Top Ten Tuesday – Books I’d Like to Re-read

This week’s topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is about re-reads. Generally, the books I choose to keep on my shelves are the books I see myself re-visiting at some point in the future, even if it might be years down the track. For this list, I’m including the books that I last picked up more than ten years ago.

1. Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
I recently re-read Love and Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser, and now I want to go back to her biography of the ill-fated French queen. I feel it’s one of the books that I didn’t read in the right frame of mind.

2. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

4. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
I read this book at a wildly inappropriate age of thirteen and it’s safe to say that it went over my head. As an adult, I find the premise of the novel utterly disturbing, but I still remember the effect Nabokov’s brilliant language had on me even as a teen.

6. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

7. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
An Australian classic that did absolutely nothing for me at the time, but there’s clearly something about this book that made it survive my many culls.

8. U2 at the End of the World by Bill Flanagan
I really enjoyed Flanagan’s book chronicling the band’s Zoo TV Tour in the early 90s when I first read it more than twenty years ago. It would probably be an even more fascinating snapshot of that era now that the music industry and world in general changed beyond recognition.

9. A History of the Crusades by Steven Runciman
It always bothered me that I never finished Runciman’s three volumes. It’s a dense and demanding read for sure, but I’ve always been fascinated by the Crusades and I got a lot out of it before chickening out.

10. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
I watched the most recent French film version of Dumas’ classic on my flight to Sri Lanka this year. It was sumptuous and beautiful, but I felt frustrated with many of the story changes made in adaptation. Mostly, it reminded me how much better the original novel was and what a cracking story it is.