Top 10 of 2015

This is it, the big one, the ultimate list – the ten best books I’ve read this year.

I have been preparing for this post for months actually. I take list writing VERY seriously and wanted to make sure this really was the definitive list of the best books I’ve read this year.

I think I’ve read 53 books in 2015 which I am very pleased with. I can’t remember how many I aimed for so I’m pretending it was 50 in which case, well done me, pat on my back, I reached my target. Although I also worked out that I have bought 73 books. Whoops.

Of those 53 there’s only a couple I actively regret reading. Both of which were from the Austen Project – Sense and Sensibility by Joanne Trollope and Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid. So number one lesson learnt this year is however much I will want to buy Emma by Alexander McCall Smith when I see it for sale I must resist the urge! But other than those two books I’m happy with everything I’v read. Which has only served made choosing a top ten an even trickier task.

There were some amazing books that only just missed the cut for top reads of the year – On Chesil Beach, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Longbourn and Middlesex to name but a few. But the below ten are just out of this world incredible. Books that are serious contenders for a coveted place on my Desert Island books.

10.  Looking for Alaska by John Green

9.   Saturday by Ian McEwan

8.   How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

7.   The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan

6.   The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

5.   Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

4.   Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

3.   The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

2.   Wild by Cheryl Strayed

1.   Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

Top Ten Tuesday: Book adaptations I need to see

I have a real problem with book to film adaptations. I just don’t think they ever do the book justice. Of all the ones I’ve ever seen there are less than ten that actually lived up to my expectations (and I’ve listed them here and here).

So what, you may ask, is the point of me even taking part in this week’s Top Ten Tuesday from The Broke and the Bookish when the theme is all about the book to film adaptations we’re looking forward to? Well because I’m a consummate optimist. Every time a new adaptation is released I race to watch it thinking this time it’ll be different, this time they’ll have done it just how I would have wanted them to. Even though they barely ever do. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

I’ve actually broken the list below up into two categories – book to film adaptions I really need to see and book to film adaptions I’ve started but really need to get round to finishing. Oh and I’ve also included TV series adaptions. Because why not.

ONES I NEED TO SEE

1. Brooklyn

This hasn’t actually been released yet so it’s a bit of a stretch to be including it. When I read this book I could imagine how it would make a great film, conveying all the excitement of 1950s New York and the desolation of 1950s Ireland. And what I’ve seen of the cast fits pretty well with how I imagined it. So fingers crossed!

2. The Virgin Suicides

I’m apprehensive about watching this film as it’s not a book I can really picture working well as an adaption. But it’s such a highly regarded film and I’ve heard some great reviews, so I can’t really not.

3. Far From the Madding Crowd

I read this book almost entirely so that I could have it finished by the time the film came out earlier this year. And then never actually got round to seeing the film. My parents both saw it and spoke of it very highly but they’ve been wrong before.

4. Paper Towns

This is my favourite John Green novel so I have high expectations for the film. Although Cara Delivigne really isn’t how I pictured Margo so it’s going to take quite something for me to able to actually get over that and enjoy it.

5. Valley of the Dolls

I want to watch this more to remind myself why I loved the book so much than to see if they adapt it well, especially as I can’t imagine it has been when it’s on a list of The Fifty Worst Films of all Time. But knowing my subversive tastes that’ll probably mean I like it.

6. Lady Susan

I’ve heard tell that there is a film adaption of this in the offing. I love the idea of a new Jane Austen story (well not new, but new in the public attention). But if they mess up Jane Austen they’ll have me to answer to.

ONES I NEED TO FINISH

1. The Great Gatsby

I started this about a year ago, got almost to the end before I just couldn’t put off going to sleep anymore and then never actually went back to finish it. And now it’s just been so long since I started it that I know I’m going to have to go back to the beginning and watch it all over again.  Which isn’t a thought I particularly relish. I loved Baz Luhrman’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet so much but The Great Gatsby just wasn’t working quite as well for me so even the thought of two hours watching Leonardo Di Caprio hasn’t been motivation enough to actually bite the bullet and finish it. One day though.

2. The Fault in our Stars

The problem with this one is that I know I didn’t enjoy the end of the book anywhere near as much as the beginning so as much as I loved the first half of the film I’m expecting the second half to be a disappointment. And it’s hard to actively want to do something that you don’t think you’ll enjoy.

3. The White Queen

This probably doesn’t count as I’m actually in the process of watching this at the moment but there was a gap of about eight months between watching episode seven and episode eight so I think it just about qualifies. So far my impressions are mediocre at best but if it can finish with a flourish then it could be saved.

4. The Hobbit

Yes it’s incredibly slow but at least it was faithful to the books. I can only dream of a Harry Potter adaption that is as truthful to the source material. Even better if it could include as many extras as The Hobbit does. I’ve seen the first two films but then broke up with the boyfriend who always took me to see them (tiny violin for me). So watching the last film has just never happened. But now I’m putting it off to enjoy the anticipation of a completely free evening, a packet of some sugar filled snack, a duvet and the climax of a great film franchise.

This week I’ve been reading… The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

 

How long: Two days.

Where I finished it: Midair somewhere above Hungary.

Should be read while listening to: Rave On by Cults

Favourite quote: The Lisbons could hardly wait for night to forget themselves in sleep

The title of this post is completely inaccurate as it was at least two weeks ago that I was actually reading this book. In two days flat (almost all of that in one sitting).

I think if I’d known absolutely anything about this before I bought it I wouldn’t have bothered as it really isn’t the kind of book I usually like – no plot but lots of atmospheric description. Although I am partial to dark and depressing which this certainly is. As it is I bought it almost entirely on the strength of it’s being mentioned at some point in The Gilmore Girls which is the whole reason I bought Valley of the Dolls which is now on my list of top ten books of all time (and a little bit because the cover is very pretty).

I wouldn’t quite go so far as to place The Virgin Suicides as an all time favourite but it’s without a doubt a brilliant book and one I am going to start recommending to absolutely everyone.

There is practically no plot at all. We’re told right on the back cover that the five Lisbon sisters all commit suicide within a year of each other and the book is set twenty years later, looking back on some of the events of their lives, not chronologically, not attempting any tension or cliffhangers, not asking any questions or finding any answers.

The story is told from the point of view of five boys who have almost no involvement in the plot at all which only added to the meandering, almost pointless feel of the way it was written. They don’t claim to know or understand the Lisbon girls. Although they watch them the whole of their lives from the house across the street, once the doors are closed they have no way of knowing what was going on inside and what drove them to suicide.

For me The Virgin Suicides reminded me of Catch 22 though I can’t for the life of me think why. Maybe the detailed description, or the melancholy sense of impending doom but never quite knowing when that doom is going to come or what’s going to cause it. Whatever the reason, for me to be comparing things to Catch 22 (greatest book ever written) you know it’s got to be something special.

I started this book in the bath on Wednesday night and finished it on the plane the next morning. And it’s been a while since the end of a book has affected quite as much as this one did. I was seriously tearing up for the last few pages, partly because of the melancholy tone of the writing and partly because I didn’t want it to be over. I felt like the narrator; I wanted to know everything about these girls and not to understand why they had to die, not to make sense of it, for the first time ever I didn’t even want a clear cut ending, I just wanted to keep reading.