Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Topics

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

 

Happy 5 year anniversary to Top Ten Tuesday! To celebrate they're having everyone list their top ten favorite topics throughout the years. I went through the painful process of rereading things I wrote and found some good posts you might have missed!

1. // Gateway Books in My Reading Journey - I read some creepy stuff as a kid.

2. // My Bookish Bucket List - I think this is super cute, because I've now done 4 of them!

3. // Most Unique Books I've Read - Obviously not completely accurate anymore, but it's got some good ones!

4. // Book Covers I'd Frame as Art - I love beautiful covers and these are still great.

5. // Short Stories Available Free Online - A popular post of mine (mostly because it says "free" in it). But these stories are actually really good, go read them.

6. // Books for Readers Who Like Experimental Formats - I really like this one. For obvious reasons.

7. // Book Related Problems - I have a lot of them, guys. They're weird. I don't do #1 anymore, because I'm not a masochist.

8. // 2014 Releases I Meant to Read But Didn't - I've now read 3 of these and I'm about to start a 4th! Progress!

9. // Stunning Quotes from Books - Because I like pretty words.

10. // Anticipated Releases for the Rest of 2015 - I'm still super pumped about all of these and you should be too.

What's your favorite Top Ten Tuesday prompt? Or which of these is your favorite?

Top Ten Books on My Summer TBR

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

This summer I think I'm going to back off of new releases ever so slightly in order to get to books I've had on my to-be-read for longer. Here's what I plan to read this summer. But like I'm so fickle, who knows if this list will actually mean anything in a week. ALSO, there are some serious Illuminati patterns going on in how these books ended up arranged. WAKE UP, SHEEPLE.

1. // The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson - A quirky book about a family of performance artists that'll make me laugh? I need that.

2. // Fun Home by Alison Bechdel - Half of the reason why I need to read this is because the summer reading bingo card calls for a nonfiction graphic novel. The other half is because Alison Bechdel is the shit.

3. // In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell - I sort of meant to read this when it came out, OH WELL. A big book about some dark, dreamy, mythical stuff going down at a cabin? That says beach read to me.

4. // Oyster by Janette Turner Hospital - I talked about this before here, but I still intend to read about this fictional Australian outback cult leader ASAP.

5. // Girl at War by Sara Novic - Just won this in a giveaway run by Socratic Salon! I've only heard good things from like everyone who has ever read it, so I guess it's my turn.

6. // The Shadowed Sun by N. K. Jemisin - The first book in the Dreamblood series blew me away, and I'm not even a fantasy reader. I'm obsessed.

7. // When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord - I'm not sure if this is strictly horror, but in a small town adolescents run wild and destroy stuff during every full moon for a year. As someone who teaches children's summer camps, that is the most horrifying thing I have ever heard.

8. // The Vorrh by Brian Catling - I'm going to be real with you: I don't even understand what this book is about. Demons, angels, warriors, priests, cyclops, robots. I don't need to know what this is about.

                                 

9. // Tracks by Robyn Davidson - I'm super interested in Australia and I'd like to read more travel writing, so Tracks seems like a good place to go for that. And camels are kind of cool, I guess.

10. // Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Another book about an inspiring solo traveler! I've been meaning to read this since February and summer seems like an appropriate time. Especially because there might be some solo traveling in my future.




What's on your summer TBR? Are you more attracted to new releases or backlist you haven't had the chance to get to? Tell me!

Top Ten Anticipated Releases for the Rest of 2015

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

You guys, there are SO MANY incredible books coming out this year, in addition to the amazing releases from earlier in 2015. Here's a list of ten upcoming books that I'm very intensely excited for. There's some literary fiction, speculative fiction, memoir, graphic novel, and fantasy. Something for everyone and everything for me. I hope you find something new in here to add to your TBR! Or like maybe you'll just be inspired to buy them all for me as they come out. That would be equally great. Either or.

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (June 16)

"Carolyn's not so different from the other human beings around her. She's sure of it. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. She even remembers what clothes are for. After all, she was a normal American herself, once.
That was a long time ago, of course--before the time she calls "adoption day," when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.
Father could do strange things. He could call light from darkness. Sometimes he raised the dead. And when he was disobeyed, the consequences were terrible.
Now, Father is missing. And if God truly is dead, the only thing that matters is who will inherit his library--and with it, power over all of creation."


