Recently I was asked to list my top ten favorite books. I
could easily have listed 100, but I did manage to limit myself to the
following:
Mixed Marriage by Elizabeth Cadell – a
laugh-out-loud story with a timeless portrayal of family. It’s one of the rare
books that has me laughing out loud every time I read it.
I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani – Remember the flood of email
scams from Nigeria? This book gives us a look at the other side – why Nigerians
initiated the scams. Read more about it here – http://emandyves.com/etcetera.html
Alphabet by Kathy Page – Ms Page was a writer in
residence in a prison in England and this book is a gritty tale of one
young illiterate prisoner in a high-security facility. He learns to read and
write and begins an illicit correspondence with a series of women. Strong,
eloquent, tightly constructed.
A Cup of Tea by Amy Ephron – The writing style
is exquisite. Every single sentence is to be savored. Here’s one: “It would be easy to say the war has made us
do things we otherwise wouldn’t have.” Another. On the corner, there was still the shape of the woman standing under
the streetlight. It was more than an accident of death and a length of pavement
that separated these two women.
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett – What
happens when the Queen of England decides to borrow a book from the mobile
library? So well written and lovely humor. The Queen talking to a servant – “None of his friends liked the dog, ma’am.”
“One knows that feeling very well,” said the Queen, and Norman nodded solemnly,
the royal dogs being generally unpopular.
Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen by Glen Husar
– My little blog story may do justice to this amazing YA
novel. I was a teacher and principal in junior high school and this story rings
so true. http://ow.ly/pk2CC
Griffin and Sabine series by Nick Bantock – Beautifully
illustrated by Mr. Bantock, it’s great fun to take letters out of envelopes and
enjoy such great art as you read. There’s a mystery here too. Is Sabine real?
Is Griffin a split personality? Or is he crazy?
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel – A
heartbreaking story of people who try to survive against terrible odds. Gabriel
Bagradian—born an Armenian, educated in Paris, married to a Frenchwoman, and an
officer doing his duty as a Turkish subject in the Ottoman army— leads 5,000
Armenian villagers to the top of Musa Dagh, "the mountain of Moses."
There, for forty days, in the face of almost certain death, they will suffer
the siege of a Turkish army hell-bent on genocide.
Clash of Civilizations Over An Elevator In Piazza
Vittorio by Amara Lakhous – Wonderful satire of immigrants’ life in Italy.
Publishers Weekly says, “Intriguing
psychological and social insight alongside a playful whodunit plot, exposing
the power of fear, racial prejudice and cultural misconception to rob a
neighborhood of its humanity.”
The Blue Castle by Lucy Maude Montgomery. – A
gentle old fashioned love story by the author of Anne of Green Gables. Colleen McCullough was accused of
plagiarizing this book when she published The Ladies of Missalonghi.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid –
Intriguing look into the mind of a young man educated in the US on an
international scholarship program. Presented in the form of a monologue,
Hamid's second novel and holds the reader intrigued. At the end is the question
of "what happened?" and "why ?" as the protagonist, Changez,
turns away from success in America to anti-American activity.
Have you read any of these? Did you like them? And, what would your Top 10 list look like?
