Top Ten Tuesday: Things that Will Instantly Make Me Want to Read a Book

"Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish!

Leave it to me to do two Top Ten Tuesday lists in the month of January alone, and then not touch any topics until three months later! Of course, a theme this alluring gave me more than enough reasons to jump back into the game.

Reflecting on my "Top Ten Things That Will Instantly Make Me Want to Pick Up a Book" made me meditate on some of my favorite bookish themes, sub-sub-genres, cliches, and characters... and honestly, kind of made want to pick up some of them again!

So, here are ten perfectly great reasons why a book might launch to the front of my TBR pile, and some examples of titles that have made the leap before. (Got any that you think might fit my bill? Make sure to leave your recommendation in a comment!)


1. The name "Jennifer Egan"
It's no secret that I've long been obsessed with the unique perspectives of popular postmodern author and Pulitzer winner Jennifer Egan, but her work rarely follows the same pattern. That means that when I pick her titles up based on author status alone, I'm taking a serious chance that I'll like the book at all, but for her, I'm more than willing to make the leap.

2. High Feminist Fantasy
What started as an early adolescent fixation on the many (many, many) works of Tamora Pierce, has manifested itself in adulthood with a preoccupation with books like Erika Johansen's The Queen of the Tearling and Naomi Novik's Uprooted. I'm more than happy to dive into any old high fantasy... but if it's helmed by a fearless female, it's moving to the top of my TBR.

3. Jaw-Droppingly Beautiful Covers
Book bloggers have long been known for dutifully ignoring that age-old adage, "don't judge a book by it's cover," but sometimes, that drives itself to extremes. Anything with interesting patterns, vibrant colors, cool fonts, or intricate detailing, will automatically catch my interest. See: Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed or Renee Ahdieh's The Wrath and the Dawn.

4. Books About Books
The only way bookworms can increase in bookishness is by making sure the books they're reading are also written about books. Case in point are titles like Celia Blue Johnson's Odd Type Writers, which details the strange tendencies of famous authors, or Samantha Ellis' How to Be a Heroine, a memoir charted by way of the iconic heroines who have shaped her life.

5. Not-So-SuperHeroes
The only thing better than a hero? A hero-with-issues. A hero-with-demons. A hero-with-enemies-within-and-without. Anything with a compelling, troubled vanquisher fighting near the front means that complex characters will most likely be found elsewhere in its pages, and serves as a decent measure of narrative intricacy. Interpersonal politics abound where there are grey heroes, and I love it.

6. Set in the PNW
Yeah, I'm from Washington. I love our trees, mountains, coastline, and quirky indie spirit, married to the glittering metal towers and bustling sea travelers of the tech and port industries. And, of course, authors have found it to be rife with the paranormal, which is also a quick way to catch my attention. (I mean, this is why I read the Twilight books in the first place, y'all.)

7. Meta-Secrets and Cult Followings
With everything from codes wound into the words, to multi-media scavenger hunts leading to deeper colonies of conspiracy theorists abounding online, I love getting obsessed with the same things others have been obsessed with before me. From Alex Hirsch's Journal Three from the world of Gravity Falls, to House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, if there are greater machinations lurking deeper than the heart of your work, I'm desperate to find them.

8. "Victoria Schwab" 
My most recent - yet no less passionate - author idol, Victoria Schwab (aka, V. E. Schwab) writes so compellingly that I've been tempted to return paperback purchases to the bookstore for hardcover (tbh, I'm still debating it, especially with the Gathering of Shadows series). I've still got more than half a year left in my Resolution to prevent me from doing so, but the good news is, I also still have Vicious in my stack, to tide me over until 2018.

9. Antiquated and Prestigious (Fictional, Often Magical) Schools 
Surprise, surprise: the kid who had a life-alteringly awful public school experience in her childhood always daydreamed of living far away in a mysterious boarding school, complete with the prerequisite plaid skirts, close companions to go adventuring with, and tons of secrets twisted into the tendrils of ivy growing over our red-brick turrets. Even now that I've graduated college, I'm still likely to reach for books that feature this classic trope, including Lev Grossman's The Magicians, or even Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Cycle. 

10. Folklore, Epic, and Mythology Retellings
I mean, it's a classic, and out of this list, the one I think I'm most likely to see on other blogger lists, as well. While I've kind of grown out of the fractured-contemporary-fairy-tale proclivities of my YA reading, there is still plenty of room left on my shelves for fresh updates on epic adventures and world mythos. I've most recently cried actual tears over Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, and have been collecting news stories about the new adaptation of Neil Gaiman's American Gods on my desktop.

What's in your Top Ten? Let me know, in the comments below!