Top Ten Tuesday

Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly book meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Follow the link to find out more/how to take part.

Today’s theme is Ten Books We’d Buy Right This Second If Someone Handed You a Fully Loaded Gift Card

Yes! Please, someone give me that!

Okay, maybe I’ll need someone to give me a fully loaded gift card and several plane tickets so I can go shopping around the world.

To make it easy: I’ll buy every single book in my list, and maybe some that aren’t in my list, but I’ll focus on these:

 

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

A single mother reconstructs her teenage daughter’s life, sifting through her emails, texts, and social media to piece together the shocking truth about the last days of her life.

Litigation lawyer and single mother Kate Baron is stunned when her daughter’s exclusive private school calls with disturbing news: her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter has been caught cheating. Kate can’t believe that Amelia could do something like that, but by the time she arrives at Grace Hall, she has to face far more devastating news: Amelia is dead.

When Summer Ends by Isabelle Rae

Chloe Henderson has never been one to break the rules or push the boundaries… but during her summer break, she and her friends use fake IDs to sneak into a club. It’s there that she meets handsome and alluring bartender, Will Morris.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Margaret Simon, almost twelve, likes long hair, tuna fish, the smell of rain, and things that are pink. She’s just moved from New York City to Farbook, New Jersey, and is anxious to fit in with her new friends. When they form a secret club to talk about private subjects like boys, bras, and getting their first periods, Margaret is happy to belong.

But none of them can believe Margaret doesn’t have religion, and that she isn’t going to the Y or the Jewish Community Center. What they don’t know is Margaret has her own very special relationship with God. She can talk to God about everything—family, friends, even Moose Freed, her secret crush.

Life of Pi by  Yann Martel

I saw the movie and I loved it. I want to read the book, but the fact that is a fantasy book makes me feel like I am going to end disappointed, not because of the fantasy, since I read A LOT of fantasy; but because I wish the story was real.

Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, a Tamil boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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.

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur’s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten’s arm is a line from Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.” But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The story of Clare, a beautiful, strong-minded art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: his genetic clock randomly resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous and unpredictable, and lend a spectacular urgency to Clare and Henry’s unconventional love story. That their attempt to live normal lives together is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control makes their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Ask the Passengers by A. S. King

Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother’s pushiness and her father’s lack of interest tell her they’re the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn’t know the passengers inside, but they’re the only people who won’t judge her when she asks them her most personal questions–like what it means that she’s falling in love with a girl.

As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can’t share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don’t even know she’s there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers’ lives–and her own–for the better.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena  by

In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home. When their lifelong neighbor Akhmed finds Havaa hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.

For Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weaves together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate.

The Comfort of Lies by Randy Susan Meyers

Five years ago, Tia fell into obsessive love with a man she could never have. Married, and the father of two boys, Nathan was unavailable in every way. When she became pregnant, he disappeared, and she gave up her baby for adoption.

Five years ago, Caroline, a dedicated pathologist, reluctantly adopted a baby to please her husband. She prayed her misgivings would disappear; instead, she’s questioning whether she’s cut out for the role of wife and mother.

Five years ago, Juliette considered her life ideal: she had a solid marriage, two beautiful young sons, and a thriving business. Then she discovered Nathan’s affair. He promised he’d never stray again, and she trusted him.

But when Juliette intercepts a letter to her husband from Tia that contains pictures of a child with a deep resemblance to her husband, her world crumbles once more. How could Nathan deny his daughter? And if he’s kept this a secret from her, what else is he hiding? Desperate for the truth, Juliette goes in search of the little girl.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters’ breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.

BONUS

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

You have no idea how bad I want the books. I’ve seen them several times, with several overs, including some that I absolutely love BUT I have never seen all of them together. And I do need them together, well… I don’t need them but I want them because I don’t have to wait and be crazy until I have the next one. I haven’t even seen the HBO series because I can’t ruin the story, I can’t see the series first and then read the books, I just… can’t.

I guess I’ll wait until Martin dies (sorry) or he finally finishes the series so I can go and buy all of them.

Here, I am including, A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons. The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring are not in my list right now because, as far as I can remember they have not been published yet (or finished?)

 

Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling

Okay, I have never read Harry Potter, I have seen some of the movies, but none complete. I have been to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and enjoyed it, but I am a complete ignorant on the subject.

A couple of weeks ago, or maybe a moth or two ago, I saw these books, with the Hogwarts Castle (I suppose) and I absolutely LOVED THEM. I was going to buy them, but I was in a hurry and couldn’t wait.

I believe Harry Potter is a story every parent should buy to its child, every brother or sister should read to its sibling and so on, but I have never read them. Maybe one day.