(Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Want to make your own list? Clicking the image will take you to this week’s post. Happy listing!)
It’s fun to read books you know you’ll love, but it’s important to stretch your reading muscles now and then. Here’s some books that, for better or worse, took me out of my comfort zone.
1. Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill) – Pretty much the opposite of what I usually read. Not a scarring experience, but not one I care to repeat.
2. Millenium Trilogy (Stieg Larsson) – An amazing series, but so incredibly sexually violent that I could barely get through it.
3. Iron John (Robert Bly) – A weird book by a weird dude who I can’t decide whether or not to mock.
4. Lucy (Laurence Gonzales) – I’m not a huge fan of thrillers, and the whole genetic experimentation thing was hard to stomach.
5. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) – I don’t often read books with characters Anne’s age, and I confess I was a bit frustrated. She rattles on a lot throughout the first half of the book; everyone thinks it’s charming, but like Marilla, I’m not certain what to make of Anne.
6. The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins) – Not my first experience with the Gothic genre, but definitely my first full immersion in it. A little long-winded, but still a great story.
7. Soulless (Gail Carriger) – Steampunk! Who’d have known I’d like it so much!
8. Gilgamesh (Anonymous) – Nothing like a 4,000 year-old story with some surprisingly contemporary themes to get one re-thinking about storytelling.
9. The Last Werewolf (Glen Duncan) – A good story, but so graphic. Too much for me.
10. Shades of Grey (Jasper Fforde) – I love Fforde, but I wasn’t expecting dystopian. Not a fan.
What’s gotten you out of your reading comfort zone recently?
