Top Ten Tuesday: books I recommend the most

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week the participants post their top ten to a specific topic.

This week's topic asks the impossibility of me to choose the top ten books I recommend the most

Like seriously how should I choose?! I think sometimes I'll have to resort to just giving you authors. I'll also try to focus on books that maybe not everyone has already read and aren't that well-known. However, I'm currently lying propped up in bed with a fever so I might not be fully coherent...

1. Nevermore, by Kelly Creagh
   Yup, because her writing is just that beautiful. And Varen is my favorite book boyfriend. The way Creagh weaves Poe into her story is magnificent! You can check out my review here. It's the first one I ever wrote though so beware...


2. Anything by Holly Black really, but why not start with White Cat, the first book in the Curseworkers series? There you've got a type of Urban Fantasy I haven't ever seen anywhere like this. It's part noir, part fantasy, part gangster thing, and features lots of cons and twists and amazing characters and reader-heartbreak! I'd link you to my review, but I've only done book 3 so there'd be spoilers...


3. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
   I know, I said no super well-known books. But seriously just pick this one up. It's magic enclosed in paper.


4. The Replacement, by Breanna Yovanoff
   It was so great I still haven't found the right words to review it. It tore out my heart and I lost count of how many times I cried at the beauty and the sadness and how often my chest ached for Mackie.


5. Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series
   To this day my favorite fairy series ever. I read the last of the spin-off mangas today and was reminded of just how amazing her characters and world-building are!


6. The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
   Another book that will put you through the emotional wringer, but it's sooo good! It's also theoretically New Adult, even though back then it wasn't marketed as such. It's about an ex-foster-home-girl trying to make a living in San Francisco.


7. Anything by Ralf Isau, especially his Kreis der Dämmerung (Circle of the Dawn) books. I'm not sure if you can find them in English though, but he's a fairly well-known German YA, MG and adult author. I know his work's been translated into other languages... Many of his stories and characters are still with me and helped me through rough patches in my teens.


8. Generation X, by Douglas Coupland
   Simply an amazing book! What he writes about the 90s generation is still fairly applicable today, IMO.


9. Kate Griffin's Matthew Swift books, starting with A Madness of Angels (not god-like angels, they're the remnants of our voices in the telephone wires). Seriously THE best Urban Fantasy/Urban Magic series I have read. EVER.


10. Finally, I feel like I should list a classic. Hm. Maybe Virginia Woolf's Orlando? Wilkie Collins' Woman in White?

I could have listed so many more books you guys!! Neil Gaiman. Gayle Forman. The Infernal Devices. Kim Harrison. Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy. Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Ugh >.<
Have you read any of them? And what can you recommend? Link me up in the comments :)

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors and Books I'm Thankful For

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the lovely people at The Broke and The Bookish. Every week, all the bloggers participating post their Top Ten list of a certain topic.

This week's topic is: Top ten authors and books I'm thankful for.

I'm not American so I don't do Thanksgiving, but seeing all those posts on twitter and around the blogosphere always gets me in a pensive mood, too, and makes me remember what and who I'm grateful to have in my life. So I'll give this list a try... as always, no particular order.
Sorry for the lack of pictures but there would be so many and the formatting always drives me nuts if I want them to look nice in the text.

1. Stephen King - On Writing
   I love this book and I've read it several times. Most of what I know about writing and how I approach it I've learned from here. It's written in a way that even my 17-year-old self could understand.
2. Ralf Isau - Der Kreis der Dämmerung (Circle of the Dawn)
   This is an epic saga in 4 volumes, spanning the entire 20th century. I've read all the books at least twice. They've made me laugh and cry and feel pretty much any emotion known to man. Reading makes me remember what's important. And I just love David Camden as a character.
3. J.R.R. Tokien - The Lord of the Rings
   Probably no explanation needed for this one... I first red it 10 years ago and have been meaning to re-read it... for the 5th time. It was part of my introduction to fantasy books.
4. Wolfgang & Heike Hohlbein
   I'm grateful for pretty much any book they've co-written between 1982 and 2004. I don't really know their more recent work. Some of my favorites are Der Greif, Dreizehn, Krieg der Engel, and Spiegelzeit. Those were the reads of my early to mid teens and fueled my imagination. I got another 2 or so from the school library every week (yes they wrote tons of books).
5. Kate Griffin - A Madness of Angels
   One of the best Urban Fantasy books I've ever read. Her writing blows my mind every time! It makes me see the city through fresh eyes again, and it makes me believe that maybe magic is still possible even these days.
6. Holly Black
   Anything she's written is amazing. She comes up with such great ways to express things, and her writing is very courageous and touches on topics that I think many authors shy away from or skirt around.
7. Poppy Z. Brite - Lost Souls
   For putting the bite back into vampires. Well, for me at least since I read it about 18 years after it was published. Great writing, though sometimes on the vey gory side.
8. Stephen King - Dark Tower series
   Roland Deschain and his ka-tet. Their journey will be with me until the day I breathe my last.
9. Edgar Allan Poe
   I love his poems and short stories. He's hard to grasp but he was a big influence on me, especially his way of approaching short story writing in one of his essays.
10. Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
    I have no way to express my feels. I really love and admire this man. I even visited his grave in Paris, and I'm grateful I got there before they put this weird glass wall around it. One of my most treasured memories.
11. John Keats, Stephen Crane, John Donne, William Carlos Williams, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, John Milton, William Blake...
    I'm sure I forgot some. A very cut-back list of some of my favorite poets.

I realized that I put a big (too much?) focus on modern authors and forgot about all the Classics I read for university, many of which have left a big impression on me. That's part of the reason for number 11. Also, poems are very underrated. More people should read and discuss them.