Top Ten Books I Loved but Will Never Re-Read

 

I don't  re-read at all, there's way to many books in the world to justify re-reading for me. For this list I've included some of my favorite books, many of which made me sob.

1. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

~Amazon~
Review
This is one of the saddest books I've ever read. It's about a boy grappling with his Mom going through cancer. I didn't even watch the film adaptation because of what this did to me.  

2. Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

~Amazon~ 
 Review

This was full of Native American history anguish and people that I will never forget. The characters were great and the drama and violence has been unmatched in any other book I've read since. It is a whooping 768 pages long, I enjoyed every page.

3. Maus I & Maus II by Art Spiegelman

~Amazon~
Reviews
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus #1)
Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began (Maus #2)

These graphic novels are must read non-fiction. The author tells his father's extraordinary tale of survival as a Jewish man in Hitler's Europe. He writes this semi-autobiographical work to understand who his father is and honor what he has been through. It is heartbreaking and fantastic.

 4. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

~Amazon~
Review
This book follows characters who steal babies, live in cemeteries, survive war and learn to love again. A great emotionally draining character study which also includes actual Indian history. 

5. Fifteen Lanes by S.J. Laidlaw

~Amazon~   

Review

Two unlikely friends meet and form a wonderful friendship. Noor grows up in a brothel, while Grace lives a very comfortable and privileged life. The descriptions of sexual violence and poverty in this book has stayed with me for a long time.

 

6. The Three-Body Problem (Three Body #1) by Liu Cixin, Ken Liu (Translation)

~Amazon~
Review

This is hard sci-fi, mystery, historical fiction, and thriller. It is a long book which describes some painful parts of the Cultural Revolution. The length fits in so much good I was sad when the book ended. I want to finish the next two books in the series this year.

7. Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao

~Amazon~ 

Review

Poornima and Savitha develop a lasting friendship that crosses borders and the tremendous amount of tragedy that they survive. The things that happened in this book hurt my heart, you should be prepared to read about serious topics and cry when you pick this up. 

8. The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1) by Alexandra Bracken

~Amazon~
I read this book before I had my blog, and loved it. Children develop super powers and the government lives in fear of them.  I'm excited it's being adapted for the big screen. However my five star rating would likely change if I was to pick it up now, because I read and analyze books more closely these days. 

9. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

~Amazon~
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace.

I read this book in college and fell in love with it. I have not seen the movie adaptation because I don't want this story to be interpreted in any other way then it was in my head. This is a masterpiece.

10. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

~Amazon~
 In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented.  Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave.  She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.

Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream, Mathis’s first novel heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction. 

A family drama that explores love, racism, and what it means to be family. I loved this book even though many parts of it made me really angry. A wonderful reading experience. 

Have you read any of the books above? Let me know in the comments