A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball (July 21)

"A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an “examiner,” the man, her “claimant.” The examiner is both doctor and guide, charged with teaching the claimant a series of simple functions: this is a chair, this is a fork, this is how you meet people. She makes notes in her journal about his progress: he is showing improvement, yet his dreams are troubling. One day, the examiner brings him to a party, and here he meets Hilda, a charismatic but volatile woman whose surprising assertions throw everything the claimant has learned into question. What is this village? Why is he here? And who is Hilda?"


The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (August 4)

"Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries."

Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet (August 4)

"When Lizet-the daughter of Cuban immigrants and the first in her family to graduate from high school-secretly applies and is accepted to an ultra-elite college, her parents are furious at her decision to leave Miami. Just weeks before she's set to start school, her parents divorce and her father sells her childhood home, leaving Lizet, her mother, and Leidy-Lizet's older sister, a brand-new single mom-without a steady income and scrambling for a place to live.

Amidst this turmoil, Lizet begins her first semester at Rawlings College, distracted by both the exciting and difficult moments of freshman year. But the privileged world of the campus feels utterly foreign, as does her new awareness of herself as a minority."


The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips (August 11)

"In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as "The Database." After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread.

As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond."


Marvel and a Wonder by Joe Meno (September 1)

"In summer 1995, Jim Falls, a Korean War vet, struggles to raise his sixteen-year-old grandson, Quentin, on a farm in southern Indiana. In July, they receive a mysterious gift--a beautiful quarter horse--which upends the balance of their difficult lives. The horse's appearance catches the attention of a pair of troubled, meth-dealing brothers and, after a violent altercation, the horse is stolen and sold. Grandfather and grandson must travel the landscape of the bleak heartland to reclaim the animal and to confront the ruthless party that has taken possession of it. Along the way, both will be forced to face the misperceptions and tragedies of their past."

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (September 15)

"At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart."



Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir by Carrie Brownstein (October 27)
(no cover yet)
"Before Carrie Brownstein codeveloped and starred in the wildly popular TV comedy Portlandia, she was already an icon to young women for her role as a musician in the feminist punk band Sleater-Kinney.

HUNGER MAKES ME A MODERN GIRL is the deeply personal and revealing narrative of Brownstein's life in music, from ardent fan to pioneering female guitarist to comedic performer and luminary in the independent rock world. Though Brownstein struggled against the music industry's sexist double standards, by 2006 she was the only woman to earn a spot on Rolling Stone readers' list of the "25 Most Underrated Guitarists of All-Time." This book intimately captures what it feels like to be a young woman in a rock-and-roll band, from her days at the dawn of the underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s through today."

The Familiar, Vol. 2: Into the Forest by Mark Z. Danielewski (October 27)

"The Familiar ranges from Mexico to Southeast Asia, from Venice, Italy, to Venice, California, with nine lives hanging in the balance, each called upon to make a terrifying choice. They include a therapist-in-training grappling with daughters as demanding as her patients; an ambitious East L.A. gang member contracted for violence; two scientists in Marfa, Texas, on the run from an organization powerful beyond imagining; plus a recovering addict in Singapore summoned at midnight by a desperate billionaire; and a programmer near Silicon Beach whose game engine might unleash consequences far exceeding the entertainment he intends."

Trashed by Derf Backderf (November 3)

"Trashed, Derf Backderf’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed, award-winning international bestseller My Friend Dahmer, is an ode to the crap job of all crap jobs—garbage collector. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a soul-sucking gig will relate to this tale. Trashed follows the raucous escapades of three 20-something friends as they clean the streets of pile after pile of stinking garbage, while battling annoying small-town bureaucrats, bizarre townfolk, sweltering summer heat, and frigid winter storms. Trashed is fiction, but is inspired by Derf’s own experiences as a garbage­man. Interspersed are nonfiction pages that detail what our garbage is and where it goes. The answers will stun you. Hop on the garbage truck named Betty and ride along with Derf on a journey into the vast, secret world of garbage. Trashed is a hilarious, stomach-churning tale that will leave you laughing and wincing in disbelief."


What new releases are you looking forward to in upcoming months?

