Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish 

The topic this week is Top Ten Books I’m Thankful For ( I think it’s because it’s Thanksgiving in the States). Anyway, I haven’t done one of those tags for a long while, so I thought it’s high time.  Besides, I should practice being grateful for the good things in life. So here are some of the books that I am thankful for, in no particular order.

1. George Eliot’s Middlemarch

Perhaps I did not always love Middlemarch  so well as I do now.  But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable. I need to reread it once more (and yes, I’ve read it twice already)

2.. Terry Pratchett’s Thud

Because this is a Terry Pratchett book about being afraid of the dark, and I was always afraid of the dark as a child ( I still am sometimes). I really needed this.

3.Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

I love all of Jane Austen’s novels, but I am thankful for this one in particular – because Fanny Price annoys absolutely all the literary critics, and yet Jane Austen chose to make this shy and awkward young woman a heroine. An amazing comfort read.

4. Charles Dickens’s Bleak House

Dickens knows exactly how to make you cry and how to cheer you up when you’re going through a troubled time in your life.

5. The Horrible Histories books by Terry Deary

I loved the Horrible Histories so much as a child, and my many dog-eared and treasured copies are a tribute to this. I can’t bring myself to part with them. I feel I owe my love of history to the many hours spent giggling over those paperbacks.

6. Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries

Because being a teenager is always tough, but Mia Thermopolis survived it somehow.

7. Adam Mickiewicz Pan Tadeusz 

Because I’m a Polish girl, and I was brought up by listening to quotations from this 12-book long epic poem. And I love it.

8.  Junot Díaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

It’s hard for me to explain the effect that reading this book had for me. It filled me with excitement, wonder, and admiration for Junot Díaz’s writing (which continues to this day).

9.  Wisława Szymborska “A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth” ( a poem which comes from a volume of poetry entitled A Moment) 

This is one of my absolutely favourite poems – please do read it, if you haven’t yet http://tiltingourheadsup.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/wislawa-szymborska-little-girl-tugs-at.html

10. J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings

I don’t have to explain this one, do I?

 

What are the books you are thankful for? Are there any particular battered copies that have seen you through some rough times?