Top Ten School-Required Reading Books that I Loved

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I used to detest school reading, but then I hit my junior year in high school and everything changed.  Here are my ten favorites through high school and my undergraduate years

1.  Night - Elie Wiesel

2.  Beowulf - Seamus Heaney

3.  The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

4.  The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton

5.  Ordinary People - Judith Guest

6.  Lord of the Flies - William Golding

7.  The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls

8.  Abandoned Prayers - Gregg Olsen

9.  The Guardian - Nicholas Sparks

10.  Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson

Ten Books I've Added To My To-Be-Read List Lately

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Ten Books I've Added To My To-Be-Read List Lately

I add to this list constantly and not even just on Goodreads, but for this post I will focus on my Goodreads List.

1.  The Long Walk by Brian Castner

2.  A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back by Kevin Hazzard

3.  Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland

4.  Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

5.  When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

6.  The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

7.  The Univited by Cat Winters

8.  The Understory by Pamela Erens

9.  Redeployment by Phil Klay

10.  A Taste for Monsters by Matthew J. Kirby

Top Ten Books on my Fall To Be Read List

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I forever have a million books on my TBR list!  But there are a few specific ones I'm looking forward to in the near future.

1.  Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur


2.  Freedom: My Book of Firsts by Jaycee Dugard


3. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

4. Wicked by Gregory Maguire


5. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling


6. Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

7. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo


8. Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig


9. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson


10. Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens

Ten Books Set Outside of the U.S. That I Loved

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A Time to Dance
by Padma Venkatraman

Written in the Stars
by Aisha Saeed

The Wrath & the Dawn (The Wrath and the Dawn #1)
by Renee Ahdieh

My Mother's Secret: A Novel Based on a True Holocaust Story
by J.L. Witterick

The Cage
by Ruth Minsky Sender

















Okay, so I only got to 5 before I was going back too many years in my Goodreads.  But these are my favorites!

Top Ten Books That Deal With Tough Issues

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So it's a freebie week according to The Broke & The Bookish!  I chose to go back in their archives and take a topic I missed a long time ago because I wasn't blogging back then!

Top Ten Books That Deal With Tough Issues

1.  It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini - This is the first book I ever got out of my high school library and actually liked.  The main character depressed and anxious and attempts suicide.  He goes to a mental hospital and the map on the head is symbolic about how he sees people and himself.

2.  The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Set back when women were consiered to be hysterical and locked away when they exibited signs of mental illness.  The "cure" actually makes the main character quite mad.

3.  When Jeff Comes Home by Catherine Atkins - The main character was abducted at a highway reststop when he was young.  He was inexplicably returned by his captor years later, but the captor doesn't leave.  Jeff has a pretty strong case of stockholm syndrome.

4.  Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult - Over the course of ninteen minutes, and this book, we follow several chacters through a school shooting as well as the aftermath.

5.  Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott - This author though, I love her.  Alice lives with her captor for years, learns to bend to his will.  Stockholm syndrome at its finest.  I wish I could add more, but it's been forever since I read this.

6.  Because I am Furniture by Thalia Chaltas - The main character lives in a physically abusive home, but her father doesn't hit her, only her siblings.  Anke is ignored, she doesn't exist.  But eventually she finds her voice.

7.  Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher - Hannah commits suicide and leaves casset recordings of the 13 reasons why she did.  These recordings go to the people who contributed to her decision, especially Clay.

8.  George by Alex Gino - Transgender elementary (or middle, I can't remember) school kid.  George wants to be a girl, but no one except his new best friend will listen to him.  He's even banned from being the main character in the school play, Charlotte's Web.

9.  Room by Emma Donoghue - Main character was born to a woman who was abducted by his father years ago.  He has only ever known the "room" (shed they live in).  Eventually though they escape and the real world is revealed.

10.  grl2grl by Julie Anne Peters - A collection of short stories about girls in "non-traditional" lives.  Covers the LGBT community mostly.  Some stories are more interesting than others.

Top Ten Favorite 2016 Releases So Far

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Top Ten Favorite 2016 Releases So Far

I have been impressed by the book releases for the first half of this year, especially the young adult novels.  So the first half of this list are the books I've read that have been released this year, and the last five are ones that have been released and I'm very excited to read!

Read and Loved

1.  The Rose & the Dagger by Renee Ahdieh

2.  If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

3.  One With You by Sylvia Day

4.  The Girl Who Fell by S. M. Parker

5.  Summer of Sloane by Erin L. Schneider

Looking Forward To

6.  How It Feels To Fly by Kathryn Holmes

7.  The Geek's Guide To Unrequited Love by Sarvenaz Tash

8.  Draw The Line by Laurent Linn

9.  We Were Never Here by Jennifer Gilmore

10.  The Cresswell Plot by Eliza Wass