Top Ten Books I'm So Happy Were Recommended to Me

It's time for another Top Ten Tuesday hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's list is the top ten books that were recommended to me. Here goes!

1-3. The Hunger Games Trilogy - I don't normally read YA books, so when my friends told me about The Hunger Games, I was a bit skeptical. Finally, I had looked at it enough times at Barnes & Noble with some interest that when my friend Ashley said she was going to read it, I followed suit. We had bonded over Harry Potter, so I definitely trusted her judgement. I'm so glad I did! I absolutely loved this trilogy and have recommended it to others since.

4. A Time to Kill by John Grisham -Way back before I had a job and could afford to buy books, everything I read was borrowed from the library or from a fellow bookworm. One of my friends let me borrow her copy of A Time to Kill, and I have been a Grisham fan ever since. I've read every single one of his novels up to The Appeal. I've since been trying to read other books on my TR list, but Grisham definitely has a special place on my bookshelf. In fact, one of my favorite memories is my mom calling me from some thrift shop or garage sale asking, "Do you already have 'The Client'? How about 'The Broker'?"

5. Special Topics in Calamity Physics  by Marisha Pessl -Believe it or not, this *is* a novel, and a spectacular one, too. It was recommended by my former boss, also a bookworm. I found it very interesting; the chapters are titled as sections of a syllabus. It's quite long, but well worth it.

6. Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin -Here's another example of something I would have never picked up on my own. Chick lit is definitely not my thing, but sometimes you just need a quick, entertaining read. Something Borrowed exceeded my expectations of books of its kind. So much so that I ended up reading Something Blue as well. This was recommended by one of my work friends and seconded by Ashley (see a trend here?). :)

7. The Giver by Lois Lowry - This wasn't recommended to me so much as forced upon me in my Adolescent Literature class. I am so glad the professor included this in the syllabus, because this is one of my favorite books. I even got my mathematician husband to read it, and he loved it just as much.

8. Agatha Christie - I'm cheating a little bit here, because I can't remember the book that started it all. All I remember is that my grandmother, also a huge bookworm, loved mysteries, especially by Agatha Christie. One day I picked up one of her mysteries and I fell in love. The plots are always brilliant and are predictably unpredictable -if you think you know what's going to happen, you can go ahead and scratch the ending you have in mind. Christie never fails to deliver, which is why she's the bestselling author of all time.

9. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks -This book made its debut on my blog on this post. I can't seem to stop talking about it. This was recommend to me by the same boss that recommended Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I really want to re-read this someday. One of my many faults is that I don't remember a lot about the books I've read (thus this blog was born), but I do remember this novel being beautiful.

10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson -Again, this was recommended by my former boss. I guess I owe her much thanks! I really enjoyed this novel, but they could have taken the violence down a couple notches. I really did like the plot, and the mystery aspect is really what attracted me to this book.

One of the best parts of reading is recommending books to people and finding out they loved it. So tell me, what are your recommendations?

Love and (a book) light,

~Dorothy