Top Ten Tuesday: Most Intimidating Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new topic that the participants come up with a top ten list for.

This week's topic: top ten most intimidating books (size, content, hype...)


This is actually quite hard. Let's see what books I can remember...



George R.R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire series
Super-intimidating because of the sheer size of it! I love the Game of Thrones TV show, and I really want to read the books, but at the moment I just don't have time for a bunch of such huge books.


Laurie Halse Anderson - Speak
Here it's the topic that intimidates me. I think it's so, so important that someone writes about date rape, but I know I'm going to have a hard time reading this book. I read Wintergirls and it really sent me into a downward spiral. That speaks for Anderson's writing, but taking a dive into my hole is always dangerous and painful.


Marissa Meyer - Cinder
The hype. It makes me very wary, because honestly I never thought it sounded all that awesome *ducks*. But everyone likes it, also people I trust. So there must be something to it...?



William Shakespeare - Hamlet
I somehow got through my BA studies without reading it. The fame and topic and size of it (the Arden edition is freaking huge because of all the notes and secondary sources etc!) always put me off. But I finally read it last spring and damn it was freaking fantastic!!! Which proves that jumping over your shadow and actually facing those intimidating books can pay off.


Something by Diana Wynne Jones
She's such a famous English fantasy author - like a classic - and I've never read anything by her. In my teens, I read fantasy by German authors so it all kind of went past me. And now I'm strangely reluctant to pick anything up, even though many authors I love adore her work.


Stephen King - Misery
It's been sitting on my shelf since my 17th birthday. My sis found a ton of his books at a yard sale. I've read them all, apart from this one. I know there's a scene where the kidnapped authors is given a cake with his own finger in it. The kidnapper-woman just sounds way crazy and I know King is good enough to really horrify me. I know I'm chicken but I never could bring myself to even open the book. Even though I love king and have read a load of his stuff!


A lot of Dystopian and Sci-fi books
Those aren't my go-to genres but I'm realizing that there actually are some amazing ones out there. It's just the unfamiliarity and sometimes the hype that kind of put me off. I want to read Under the Never Sky though and see how I like it. It's just... so many of those books sound so similar. Blabla virus blabla zombies... natural disaster... nearly everyone dead... the fate of the world in the hands of a couple teenagers... evil scientists vs. good scientists. Controlling evil state power. Sure, you can make it good or unique. But when it comes to the description on the back of a book, it just all sounds like something I've heard before, even though I haven't actually read it.


Books by authors I've been following on twitter for a long time but who's work I haven't yet read
What if I like them and I've talked to them and told them I was going to read their book... and then I end up not liking it? It'd be awkward...


Huge but super-successful serieses
Sometimes I'm reluctant to start a series even though it sounds great, simply because there are already like a dozen books out and I know that in the time it'll take me to catch up, there will be another 3 or so out because the author is just that crazy-productive.



Garth Nix - The Abhorsen Chronicles
I've got a paperback with all three books in it (not the one pictured above). Which means it's over 1000 pages and super-heavy. I've had it fore like two years and just can't bring myself to read it, even though I've been drawn to the story ever since I picked up the German edition of Lirael when I was 14 and read the blurb on the back. That was 10 years ago. Am I stupid or what?!


I could go on with this list. There'd be quite a bunch of American classics on it - I've read quite a bunch of English ones, but I've never read William Faulkner or Hemingway or To Kill A Mockingbird or Gone with the Wind or Moby Dick or The Scarlet Letter. I also know that I really should read Brandon Sanderson. I think I'd love his work but I'm scared somehow. Same for Brent Weeks. It's very silly. I don't even know why. Sometimes it's like I'm afraid to like stuff.

So... what do you think of my list? Do we have anything in common? Books? Tendencies of avoidance? Also, please leave a link so I can check out your list :)

From the Review Pile: Blacker than Black & The Abhorsen Chronicles

From the Review Pile is a meme hosted by Stepping Out of the Page every Thursday. 

The aim of this meme is to showcase books that you've received for review (or if you don't receive review books, any book that you own and really want to read/review) but haven't yet got around to reading, in order to give the book some extra publicity. It is also inspired by 'A While on the Pile', a post by Rachel from Fiktshun / My Reading Pile.

 

 

I haven't done one of these posts in a long while but since it motivated me to actually go and read the book last time, I thought I'd give it another shot.

The first book that's been on my pile for a few months (July, I think) is Blacker than Black by Rhi Etzweiler. It was one of the first books I requested from NetGalley (it might have been a 'download now' one) and since it was already out, I kept pushing it back on the pile.

Release date: January 23, 2012
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Format: ebook, 360 pages

Apparently, my twin and I are two of York’s most notorious criminals. We’ve been Nightwalkers in the blue-light district since the vamps took over the world. Don’t know how many years it’s been. Long enough that a stream of fellow ’walkers have come and gone. Most don’t last long selling their chi. End up face-down in the gutter, or worse.

For us, one night and one sale change everything.

Monsieur Garthelle is the first john to hunt me down. He calls me a chi thief in one breath and offers absolution—servitude—in the next. Maybe I’m a sucker, but I like living and breathing. Strange that such a powerful vamp would show leniency to a mere human. And something’s not right with the chi I took from him. It won’t go away.

Neither will he, and he’s forcing us to spy on his peers. Then a vamp turns up dead, and we go from playing eyes and ears to investigating a murder. This isn’t what I signed up for. All I ever wanted was to sell a little chi, maybe steal some in return. I should’ve kept my damn hands to myself.

This is my story. Look through my eyes.

I don't know why exactly I've kept pushing this one back. I love Urban Fantasy and vampires and the world building seems promising. At the moment I have too many galley titles with 'expiration dates' on them though to get to it immediately. But I'm determiend to read it at some point.

The next one is a book I bought about a year ago. Actually, I first noticed this series at a bookstore when I was like 15... eight years ago. I loved the (German) covers. So it's kind of ironic that I ended up buying it with a cover I don't much care for. Having the whole trilogy in one book (omnibus) for a very reasonable price was a convincing argument though...



The Abhorsen Chronicles, by Gath Nix (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen)

Release date: December 30, 2008
Publisher: Harper Teen
Format: Paperback, 1232 pages

Sabriel

Every step brings Sabriel closer to a battle that will pit her against the true forces of life and death--and bring her face-to-face with her own destiny.

Lirael

With only her faithful companion, the Disreputable Dog, Lirael must undertake a desperate mission under the growing shadow of an ancient evil, which threatens the fate of the Old Kingdom.

Abhorsen

The Abhorsen Sabriel and King Touchstone are missing, and Lirael must search in both Life and Death for some means to defeat the evil Destroyer--before it is too late.


I think the book I'd picked up was Lirael, which was one reason why I didn't buy it - they didn't stock Sabriel. I remember the description including something about everyone having mind powers (reading thoughts?) apart form Lirael, which alienated her. Not sure though... it was a long time ago. But I've heard so much about Garth Nix and really want to read one of his books. It's just... it looks so big and heavy ^^'' Hard to carry around. Takes long to get through. So many other books on the shelf. Yeah...

If any one has motivation to offer for starting to read either of these books, go ahead :) Have you read them? And what's gathering dust on your pile?