The Top 10 Books I Couldn't Have Lived Without

Hello again and welcome to Ink Stained Fingers, where all books get their trial by fire.

As for those of you who have been keeping up with my reviews you know that last time I went over the list of the top 10 books I could have lived without. Since then I’ve had a few friends of mine that had asked me numerous questions. One of the biggest ones was that if that was the books I didn’t like then what were the top 10 books I couldn’t live without?

You know those books. The book that you could read over and over again. It’s the books you keep within reach so you can grab it up and read it whenever you get the urge.

Luckily for them and for you I all ready had a list set up for just this occasion. So today, we are gonna dive into the Top 10 Books I Couldn’t Live Without. So buckle in for the books that I could talk about all day long.

And I promise to keep it short as possible…but I make no promises.

10. The Chalice and the Blade by Genna McReynolds

This is one of those books I believe I’ve mentioned before. But this is one of those books that broke through my usual radar of books with damsels in distress as something not to aspire to. The main reason it made this list is because of that. The fact that it has dragons, sword fighting, magic and a damsel in distress that can fight back makes it a book that I could read over and over again.

9. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

Now, many people know all about this book series. It’s one of the most popular book to movie series even before Harry Potter. This book is timeless. The characters are amazing. The story is epic in ways that all other books try to compete with. The series is flawless and they know it because they aren’t trying to add to it or do spin offs. There’s simply no need.

8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

And here we have it. This is the next book in a series that came out perfect. Some people may have problems with the characters but I don’t. As Steven King said: “Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity.” If any kids need a series to inspire them, then this series is the one and the Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite out of the entire series for that.

7. Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer

Now my friends know that this book would make this list and for those of you that have kept up with my blog then you would too. The big reason this book makes the list is that for the first time in the series we actually get to hear from the other characters. The starting force might have been Bella but she wasn’t completely center stage. That made this book better than others by far.

6. Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice

I’ve seen another couple of reviews for this book and I have to agree with them. While this book does make series like Twilight possible, it is still separate from those other series. It is the first of its kind that makes vampires into the ones that you’d rather spend eternity with rather than running screaming in the other direction. I do like the traditional vampires once in a while but what’s a good story without some hot eye candy? You may never marry these vampires but I bet it’s more than enough to dream about them.

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Now this book is unlike the other books on the series except maybe for The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. This is one of those stories that I like not for hot guys or powerful women. This is a story I like for the moral it brings across. Simply that first impressions of a person aren’t always right and those impressions shouldn’t used to keep yourself distant from the other person because that very person might be the key to happiness in your life.

4. Dhampir by Barb and J.C. Hendee

Again, here’s another vampire book that makes the list. However, this is so far from Twilight and Interview with the Vampire that it has its own category in my mind. There’s no romance. No vampires you want to date or that are even sexy. This is all about the action with some mystery thrown in to keep you wondering what’s going to happen. A vampire mystery. Sounds like fun to me.

3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Now this is a book that needs to be on everyone’s list. A book about the severe effects of over-censorship. Most people think we as a society could never let things get that far. This book is more than enough of a wake up call as to what things could be like if we just keep taking the passive route through our lives. Give this book a read and see just what I mean.

2. Obsidian Butterfly by Laurell K. Hamilton

Yet another vampire novel makes my list. Any of my friends could attest to the fact that I’m a sucker for a vampire novel. However, while this novel is from a vampire series, this book has little to do with the main vampires of the series. Yeah it features vampires but it delves more into the life of an assassian and bounty hunter that Anita Blake knows as Edward, Death or Ted Forrester. The last when he’s doing legal things. Edward is one of my faves from the series and I was more than excited to learn more about him.

1. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King

And here it is, one of my fave books. This book made me want to seek out the original Sherlock Holmes stories and read as many of them as possible as well as the rest of this series. This book is perfect in my mind. The thrills, the backstories, the characters and everything else is well thought out and executed. You aren’t spending the book trying to figure anything out but you are still curious where the story is going. Mystery, crime, and someone that will go toe to toe with Sherlock Holmes? Just awesome.

And there you have it, the top 10 books that I couldn’t live without. These books were never in any particular order. Even if I tried to go for some sort of order I wouldn’t have been able to do it. They are all amazing in their own ways. Just seems wrong to pit them against each other. It’s enough that they are great.

Do you have a top 10 books you could always go back to? Those books that you turn to on good days, bad days, and all the days in between because it’s stuck in your mind. If you do feel free to share them in the comments.

Don’t have a top 10? Don’t even know where to start? Try out the books on my list. They just may be the ones that end up on your top 10.

That’s all from this book junkie.

I’m Creative Karma and I’m on the look out for a new top 10 books to love.

The Top 10 Books I Could Have Lived Without

Evening everyone out there in the world wide web and welcome to another edition of Ink Stained Fingers. The place were all books get their day in my court. Some are innocent until proven guilty while others are guilty until proven innocent.

In this edition of Ink Stained Fingers, I’m going to be delving into the books that are just plain guilty. And I’m not talking about those nice guilty pleasures that you enjoy in the privacy of your room. I’m talking about the books that are simply the kind I could have done without.

Let me describe this type of book before I move to far ahead.

Any book that made this list is guilty of one or more things. Those things can be but are exclusive to: too many plot lines, too little of a plot line, boring characters, characters you can’t relate to, too much information, trying to be funny/epic/romantic/serious/etc. and failing miserably at it, getting the reader’s hopes up, and lame endings.

There’s much more I could add to that list but then this would be list that might last me all night and that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to reveal my top 10 books I could have lived without and tell you why that is.

These books are in no particular order but all belong on this list.

Enough with the teasing, let’s dive into the top 10 books I could have lived without and this time I have pictures.

