Top Ten Books that Surprised Me

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is about books that surprised us in either a good way or a bad way. I decided to share a little of each.

Books that Surprised Me in a Bad Way

1. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
This book has gotten rave reviews from every corner, and I can't understand it. Besides the truly awful romanticizing of suicide, it just didn't seem that well-written to me — the characters seemed two-dimensional and like stand-ins for different ideas. I was surprised and disappointed.

2. I Am an Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler
I thought the writer of The Vagina Monologues would have another slam-dunk here, but this book was terrible. It read like a checklist of issues, for each of which Ensler tried to put herself inside the head of, say, a child factory worker in China with minimal research. The writing wandered and the audience was unclear, unless it is "middle-aged women who think this book would be really great for teens," which seem to be the people rating it highly on Goodreads.

3. None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio
I was so excited to see a popular book about an intersex character, and then I was shocked at how transphobic this book is, on top of just being a really terrible plotted and predictable YA book. The main character's intersex condition was also not handled well by the author, and as a non-intersex person she was not the right person to write a self-loathing story.

4. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
I knew enough about what the "choice" mentioned in the title was that I was really surprised that 1) it doesn't happen until the very end of the book and 2) the main character isn't Sophie, but a sex-obsessed writer based on Styron himself who spends pages and pages on "humorous" interludes about his inability to get any. All the characters were terrible and the payoff at the end was not worth the slog to get there.

5. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
Donoghue's Room is one of my favorite books ever, so I was surprised at how much I disliked this one. The plot was draggy, the main character was painfully slow on the uptake, and the overarching theme of "Boy, Catholics are dumb, huh?" wasn't one I (as a Catholic) appreciated.

Books that Surprised Me in a Good Way

1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
I expected this book from the 17th century was going to be a slog, but I liked it much more than I expected. It was amusing and satirical and sweet, and while parts were repetitive or inconsistent, there were enough good parts to keep me going. It's still not one of the best books I've ever read, but it was enjoyable enough.

2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
This book got so much criticism for its limited applicability that I was surprised to find that Sandberg falls all over herself at the beginning making disclaimers about that exact thing, and then proceeds to share a lot of really excellent advice for that specific audience (men and women who work in white-collar jobs or aspire to do so). I thought it was practical and inspiring, and I never felt shamed for my own choice not to "climb the ladder."

3. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
I had heard very mixed reviews of this book before picking it up, but I loved it! It was like all my favorite things in one book. I think maybe a lot of people misunderstood where the book comes down on technology, as I've heard rants against it both for being anti-technology and for implying the technology improves everything. I found it to be a great parable about how technology has a role to play in our lives, but that doesn't make it the be-all end-all.

4. MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche
Man, this book was slammed by Goodreads readers, but this is one of the very rare occasions where I liked a book better than most. At first I found the author hard to relate to (I'm not looking for a friend to get brunch with every Sunday) but I enjoyed seeing the wide range of approaches she took to making new friends and her spot-on observations about the awkwardness of making friends as an adult. It was this book that first prompted me to join a book club, and several book clubs later I'm still grateful for that push!

5. Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson
I don't read a lot of celebrity memoirs, and I picked this up just because of my love for the Matilda movie, so I really wasn't sure what I was going to find between the covers. But it turned out to be amazing and relatable and such a beautiful book about life. A wonderful surprise!

Which books surprised you?

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Top Ten Things That Will Make Me Instantly NOT Want To Read A Book

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is the opposite of last week. This time it's the things that will make me say, "Next!" when reading through book descriptions.

1. Alternate history
This kind of goes with #8 and #10 below, but it's just so hard to do thorough and convincing world-building when you're rewriting history because of the myriad ways events affect one another. I prefer either learning about how things actually happened or immersing myself into a new world built from the ground up with all its own rules.

2. Deception
It makes me feel on edge when an entire plot revolves around someone's real identity not being uncovered or some big secret not being uncovered. (But only if I as the reader know they're deceiving other people. I love unexpected plot twists when someone else has been hiding something!) Is there ever a time when the deception doesn't eventually unravel? It's just like watching a ticking time bomb.

3. Horror genre
I just don't do well with blood and gore or anything that's going to scar me psychologically.

4. Low ratings by people I trust
If the people I follow on Goodreads say it's crap, I'm not going to waste my time.

5. Magical realism
Maybe it's because I'm a world-building snob, but everything with magical realism seems to lack any sort of internal consistency or explanation, and so it just ends up being like, "Here's a normal story except [waggling fingers] oooh, maaaaagic." And I'm like, but why? How? What's the point?

