a certain theme that inspires me. I have social anxiety/depression. I'm pretty sure I've had this since I was young. I got voted "Biggest crybaby" my senior year of high school because by that point it was common knowledge that I cried a lot. In retrospect, most of these cases were because of anxiety attacks that I wasn't aware I was having. However, by this point in my life I was able to laugh off the fact that my 200 class members thought it was funny I had cried when my teacher refused to let us go to lunch early to watch President Obama's first inauguration (even though I was apart of early lunch and had got a 95% on my test; he said he was holding us back for low test grades). 

But that's just a bit of background context that you really don't need to know if you see that giant paragraph and think "Nah, get to the list."

My current "Wall of quotes", the original in my dorm went to the ceiling and left no space between post-its.

1.) "I will not say do not weep for not all tears are an evil." JRR Tolkien, Return of the King.

2.) "Once you've accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you." George RR Martin, Game of Thrones.

3.) "Laugh as much as you choose but you will not laugh me out of my opinion." Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice.

4.) "Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

5.) "Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it." JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

6.) "At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad..." Lemony Snicket, The End.

7.) "It's a shitty world and shit happens, but we don't have to bathe in shit." Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies.

8.) "It's dangerous business going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." JRR Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring.

9.) "Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold." S.E.Hinton, The Outsiders.

10.) "No one controls your destiny. Even at the very worst - there is always choice." Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

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April 7: Top Ten Characters You'd Like To Check In With

I have this issue that has followed me for many years. The issue is that all my favorites die. Literally. I get sad when I find a favorite character because they will ultimately die. Only once has this not happened and then I had to reread the last time he was mentioned because I wasn't convinced he had actually survived.

However, I managed to figure out ten I would like to check in with who were not dead or who haven't already been checked in with or who I really didn't care about. So, in no particular order;

1 & 2.) Ron and Hermione Granger-Weasley from The Harry Potter series: I'd like to check in with them pre-epilogue, mainly to prove that they are the OTP to end all OTP's and they're perfect for each other and did not in fact fight all the time and have to go to couple's therapy. Especially since they didn't get together until the very end of the last book I'd like to have a few moments of adorable couple-ness. 

3 & 4.) Marianne and Colonel Brandon from Sense & Sensibility: This is a bit like the one before. I took a class where we read Sense & Sensibility and everyone said there was no way Marianne and Brandon could have been happy. I wish to prove them wrong. I'd also like to see Brandon getting to be a real daddy.

5.) R from Warm Bodies: I mean I feel like to die, get turned into a zombie, and then get turned back into a human would be pretty interesting and worth a check in to make sure everything is going good. Did him and Julie stick it through? Did being a zombie mess with the whole "ability to have kids" thing? Is this an issue? Plus, post-apocalypse world coming back would be cool to hear about.

6.) Haymitch Abernathy from The Hunger Games: LITERALLY my only fave who survived. Really, I just want to read more about him. I don't care if he's sober and married to Effie or drunk and alone, I just wanna hang with Haymitch more.

7.) Snape's Headmaster Portrait from Harry Potter: Spoiler alert; the first fave to not make it. Luckily, there's a loophole; he has a portrait with his personality that talks and moves. I'd like to see how he's doing being stuck between Dumbledore and McGonagall.

8.) Ponyboy from The Outsiders: I have a thing about kids from YA novels and wanting to see what they're like grownup. Kinda curious how he handled the seventies and which of the greasers ended up having to go to Vietnam. I know he was in, I believe it was "That was then, this is now" but I want more.

9.) Baudelaire Kids from A Series of Unfortunate Events: Again, another case of "I wonder how all the traumatic experiences messed up this kid's head". I kinda just want to know what they're doing and how stable they are.

10.) Kate from The Taming of the Shrew: "Hey Kate, so in that last speech....you were being sarcastic, right?" 

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March 31st: Ten Books you recently added to your to-be-read list.

I'm going by the last 10 books added to my to-be-read list on GoodReads. Makes everything easier to figure out.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart: A beautiful and distinguished family. A private island. A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy. A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive. A revolution. An accident. A secret. Lies upon lies. True love. The truth. - Goodreads


Why read it?: Many of those who I follow on GoodReads seem to like it. When I get in the mood for a YA novel I'll probably head for this one. Every once in awhile I get in one of those moods.

That's Not English by Erin Moore: An expat’s witty and insightful exploration of English and American cultural differences through the lens of language that will leave readers gobsmacked. - Amazon books


Why read it?: One of my favorite classes in college was my intro to the English Language class. I love knowing why certain people pronounce certain things and why certain groups of people use certain words the way they do. Considering I'm a self confessed anglophile and I have a love of the origins of my own accent (Appalachian) I look forward to this book.

Yes Please by Amy Poehler: Yes Please, Amy’s hilarious and candid book. A collection of stories, thoughts, ideas, lists, and haiku from the mind of one of our most beloved entertainers, Yes Please offers Amy’s thoughts on everything from her “too safe” childhood outside of Boston to her early days in New York City, her ideas about Hollywood and “the biz,” the demon that looks back at all of us in the mirror, and her joy at being told she has a “face for wigs.” Yes Please is a chock-full of words and wisdom to live by. - Google Books


Why read it?: I read Tina Fey's "Bossy Pants" and while I typically consider myself more of a Liz Lemon than a Leslie Knope I figure you can't have one without the other. It's about time I read Amy's.

The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love. - Amazon books


Why read it?: It feel like this is one of those books you hear about a lot on the first day of English classes when they make everyone name their favorite book and I've never read it so here it is.

The Empty Throne by Bernard Cornwell: This eighth entry in New York Times bestselling author Bernard Cornwell's epic Saxon Tales series brings to life the harrowing and turbulent tale of a nation torn apart by sectarian and religious strife, a political struggle dominated by dynastic rivalries, and the remarkable strength that elevates some characters above their time. - amazon books


Why read it?: Gonna be honest, saw the cover in B&N and since Game of Thrones is still on hiatus and the new episode of Vikings wasn't on for a few days this got added to the list. George RR Martin praised the battle scenes so that's a bonus in it's favor. This is another that's going to have to wait for a mood shift.

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford: Few aristocratic English families of the twentieth century enjoyed the glamorous notoriety of the infamous Mitford sisters. Nancy Mitford's most famous novel, The Pursuit of Love satirizes British aristocracy in the twenties and thirties through the amorous adventures of the Radletts, an exuberantly unconventional family closely modelled on Mitford's own. - Goodreads


Why read it?: Typically I go for earlier period romance novels, but this has me intrigued. Love me a good satire.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. - Amazon books


Why read it?: I'm suspicious of another post-apocalyptic novel, but this is another one I've seen making the rounds of my goodread friends. Plus, I have a soft spot for post-apocalyptic novels set near where I live.

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi: In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time. - Amazon Books


Why read it?: Ever since "Wicked" I've liked the idea of "Take a fairy tale and twist it" (not to be confused with that mess known as Once Upon a Time). This is getting dangerously too modern for my typical taste but I think I've give it a go all the same.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman: Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk freak show that amazes and stimulates the crowds. An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father’s “museum,” alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man photographing moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River. - Google Books


Why read it?: The American Horror Story fan in me is intrigued.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. - Amazon Books


Why read it?: First, that cover is really pretty. Second, I've seen good reviews on it from bookblog friends and it was listed on my library's March Madness tournament.

Any opinions on these, if you've already read them that is. Are any of these just not worth it? Any suggestions based on this that I can add to my growing pile?