Allison Burris

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature from The Broke and the Bookish

So with the end of the year comes the best book of the year lists. I added a bunch of those to my TBR of course, but since I already talked about some of those books last week, I thought I’d come at this topic from a different angle.

At the beginning of 2016 we’ve lost some amazing people like Alan Rickman and David Bowie, and it’s made me quite melancholy. When I found a list of Bowie’s top 100 favorite books, I knew I had to add some of them to my list. The first ten books are the ones from this list that I most want to read (they link back to Goodreads).

The second list is five books I’d like to reread this year. I’m often caught up in devouring as much new content as possible, but I think there’s something to be said for revisiting old favorites or coming at a book you didn’t like from a new perspective and seeing if that changes things. So without further ado, here’s my two lists:

• Journey into the Whirlwind Eugenia Ginzburg’s political prisoner memoir under Stalin’s regime
• Passing Nella Larson’s portrait of two women in 1920s Harlem
• Fingersmith Sarah Water’s somewhat Dickensian novel
• Inside the Whale and Other Essays George Orwell on diverse topics
• Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert’s novel about a bored French housewife in the 1800s (actually I was surprised to see this wasn’t already on my TBR)
• In Cold Blood Truman Capote’s questionably true crime novel
• Lady Chatterly’s Lover D.H. Lawrence’s novel about another unsatisfied French housewife
• On the Road Jack Kerouac’s road trip
• Wonder Boys Michael Chabon’s buddy story
• The Street Ann Petry’s tale of raising a child in Harlem in the 1940s

And here are five books I’m going to try and reread this year:

• Alice in Wonderland–Lewis Carroll–I didn’t like this book growing up, but I feel like I might enjoy it now
• Emma–Jane Austen–it just had its 200th birthday
• Jane Eyre–Charlotte Bronte–because this is a book you need to read more than once
• Memoirs of a Geisha–Arthur Golden–I want to know if it’s as good as I remember
• Princess Diaries series–Meg Cabot–so that I can finally read the last one that just came out

Stumbled upon any new books to add to your list lately? Where did you find them? Let me know in the comments!