The Weekly List #4: My List of Mood Boosting Books

Last week I posted The Reading Agency's most recent list of mood boosting books, and then I went and sat down and tried to write a list of books which, on repeated reading, have never failed to put a smile on my face once I've finished with them. You should go and do the same, seriously, it's harder than it sounds... Here's what I eventually came up with:

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern

The End of Mr Y – Scarlett Thomas

Harry Potter – J.K Rowling

Anne of Green Gables – L.M Montgomery

The Railway Children – E. Nesbit

Little Women and sequels – Louisa May Alcott

Quentins – Maeve Binchy

These Old Shades – Georgette Heyer

About a Boy – Nick Hornby

Chocolat – Joanne Harris

Anything featuring cupcakes or chocolate by Jenny Colgan

Anything and everything by Noel Streatfeild, but especially Ballet Shoes, A Painted Garden, The Growing Summer and Apple Bough.

How to be a Woman – Caitlin Moran

Things by Bill Bryson are also generally a good bet.

Matilda – Roald Dahl

I realised after a while that the vast majority of these books are either children's books, or books I read when I was in my early teens. I wonder whether that's because kids books often have a more optimistic subject matter or are more humorous? Or just because of the time of life I was at when I read them; do they make me happy because I was less jaded and cynical when I read them? I'm not sure, but I'm inclined towards the latter way of thinking... What would be on your list? And if you do accept my challenge and write one yourself, please leave a link to it in the comments so I can have a look!

The Weekly List: A Levels Part 2

This is part two of my recommended reading for A levels. I forget where I found this now, but it's from a school in the UK and it's their 'wider reading for A Levels' list.

1.       Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe*

2.       Watership Down – Richard Adams

3.       Behind the Scenes at the Museum – Kate Atkinson

4.       Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

5.       House of Spirits – Isabel Allende

6.       London Fields – Martin Amis

7.       Anything by Isaac Assimov

8.       The Handmaid’s Tale*, Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace* – Margaret Atwood

9.       Anything by Jane Austen*

10.   Complicity – Iain Banks

11.   Anything by Pat Barker

12.   Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres

13.   Room at the Top – John Braine

14.   Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

15.   Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte*

16.   Hotel du Lac – Anita Brookner

17.   A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

18.   Possession – A.S Byatt

19.   Wise Children – Angela Carter

20.   Anything by Wilkie Collins

21.   The Heart of Darkness*, The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad

22.   Anything by Charles Dickens

 

23. Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle

 

      24.   The Millstone, The Garrick Year – Margaret Drabble

25.   Jamaica Inn, Rebecca* – Daphne du Maurier

26.   The Siege – Helen Dunmore

 

27. Anything by George Eliot

 

28.   As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner

29.   Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks*

30.   The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald*

Those in bold are books I've read, and those with stars by them also appeared on my list from last week. There are some on this list which, to be honest, I wouldn't personally recommend. I read Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha when I was in a book club in college and really hated it. And I don't get along at all well with George Eliot (except Silas Marner which I read when I was 15 and loved, weirdly) but aside from that it's an interesting list. There are a few (The Seige, The Garrick Year, Room at the Top) which I'd actually never heard of, so that's always interesting. Personally, I like my list better, but that might just be because it has, like, 60 books on it...

Next week, books to boost your mood!

The Weekly List

When my sister was about to start A Levels (16, for the non-Brits reading this!), she asked me to write her a list of books she should read over the summer. To give an idea of time scale, she's now 19, so this was a list I made preblogging. I just found it last week and it got me thinking about book lists and what makes them good. Some of the titles on this list I haven't even read myself and looking at it now, I've really no idea why some of them were on here, but it made me wonder why I haven't turned my obsession with bookish lists into a feature on the blog before now. So here it is. This week, part 1, is the list I made for my sister, and next week I will publish a list of internet recommended reading for similar aged kids. This is how it will go; one week my list of certain subjects/genres, the second week an outside source (e.g 1001 books to read before you die, Guardian top 100 etc). I'm aware that this may not appeal to anyone but me, but if you're a similarly list loving person then I definitely welcome your input on things I've missed, things that you thought were awful and so on. It's all about the debate :-)

So here it is, Esther's A Level reading list, with the comments I wrote for her at the time:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
3. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Paradise Lost - John Milton (and tell me if it's good, cos I've not read it )
6. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
7. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (this book is genius - if you don't love it, I will have to disown you)
8. Don Quixote - Cervantes (Dad has it - nick it)
9. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
10. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
11. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (stick with it - its worth it!)
12. A Passage to India - E.M Forster
13. Howards End - E.M Forster
14. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
15. Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
16. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
17. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (Do NOT watch the film)
18. Beloved - Toni Morrison
19. Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
20. 1984 - George Orwell
21. Animal Farm - George Orwell
22. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier 
23. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
24. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
25. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
26. The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (I have it. Just bloody brilliant. Read it. Now)
27. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
28. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Anne Bronte
29. T.S Eliot poetry - especially... The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, Preludes, and The Wasteland but also Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and others... he's a genius poet
30. A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams (WATCH WATCH WATCH the film starring Marlon Brando (very often shirtless :D) and Vivien Leigh... pure brilliance)
31. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Film Recommendation - Kenneth Branagh.. don't bother with Mel Gibson...)
32. Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare (Baz Luhrman, obv)
33. The Tempest - William Shakespeare (Return to the Forbidden Planet :p)
34. Othello - William Shakespeare (don't watch the film.. go see it at the Globe)
35. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
36. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
37. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Remarque
38. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
39. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
40. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
41. The End of Mr Y - Scarlett Thomas (absolutely GENIUS writer)
42. Our Tragic Universe - Scarlett Thomas
43. The Hunchback of Notre- Dame - Victor Hugo
44. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
45. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
46. The Odyssey - Homer (Dad has, but I'm reading atm so you can have it after :p)
47. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
48. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - R.L Stephenson
49. Wild Swans - Jung Chang
50. Quo Vadis? - Henryk Sienkiewicz
51. Translations - Brian Friel
52. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
53. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
54. An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
55. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
56. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
57. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
58. True Notebooks - Mark Salzman
59. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - Ken Kesey
60. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
61. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
62. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
63. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak (due to Stalin, he wasn't allowed to leave Russia to get his NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE for Dr. Zhivago. This is one of the many reasons why we hate Stalin..)
64. Poetry of W.H Auden
65. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Unhand me, grey beard loon!)

Looking at it now, this list could otherwise be entitled 'All the books I'd loved at this point plus the ones I wanted to read but was too scared/lazy to have got around to yet'. 

It's not necessarily the books I'd recommend now, but I know that she's read a fair few of them now on my recommendation, and loved a lot of them :-) 

What would you put on a list like this? What have I missed, and what shouldn't be on here?