“Top 10 Tuesday” ist ein wöchentliches Meme von The Broke and the Bookish

Let’s be honest: When I’m talking about books that are not my typical genre than those are usually those where nobody dies – give me blood and murder and a mystery to solve and I’m happy. In 2015 more than 65% of the books I’ve read were thrillers, crime novels or horror stories which doesn’t leave a lot of room for other genres. I also like reading science fiction from time to time but everything else is already off my beaten path. So for this weeks Top 10 Tuesday theme I had to go back quite a few months to come up with ten titles that weren’t my typical type of book. Surprisingly I often enjoy those books quite a lot because I get very picky when I decide to take a break from all the murder mysteries and dedicate my time to other genres because I don’t want to waste my precious reading time with books that are just okay so I often rely on recommendations from friends.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – Claire North
I wanted to read this book because I found the premise of living the same life over and over again quite interesting and expected an exciting twist on the time travel theme but unfortunately this story turned out to be rather boring because Harry August basically spent his first fifteen lives thinking about his lives instead of actually doing something.

The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch
I usually don’t read a lot of fantasy books but when I was looking for a really long story that would accompany me during my trip to Iceland last September Crini and Maraia recommended „The Lies of Locke Lamora“ to me. I went into this book completely blind and had no idea what it was about but after struggling a bit with the first few chapters I really enjoyed it a lot.

Red Seas Under Red Skies – Scott Lynch
Since I enjoyed the first adventure of Locke Lamora so much I wanted to read the sequel, too, but unfortunately this book couldn’t live up to my expectations at all. For me this book lacked almost everything that made the first one so much fun and especially the middle part was quite tedious.

A Man Called Ove – Fredrick Backman
I usually read a lot of books from Swedish authors but usually they involve murder and violence and not old grumpy men that have grown tired of living and want to kill themselves but at least the prospect of people dying and a recommendation from Maraia made me want to read this book anyway – and I wasn’t disappointed and really enjoyed the story of Ove’s life which was often hilarious, sometimes sad but always entertaining.

The Last Olympian – Rick Riordan
The Percy Jackson series might not be completely outside my usual reading habits but I had to realize that by the time I started reading those books I had already outgrown them. While other YA/middle grade fantasy series like Harry Potter never lose their magic no matter how old you are I just felt like the Percy Jackson book were rather books for children that just couldn’t thrill me anymore.

The Invisible Library – Genevieve Cogman
Fantasy books with a steampunk setting are definitely not my typical genre but since this book was about a spy that works for a secret library organization and the story was set in an alternative London I just couldn’t resist buying this book and I’m glad I that I did because reading this was SO MUCH FUN. I already have the sequel on my TBR and can’t wait to read it.

The Dinosaur Lords – Victor Milán
Okay, I really can’t pretend that dinosaurs are out of my comfort zone because I absolutely LOVE them but I usually try to avoid reading high fantasy – and to be honest I should have avoided this book as well because it was just one big disappointment. I even disliked the dinosaur part of this story and if you know me this already says a lot about this book.

Who Fears Death – Nnedi Okorafor
I have to admit that the only reason for why I wanted to read this book was that I fell in love with the cover of the prequel and felt like I needed to read the original story first. Magical realism definitely isn’t my typical genre but the Africa setting sounded interesting but in the end this book turned out to be not my cup of tea at all and therefore I also lost interest in the prequel.

The Hero of Ages – Brandon Sanderson
As I don’t get tired to mention I’m really not that much into fantasy but since everybody was raving about the Mistborn series I just had to give it a try – and I’m so glad that I did. I already enjoyed „The Final Empire“ but the series got even better and better with every book and in the end „The Hero of Ages“ was nothing less but the best book I’ve read in 2015.

Freedom – Jonathan Franzen
I have absolutely no idea how I got in possession of this book because some day I received a signed (!) copy as a giveaway prize but I still can’t remember having participated in one 😀 I avoided this book for years but in the end it turned out to be quite interesting and definitely less boring than I had expected.

Which books have you read recently that were not your typical genre or out of your comfort zone?