Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books Since My Blogging Began

Today's Top Ten Tuesday at The Broke and the Bookish is an easy topic.  So easy, in fact, that I feel like I've made this same list several times over.  If you're a regular reader, you've probably heard me go on about these books at length, but just in case there's a person or two out there who I haven't regaled with my favorite books from the lifespan of my blog, here it goes (again).  ;-)


1. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue - Literary fantasy about changelings and the boy they steal away to replace, but neither the changeling nor the boy can forget their pasts. It proves to be fascinating lens through which to examine memory itself.

2. City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell - Caldwell writes the fictionalized story of her grandparents who were missionaries to China.  If only the "Christian Fiction" genre produced half as good Christian fiction as this book, I would be a fan!

3. After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell - I love O'Farrell's style.  It's a unique unpeeling sort of style that pulls off the layers of the story one by one until suddenly you've arrived at the heart which is unexpectedly affecting.  AKA, this book made me cry like a baby.

4. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff - What can I say?  If you can have a girl whose voice is so cleverly narrated fall in love with her cousin, and it ends with me thinking that's sweet and romantic...you must be doing something right, right?

5. The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips - The characters in this book are so salt of the earth in such a genuine, uncheesy way that I couldn't get enough of them. 

6. The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen - Depression, bank robbers, and magical realism?  It's to die for, many times, if necessary.  ;-)

7. Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer - Hasn't everybody heard the story about how I was confused after reading this on all my plane flights back from vacation and for the evening following because I read it in one big gulp and started to feel like it was actually happening?

8. The Call by Yannick Murphy - Murphy's main character in this one is a large animal vet in New England, and the story is told entirely through his journal of his daily calls to different farms until tragedy strikes and it becomes so much more.  I totally fell in love with the way he thinks out loud to himself in the entries, and couldn't help, oddly, being reminded of myself and the way I think about things. 

9. Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going - This is one of those books that I didn't mean to read when I read it.  I just started and I couldn't stop!  It's a great story of the journey of Troy who goes from suicidal to finding his place all with the help of a drug addicted young guitarist who might just need "the fat kid" more than Troy needs him.

10. Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger - Hilarious and heartbreaking, and I thought I didn't like books told in letters. 

What's the best book you've read during the lifespan of your blog?

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