janet fitch – A Book and a Short Latte

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created over at The Broke and the Bookish that allows us to list our top ten answers to a different question each week.

This week’s theme is: Top Ten Books I Think Would Make Great Book Club Picks

1. Eucalyptus by Murray Bail

A lyrical modern-day fairy tale set in Australia, this book is hushed yet poignant.

2. The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan

Levithan’s prose reads truthfully, allowing the reader to draw her own connections among the many characters whose viewpoints we witness at crucial moments in their lives.

3. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Carter’s fairy tale retellings are gruesome, haunting masterpieces of feminist critique.

4. A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot

A convoluted knot of mystery winds through this novel in which a young woman desperately attempts to find out what happened to her fiance, claimed dead after a war.

5. The Sharp Teeth of Love by Doris Betts

Betts delivers a quietly resilient tale about a woman stretched to wits end who allows herself to let go of all of the trappings of her structured, safe life.

6. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Lamott’s humorous dialogue about her writing process is both a pick-me-up and an inspiration to push yourself to finally pick up a pen and write the novel that’s been building up inside of you for years.

7. Atonement by Ian McEwan

McEwan’s story is a punch to the gut, but it’s rife with the potential for discussion about whom the title refers to.

8. White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Fitch delivers a heartbreaking story of a girl trying to navigate through the foster system and a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship while remaining intact.

9. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

A story for all romantics, Forster’s novel is less often cited on romance reader’s lists, yet it’s worthy of standing beside any of Austen’s best.

10. The Prestige by Christopher Priest

Creepy, confusing, slightly steampunk, and very intriguing, Priest’s tale of dueling magicians will have you guessing until the end.

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created over at The Broke and the Bookish that allows us to list our top ten answers to a different question each week.

This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Books Tackling “Tough” Issues

My list is shy a few books this week, but I tried to limit it to those currently on my shelves. Since I read primarily for entertainment, I don’t have too many books tackling social issues in my personal collection.

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A classic tale that most have read before graduating high school, this story examines racial disparities amidst the hijinks of a southern youth.

2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
A haunting look at the slow creep of mental illness made all the more poignant by its author’s own struggle with her mental stability.

3. White Oleander by Janet Fitch
A look inside the foster system and the toll it takes on a young girl struggling to cope with her mother’s murder trial.

4. Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
A beautiful story that blends fact with folklore as a woman learns of a fairy tale that may hold the secret to her grandmother’s life during the Holocaust.

5. The Aye-Aye and I by Gerald Durrell
An often humorous, more often tragic, and always interesting account of a naturalist’s efforts to conserve lemurs and other species in Madagascar.