                                                     10. Hit List by Laurell K. Hamilton

    Now, normally, I'm a huge fan of the Anita Blake series. I read this whole series over and over again till most of the people around me can't stand it anymore. But this book upset me. The story line wasn't horrible, the characters were all the same, and it was the same writing style. However, it was the way this book was ended that did it in for me. Having followed all of the characters this far I tend to think I know them rather well. The end of the book made no sense to the rest of the series and made what could have been some epic into a lamely written confrontation.

9. Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice

     Again, I'm traditionally a fan of the Ann Rice series and something of a vampire lore junkie. I like following the lives of Lestat, Louie and all the rest. I even loved the individual books in the series. But Memnoch the Devil definitely shows the author when she decided to be uber religious. I'm all for reading about people's different ideas of what Heaven, Hell, the Devil, God, demons and angels are like. However, when I pick up an Anne Rice vampire novel I expect it to have something more to do with vampires than Lestat having some weird religious out of body experience.

8. The Witches by Ronald Dahl

     Again, another author I like. I loved Matilda and they did a great job with the movie rendition. But this is one book that I really didn't want to wrap my head around. This is a sort of children's book so it's not hard to follow by any means. It's a quick read and that's about the only good thing about it. But the idea they are trying to pass off with who "The Witches" are is just so silly and stupid that the only type of person it's good for is a scary story for five year olds. But scary in the manner of all those "scary stories" for teens that were more meant to scare them out of  going to park out on some hill in a guy's car to make out. All in all this is a book that tries to take itself too seriously and that's what makes it fail.

7. Skellig by David Almond

     Like in my comments about Memnoch the Devil, I don't mind different thoughts on religious ideas. A couple of years at a community college and a Comparative Religion class helped that along. But this story has nothing to do with religion in any sense of the word. There may be one or two little things at the end of the book that hint towards some of the teachings in the Bible but it's like an afterthought. I'm not even sure what the author meant to get across in this book. Is it supposed to be scary? Is it supposed to express some idea? What is the reading supposed to feel for the characters? All questions to which I still have no answer.

6. The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer

     It surprises me how many of the books on this list are from the Children's Literature class I took in college. I liked a lot of the books we read and I don't mind reading children's books. I even recognize that I might not like some books because they are for a much younger audience. However, this book gets more confusing as you go on. The idea was a great one. But there is little to no explanation for how we got to this point in time. As if the reader is simply supposed to accept a society that they are unfamiliar with set a thousand years more or less in the future and using terminology and technology that are suddenly something common and everyday. The descriptions make it hard to picture what's going on and only adds to the confusion. All in all this is a book that left me wondering what all I missed and not in a good way.

5. The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening and The Struggle by L.J. Smith

     Now, I'm putting these two together because I read them together. Doesn't seem fair when I can't keep the stories from mixing in my own mind. As I said before, I'm a sucker for different ways of using vampire lore. I'm not stuck on Dracula as the one true vampire. But these two books simply didn't do it for me. I guess the author was trying to make it more down to earth and real for a teenage/high school setting. Well, they succeeded better than the Twilight series on that one. However, save for the vampire angle it was too close. It was too much like a typical high school drama. Heck, you could have removed the vampire angle and made every character human and it really wouldn't have taken much away from the books. The female lead in these book is better than most by far. She's far from being a true damsel in distress...like some emo chics I could name... However, I still couldn't feel drawn into the story.

       4. The Group by Mary McCarthy

            This book wasn't all that bad to tell the truth. It had it's good moments and the characters weren't bland in the least. It was simply hard for me to handle the writing style of this book. It tended to jump between story line to story line of each girl in "the group" of friends. I ended up missing more of the things going on then remembering them. It was simply too much information to keep in my head till all the story lines converged in the end of the book. If you can juggle multiple storylines in one book then I would actually recommend this book to you. Fair warning, this book is uncensored and for adult reader's only. Graphic sexual content is the norm here not the

exception.

    3. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

        If the last book had graphic sexual content as the norm, then this book would end up in the back room with a curtain hanging in the doorway with a sign that said "for adults only". This book pushed way to many buttons all at the same time to make this a comfortable read. I might be only half joking to say that even the hardcore liberal might need to pause in reading this book to get some air and a cigarette. If it had one less controversial topic or one less story line then it MIGHT have been enjoyable. To me it was simply uncomfortable. 

     2. Troilus and Criseyde by Chaucer

          If this book alone doesn't prove that I obtained an English degree, then nothing will. As an English major I've read a lot of Chaucer's other works. He was an author that I did enjoy during college. But this is a book that I struggled through for a class. It's not that the material was about an era that I couldn't understand. All of Chaucer's works are like that. But this book seemed to be so forced. The characters were unreachable, unbelievable, the story was way too chalked up and left me wanting. It would be like if they were building up to an epic battle and they ended with a handshake and everyone happy and smiling. It's like Romeo and Juliet without the undying love and double suicide.

1. New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

    If you've read my review of the whole Twilight "saga" then you know my thoughts on this book so I won't rehash them too much. This is the one place where I truly agree with my friend TheCinemaChick. The only good thing about this book was Jacob and the fact he was shirtless and muscled. Even that lovely eye candy can't distract the reader from the psychotic roller coaster that the reader is dragged through all in the name of something that is unfortunately and mistakenly called love.

Whew, there you have it folks. Those are my top 10 books that I could have lived without. Maybe you'll agree and maybe you won't. Maybe you'll want to read the books yourself and make up your own mind. However, I've made up mine and I'm stickin to it.

If you have a list of books you could have lived without then feel free to comment with your top books that you could have lived without. Just maybe you can save a friend from the horrendous fate of a soul destroying book.

I'm Creative Karma and I really really REALLY need a good book right about now.