Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Recommend to Others the Most

"Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly bookish sharable, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl!

Let's be real: if there's anything a book lover loves more than a good book, it's trying to convince other people they should also read that book, too, so as to best facilitate additional conversations about how much you love said book. 

It's one of the most enduring reasons book clubs (and, to be honest, English degrees) exist... enjoying a book all on your stony lonesome is one thing, but finding other people to freak out about recent reads with is its own kind of heaven. There's nothing better than clumping up over a cup of coffee, or piling onto someone's sofa, or taking over the back corner of your Lit class, to gab about which character did what. 

There's nothing that's convinced me about this more than a friendly exchange I had a few weeks back. I recently stumbled upon a friend of mine at a local coffee shop, when she interrupted her own Saturday morning routine to come say hello... then found herself unexpectedly embroiled in an hour-and-a-half conversation, about poetry as an act of public witness; and how experiencing a novel is an act of co-creation; and how theater is like a group project between the author, the stagecraft, and the audience, and how that's why I love Shakespearean adaptations so much; and what have you been reading recently? 

She's a gem of a human, and that jewel of a conversation was the perfect way to ornament an otherwise kind of bleak weekend. Clearly, I'm still thinking about it all of these weeks later! 

But that's what the joy of a great conversation can get you. And oftentimes, those kinds of conversations come as a result of really great books. 

Here are a few of the titles I recommend to friends quite a lot: 

someone trying to get into the classics

1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

There's a reason it's a favorite of high school English teachers everywhere: much like how Shakespeare's themes of love, war, betrayal, and history stand the test of time, so, too, are the human experiences of having family members that drive you nuts, dealing with your friend's bitchy sister on vacation, and watching your bestie settle for a guy you truly cannot stand. May we all someday experience the highs of "finding out the hot guy you know with the nice house and steady income has a total crush on you," but for now, it's one of my most regular recs for someone trying to figure out if British Classics are right for them. 

2. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

I've been called "basic" for this before, but if the self-inflated men I knew in college were allowed to breathe the names "Hemingway" and "Steinbeck" and "Kerouac" every other second without getting tomatoes thrown at them, then I get to talk about why it's still important for young women to read Plath. I fully recognize that poetry isn't for everyone - hell, including me; I read the original, unformatted collection of Ariel all the way through twice last summer and came out on the other side pale and shaking - which is why The Bell Jar provides a more straightforward, though no less harrowing, entry point for Contemporary Classics, especially those interested in vivid description and sociohistorical context for what they're reading. 

3. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

Listen, and I mean it: sometimes the best way to get into Classics, is by starting at the ground floor, just like everybody else. Most of the time, when someone asks me how to begin reading "real" Literature, I tell them to start with something like Alice in Wonderland, and to really dig into the meat of it; not just the Tea Party side, but the "Charles Dodgson - logic puzzles - chess playing - real life counterpart" side of it. Chances are, if you can read a book intended for children like a scholar, you'll have a better time breaking into Dickens later. My favorite Children's Lit to recommend is, of course, the incomparable Phantom Tollbooth, a perennial classic of kids and adults alike... but of course, "[t]here are no wrong roads to anywhere." 

someone trying to get into romance (like, capital R romance)

4. Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston

I don't think there's a single person of my acquaintance who's read this book, and NOT fallen in love with its snappy dialogue, congenial characters, and alternative history. Truly the highlights are its sense of humor, but there's absolutely no ignoring the steam factor, too. Friends who have told me they don't really like Contemporary Romance in their novels have had their minds totally changed by this book alone... you can't help but be won over by its optimism and heart. (Though I will say, if Politics make you want to dry heave, you might want to sit this one out.)

5. The Duchess Deal, by Tessa Dare 

Tessa Dare, back in 2018, served as one of my own entry points into the genre with the Castles Ever After series; I see no reason she wouldn't serve you well, too. Her characters are compelling, her dialogue is hilarious, her plots are absolutely bonkers, and her books are jam-packed with tropes galore: these are all among the reasons why she serves as an excellent exemplar of Historical Romance. If you have a good time, chances are, you'll have a great time in the rest of the genre. 

unique science fiction and fantasy

 6. In Other Lands, Sarah Rees Brennan

My experiences reading this book have been so overwhelmingly special, that I've since shared it with several people... but only a few. Only the kind, I think, who would really appreciate it, and understand it for what it is. There's not a lot of YA Fantasy novels I would call life-changing, but to give you some personal insight: the first time I finished this book, years ago, I turned the last page crying, not because it was a sad ending, and not even necessarily because I was sad it was over, but because I knew how much this book would have meant to me, had I read it when I was a teenager, instead.  

7. The Murderbot series, Martha Wells

My brother, bless him, hates Science Fiction. The kid will tear through an 800-page Branderson novel like it's the weekend funny pages, but if you ask him to immerse himself in anything set in Space? Not a chance. But you know what he does love? The Murderbot books. They're a crowd-pleaser, for whatever crowd you point them at.

8. The Wayward Children series, Seanan McGuire 

Speaking of Fantasy I wish I had when I was a teenager, I truly cannot recommend the characters of Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children and their myriad adventures enough. Not only is the concept incredible - a boarding school for children returned home from adventures in Fantasy lands they no longer have access to, like if the Pevensies came back from Narnia and all had nervous breakdowns - but each installment in the series of novellas introduces different characters, new worlds, new lessons to have learned. And the covers are among the most beautiful that you can find anywhere. 

personal faves

9. The Gideon Oliver books, Aaron Elkin

I was on a walk one afternoon, during 2021 Covid, with a few friends, when one mentioned that she was using quarantine as an excuse to finally pick up some of the Agatha Christie novels her parents have been recommending to her all these years. As someone who collects them myself, I was overjoyed, but grew nervous when she said after running through so many, she was running out of steam. I told her to take a break from the British, and hop back to our side of the Pond; more specifically, the Puget Sound area, where forensic anthropologist and fellow UW Husky (wink wink) Gideon Oliver has been examining skeletal findings for decades. The next time I talked to her, she had bought three. 

10. House of Leaves, Mark Z Danielewski

Listen, one of the first pages says everything you need to know: there's a great chance "this book is not for you." It's weird, its formatting doesn't make any sense, there's too much left open to interpretation, and who wants to be a part of an underground cult anyways? Unfortunately, not only do I talk about this novel an unhealthy amount, but it's because I experienced it in an ideal format: back in college, I had an entire five-credit class dedicated to solely reading this book and concurrent literary analysis for an entire Quarter. Yet another reason I wish college was free... that way, we could all voluntarily attend ten two-hour lectures to better understand the books we're reading. 

What books do you like to recommend? What kinds of books do you GET  as recommendations? Let me know, in the comments below!