Top Ten Tuesday (29)

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books Written in the Past 10 Years That I Hope People Are Still Reading in 30 Years

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. It’s awesome. Every Tuesday, the lovely folks over at The Broke and the Bookish post a top ten list topic so that book lovers like you and me can pour over our shelves and make our own lists. You can check out all the other Top Ten Tuesday‘s on their site!

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This is a fun one, friends! But also hard. I feel like I’m not going to mention any books you all haven’t heard of before. But I guess that would be a good sign for this week’s TTT! Books that are so good that everyone knows them! But I like this “written in the past 10 years” business. It’s all about New Classics, guys. Let’s hope that 30 years from now, young people don’t complain and groan over reading these books like I did when I had to read…let’s be serious. I hardly ever complained when I was reading something for school. 

Graceling (Graceling Realm #1) by Kristin Cashore. If Katsa and Po are not timeless, awesome, inspiring characters, then I don’t want to read books anymore. I LOVE GRACELING. I love the world that Kristin Cashore paints. I love the themes of independence, respectful relationships, and doing the hard thing when it’s right. And SO MUCH more. Katsa’s growth over the course of GRACELING is special and has stayed with me a long time already. Thirty years is NOTHING. 

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. This book is funny. Not haha funny, but funny in a curious, AMAZING way. Because every time I’ve tried to describe it to people who don’t know what it’s about–this island I’m not sure where or when but pretty modern and normal-seeming, is surrounded by an ocean that’s full of these mythical, deadly water horses that come out of the water every year and the island folk race them each November, and this one girl becomes the first girl to race a horse there–it sounds faintly ridiculous. Except THE SCORPIO RACES is only ridiculous on OPPOSITE DAY. All the other days it’s basically perfect. 

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. This book punched me in the heart while wearing brass knuckles. Conor is one of my all-time “book kids who’ve stolen my heart,” and his story of his dealing with his mother’s illness with the help of a monster/tree is pretty much without fault. It’s kind of dark, but lovely and sad and true. J’adore. 

The Hunger Games (Hunger Games #1) by Suzanne Collins. Talk about a game-changer, amirite? To me and my reading, that’s what THE HUNGER GAMES was the first time I read it. I wasn’t unfamiliar with kid-on-kid violence–I’d read Harry Potter, after all, which has its fair share–but this story of Katniss Everdeen and the reality show competition to the death was somehow more jarring. Also, PEETA. I can’t think of this book and not think of how much I LOVE that boy. Katniss sometimes was hard to like. Peeta? Nuh uh. ALWAYS likable. 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J.K. Rowling. Guys, I almost didn’t even put this on here because I thought it was too obvious. Too much of a gimme. OBVIOUSLY people will be reading about The Boy Who Lived until the end of time. Obviously. Another game changer, except WAY, WAY BIGGER. I feel like without Harry Potter, I don’t know if this blog even exists. I don’t know if I feel like, as an adult, reading children’s books for pleasure occurs to me as something I could do. Harry mother-effing Potter changed the WORLD. 

A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire #3) by George R.R. Martin. HOLLA! I would put A GAME OF THRONES on this list to be orderly but there’s that “10 year” rule. Thankfully, though, ASoS is pretty much my favorite book in this series so far because, well, because it’s THE BOMB. This whole series is amazing. 

Eon (Eon/Eona #1) by Alison Goodman. You know why I hope people are still reading these books in 30 years? Because I hope that 30 years from now, someone who loves fantasy but always seems to read Western-inspired fantasies comes across EON and is BLOWN IN THE MIND like I was. Asian-inspired fantasies always seem to miss lots of radars, and I hope that time is kinder to these books because Eona DESERVES it. 

The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicles #1) by Patrick Rothfuss. “Amy,” I can hear you say. “How can you include a book that you haven’t even finished yet?” Good question. My answer is, “Because I’ve only read about 200 pages and I’m already in love with it. It’s so amazing that it makes me look forward to driving to work.” Kvothe is a STUD, and even though the world is still building itself, I’m completely captivated by it. 

The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson. Is it just me or do contemporaries not really stand the test of time very well? Doesn’t that just make you sad? There are a BUNCH that I wanted to include on my list, but when I have only one choice available to me for a contemporary book, I always come back to this one. Because it’s pretty stellar. I cried, I swooned, I felt all the things. SIGH. Wonderful.