Top Ten Potential Beach Reads

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

I've still never read on a beach. There, I said it. It's really hard for me to imagine a situation in which I am sitting on a beach, away from the water, and just reading. But people keep talking about it, so I guess it's done. Is this happening on tropical beaches? Because all I can imagine is like a Minnesotan lake in the woods with a rock beach. That's what I'm working with in regards to my picks.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis - Lydia Davis' stories range from a few pages long to a sentence long. And they're all really amazingly good and profound. An easy book to pick up and put down if you're doing other things like readjusting on top of rocks.

The Ritual by Adam Nevill - This one's ideal for a woodsy beach. Or perhaps the worst possible choice. A horror novel where people hike and get lost in the woods. And they happen upon a habitation where there are remnants of some kind of ritual. YES. SCARE ME.

Oyster by Janette Turner Hospital - On a hot day, I really want to dig into this slightly bigger book about the harsh Australian outback. There's a mysterious cult leader visiting a small town. This sounds like the best.

The Room by Jonas Karlsson - A very short, funny book that sounds kind of like Office Space/Being John Malkovich. A bureaucrat finds a secret room in his office that nobody else will acknowledge the existence of. Fun, surreal, and a nice reminder that you are not currently at the office.

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed - Because this came from an advice column, it will come in fairly easily digestible portions. But it will also be beautifully written and powerful and funny and insightful and moving. Cheryl Strayed's great.

Prudence by David Treuer - A quiet book set in the woods in Minnesota (I imagine it's at a cabin on a lake, because that's where everything in Minnesota seems to be). Right before going off to fight in WWII, Frankie visits his family. While he's dealing with his relationships with the people he's known all his life, a German soldier from the POW camp nearby escapes and is a catalyst for a violent act that will change everyone's lives.

Mislaid by Nell Zink -With The Wallcreeper, Nell Zink proved to be a really funny, sharp new mind in literature. Her absurd new book isn't quite as short as her first, but it would still be an interesting, zany read. It covers race, class, and sexuality, and probably a bunch of other stuff in ways you wouldn't have thought to think about them.

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor - This one is perfect for reading on the beach, because it starts on a beach in Lagos, Nigeria. But, like, then a big object crashes into the ocean and it's aliens. This ocean science fiction follows a marine biologist, a rapper, and a soldier as they all race to save Nigeria.

The Three by Sarah Lotz - Here's a thriller. That's a beach read, right? In The Three, four planes crash into different continents. They're completely unrelated except for the fact that in three of the crashes, there's one surviving child. Then an evangelical minister insists that the survivors are harbingers of the apocalypse. Fair, I guess.

The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson - In this science fiction novel, social media is taken a little too far. You can take a test to join one of twenty-one social groups called Affinities, which will be like a new family. They help you in all areas of your lives. When main character, Adam, takes the test and places into the largest utopian affinity, all seems well. Until the affinities start going to war with each other. If you don't have 4G in your woodsy beach, at least you can read about social media!




What are you planning to read on the beach this summer? Have you heard of this strange activity before?

Top Ten All Time Favorite Authors

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What a question to ask someone. My top ten favorite authors? I can only choose TEN?? This is hard on so many different levels. I'm trying to separate the authors from specific favorite books. Do I list authors I like as people over others? I guess so. This is a game with NO RULES. These are authors who inspire me and whose writing styles I adore. This isn't a best to worst list, but it's vaguely in the order of how long I've been reading them.

Mark Z. Danielewski

Danielewski's books are everything I crave. Dark horror that comes in crazy experimental formats. House of Leaves rocked my world. If there's anybody pushing the boundaries of what books can be, it's him. Especially with his upcoming 27-volume project, The Familiar. Crazy.

Virginia Woolf

I long to have a seance and marry Virginia Woolf's ghost. Orlando was a huge part of me discovering my love of books. Normally I like sparse writing, but Woolf's flowery language is actually the most beautiful stuff I have ever read. And her on-point feminism? Her on-point everything? SWOON.

J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm thoroughly obsessed with Lord of the Rings. I don't mention it much here on the blog, but it is ever present in my life. I have an enormous map of Middle Earth in my living room. I've taken an LoTR college course where I wrote 20 pages about elves. I've played a lot of the MMO, Lord of the Rings Online. The movies made me study CGI in school. I'm into it a little. People hate on his descriptions, but they are what I love most about him. Ugh, so good.