6. Recipes
I am definitely not the kind of person who reads cookbooks for fun. I am not into the "food memoir" genre that women my age seem to be all about. If a book has recipes, I will skip over the recipes, if I read it at all.

7. Romance genre
The little I've read in this genre has not interested me, and I can't justify wasting my reading time on more.

8. Sci-fi/fantasy
I will read sci-fi and fantasy, but only if it's a classic and/or comes highly recommended. The vast majority of it just does not sound interesting to me.

9. Superheroes
Nope, not my thing. The closest thing I've read is Watchmen, and the superhero aspect was my least favorite part — couldn't keep all the names and identities straight.

10. Voluntary time travel
For whatever reason, I didn't mind the involuntary time travel in The Time Traveler's Wife, which is one of my favorite books — maybe because the main character couldn't actually change any events. I get really uncomfortable when a character intentionally goes back in time to try to change things. (You can imagine how I felt about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.)

What are your book turnoffs?

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Top Ten Books I Liked More Than I Expected

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is books that you liked more or less than expected. I could write another full post of books I didn't like as much as I expected, but I decided this time to be positive and share books that I liked. They were easy to pick out because I tend to start my Goodreads reviews of these kinds of books with "I enjoyed this more than I expected..."

1. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I've mentioned this already a few times, but I expected this book to have dense prose and be all symbolic and philosophical, and it wasn't at all. It was very readable and ended up being my favorite read from January.

2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
I had heard a lot of criticism of this book before reading it, so I was surprised to find that most of the criticism was unfounded. Yes, the book is targeted at a specific demographic, but Sandberg makes that very clear upfront, and for her specific audience I thought the book contained a lot of excellent advice, addressing systemic barriers while giving women practical things they could do to advance their career.

3. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
I read very little sci-fi and fantasy, and I'm an unrepentant world-building snob, so I was very surprised at how much I liked this book. My book club wasn't a huge fan, but I found the characters relatable and their dilemmas felt real.

4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
I'm always hesitant going into 19th century classics because they can be so dry and tedious, but this one was quite enjoyable. I wouldn't say it's a favorite — it would still be more rewarding to study and analyze than simply to read — but I found it entertaining enough to keep my attention.

5. MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche
This book kind of got panned by many reviewers as being too gimmicky, but I liked reading her reflections on the awkwardness of making friends as an adult. Maybe it just spoke to me at a particular time in my life. This book is the reason I initially decided to seek out a local book club (why had that never occurred to me before?) and since I'm now part of three, I guess I have Bertsche to thank.

6. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
I expected to hate this book based on what I knew about it, but I ended up finding it quite entertaining. It still has pretty terrible viewpoints on women and people of color, but at least for myself, Kerouac's ("Sal Paradise's") experiences were so utterly absurd that I couldn't help but find them funny.

7. Stolen by Lucy Christopher
Young adult books have been super hit or miss for me in recent years. (The majority of the "books I expected to like and didn't" fall under this genre.) I really thought this was going to turn into a YA cliché where the questionable male character ends up being an unquestioned love interest, but it didn't develop that way at all.

8. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Don't get me wrong — long sections of this novel were a slog, as you might expect from a 1300-page 19th century Russian novel. But I liked how the novel went back and forth between the war front and the home front, where the events start out separate and over time come to be more and more blended as characters at home became more affected by and involved in the war efforts. If you're not looking for the accomplishment of reading the whole unabridged version, I actually recommend the story in an abridged format.

9. Watchmen by Alan Moore
When I picked this up I had only read my first graphic novels the year before, and I hadn't read anything that explicitly dealt with comic book-type superheroes and villains. I appreciated the book's various themes, and it gave me a lot to think about. (Plus I could recognize how this year's Doctor Who Christmas special borrowed from the book's plot!)

10. The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal
I've read a lot of books in this vein that talk about how you shouldn't rely on willpower and should instead craft your environment to help you make the right choices, so I was skeptical going into this book, but McGonigal acknowledged this upfront and specified that her research was about the areas where you do still need willpower. You can set out your workout clothes the night before, get a running buddy, and incentivize yourself to complete your workout, but you still have to actually get up and out the door. I found the book helpful, practical, and applicable.

Which books surprised you for the better?

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