Books… Now and Then

Top Ten Tuesday

::Waves:: Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, where we talk about books! It’s hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! Today’s topic is “Changes in My Reading Life.” I’m not sure what to do with that, so I’m just going to take a time machine through history and come up with books that I really liked, and go through the present time. I don’t know where this journey will end up… you might be less clueless than me! Here we go!

Little House on the Prairie set

If we go far back enough, we’ll see this beautiful Little House boxed set sitting in the bookshelf in my bedroom closet! Well, not this one specifically, because mine was blue. I still have… most of these books? Somewhere. My daughter kind of tore some of these.

Rilla of Ingleside cover

Inching forward in time to high school, you’ll find the Anne of Green Gables books. My grandma had the whole set and I borrowed them from her. My personal favorite from the series was Rilla of Ingleside. These books were the one thing I really wanted to inherit from my grandmother.

Sweet Valley University 1 cover

Here’s some escapism from college. Sweet Valley University books can easily be read in a few hours. Of course, back then you didn’t to go Amazon, you’d head on down to your local mall to the Brentano’s or Waldenbooks.

The Discoverers Cover

I got The Discoverers from the USC University bookstore. I’ve read it twice and will probably read it again someday. Boorstin has read several books and I checked a lot of them out of the library. I still haven’t read his book The Seekers yet. Adding it to my Winter 2019/20 TBR lottery to give it a chance.

In the Garden of Beasts cover

There’s a lot of books I could put in this slot… I’ve probably been posting my favorite books of the year now online for… ten years? Maybe longer? But because I used to post them on places like Squidoo, which are no longer up, they’re no longer available. In The Garden of Beasts was a book that I read sometime between college and the time I have records of my favorite books of the year. There are any number of books that could go here. The book I’m writing is partly inspired by this book, so I think it belongs.

Divergent cover

Divergent is one of those life-changing books for me. I hated chapter 50 and beyond in Allegiant. So that’s not really a ringing endorsement, but I adored everything that came before that. This book prompted me to get into fanfiction. I won NaNoWriMo for the first time with an alternate version of this story where Tris chose Abnegation. For years I wanted to write books but couldn’t come up with a story. So I have to thank this series for that.

The Fourth Turning Cover

My first post on this blog was January 1st, 2017, where I posted about my favorite books I read for the first time in 2016. The Fourth Turning won that year. I love this book.

Warcross cover

Warcross was my favorite book from 2017. I read it on December 31st that year. I knew it had a good chance of taking the #1 spot for the year, which was why I made sure to read it before the year was over. It was a Christmas present. 2017 was the last year before I started pre-ordering books and getting ARCs.

Enchantée cover

Enchantée was my favorite book from 2018. And I just discovered that I haven’t pre-ordered its sequel, Liberté, which comes out on July 14, 2020. I think I’m waiting until after Cyber Monday. Last year I spent about $75 over Black Friday weekend on books. Maybe I’ll use that “Buy $20 in books, get $5 off” deal that they had last year.

Rebel cover

2019 is not over yet, so I can’t tell you what my favorite book of the year is/was, but Legend is another one of the books that changed my life. I have written a lot of fanfiction in this series, including one book where Day and June grew up in the Divergent universe. So it’s only fitting that for the last stop on our trip through reading time, we stop at the 2019 release of Rebel. I loved this book and want to read it again.

What about you? If we were to take a trip on a time machine and take a journey through your reading history, what would we see? Next week, we’re going to talk about bookish things I’m thankful for. See you then!

34 comments

    1. Haha. I just don’t accept the ending. There’s fanfic to take care of that. We Can Be Mended didn’t change anything in my eyes. I don’t even like how that turned out.

    1. It’s interesting to see this week how people’s reading habits have changed. There are so many amazing books out there in different genres and its fun to explore many of them.

    1. A librarian recommended them to me after I told her I loved Divergent! I think I have purchased 24 Marie Lu books now (yes I have some duplicates). No, 25 because I just pre-ordered Skyhunter… or maybe 26 because I’m not sure if I counted Kingdom of Back. Who says libraries don’t sell books!

    1. I’d like to reread the Anne of Green Gables series soon, especially now that I have my grandma’s old copies now. I don’t think I could get rid of them.

  1. Ah Little House. I read some of those as a kid- I was in a covered wagons are cool phase lol- and enjoyed them. And Divergent! I’ve never read Allegiant although I’ve heard all about it, but I did like the first book and the whole concept.
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    1. I already have “Untitled” on my “Want to Read” list, because I’m about 99% sure I’ll want to read whatever she writes!

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