Karen Russell

As my mother recently told her at AWP, Karen Russell is the "word goddess of my life." Her writing is absolutely stunning. Her plots are original and strange. Swamplandia! was my everything, but her short stories are also excellent. I have so many Karen Russell quotes written down in various places. So perfect.

China Mieville
I'm pretty sure Mieville knows me better than I know myself. I didn't KNOW that I needed a book about linguistics and aliens. But then he wrote Embassytown and it fulfilled basically all of my interests. I know that he is right up my alley in every way, so I need to read more pronto.

Miranda July

Miranda July is my manic pixie dream girl and I don't care. Luckily, for all of her indie and twee-ness, her stories are firmly grounded in the reality of human relationships. She touches on things that I normally don't even think about in moving stories. And she's really, really funny on top of it all. She's a filmmaker, actress, writer, and 1,000 other things. I'm so grateful that she blessed our forsaken world with her first novel, The First Bad Man.

Toni Morrison

I don't even know what to say. Toni Morrison is such an inspiration. I had to read The Bluest Eye in my Fiction I class, and it was the best choice that has ever been made by any institution. I didn't even know language could be used the way Morrison uses it. And her stories. Oh, she always gets me right in the heart.

Lydia Davis

Oh. Oh, Lydia. You are my writing inspiration. Your sparse prose yet heavily poignant prose. Your short stories that sometimes stray no longer than a sentence. Your restrain and skill amazes me. Everyone, do yourselves a favor and check out some of her tiny, amazing stories.

Ursula K. Le Guin

She is just so cool, you guys. I've read some of her short stories and I loved The Lathe of Heaven. If you're looking for powerful forces in science fiction AND feminism, look no further.

N.K. Jemisin

Maybe this is jumping the gun a little bit. Maybe this is getting engaged after three months of dating, but I AM AN ADULT, MOM, AND WE ARE IN LOVE. I recently read The Killing Moon and literally found nothing wrong with it. I was excited about fantasy for the first time since Lord of the Rings. And her new initiative, The Octavia Project? Helping girls from under-served neighborhoods in Brooklyn write SF/Fantasy? Amazing. I need desperately to read all of her other books.

Who are your all time favorite authors? What qualities do you look for?

Top Ten Stunning Quotes From Books

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

This week's prompt was originally top ten INSPIRING quotes, but you know what inspires me? Beautiful prose. And lucky for you guys, I catalog pretty quotes from books obsessively both in a tiny notebook and in evernote. Prepare for some wordgasms.

So moved by the author's passion for quilts, Mother had one quilt square made by a friend of hers framed, and hung it in her bathroom, where she saw it first thing in the morning. When I asked her why this mattered, she said, "It represents how women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them."

-Terry Tempest Williams,

When Women Were Birds 

The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.

-Jeff VanderMeer,

Annihilation

 
 

 It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mine of childhood. Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms and deep voices in the dark saying, "Tell Papa, tell Mama, and we'll make it right." The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child's need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

                      -Katherine Dunn,

                      Geek Love 

He reached out like a blind man and randomly patted his son’s shoulders, wondering if this offered any comfort at all or if it only registered faintly to the boy, like raindrops, maybe, or like tears.

-Sharma Shields,

Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac

When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I’d be one day to look inside it.

-David Mitchell,

The Bone Clocks

Then, whether Aragorn had indeed some forgotten power of Westernesse, or whether it was but his words of the Lady Eowyn that wrought on them, as the sweet influence of the herb stole about the chamber it seemed to those who stood by that a keen wind blew through the window, and it bore no scent, but it was an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and came new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam.

-J.R.R. Tolkien,

Return of the King

We had made someone together, and we had watched him die together. Sometimes I felt that there was something physical connecting us, a long rope that stretched between Boston and Portland: when she tugged on her end, I felt it on mine. Wherever she went, wherever I went, there it would be, that shining twined string that stretched and pulled but never broke, our every movement reminding us of what we would never have again. 

-Hanya Yanagihara,

A Little Life

And although your naked eye could easily find the ball of Venus and the sapphire hairs of the Pleiades, our mother's body was just lines, a smudge against the palm trees.

-Karen Russell,

Swamplandia!

 That day I carried the dream around like a full glass of water, moving gracefully so I would not lose any of it.

-Miranda July,

No One Belongs Here More Than You

All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we has a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.

-Toni Morrison,

The Bluest Eye

What are your favorite quotes? Do you go for pretty or inspiring?