Top Five Books That Exceeded My Expectations

Posted on by Astrid

I am once again in the mood for books and book blogging. Today I discovered a new to me bookish meme called Top 5 Tuesday. Today’s topic is about the books that exceeded your expectations. Now I must say that I don’t usually read books I don’t expect to really like. For this reason, last week’s topic of books that weren’t what I expected, is a lot easier for me. Still, particularly in the last few years, I’ve come to read a few books that are outside of my admittedly rather narrow comfort zone and that I did end up loving. Here they are.

1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Well, let’s start with a book I read many years ago. I read this in high school for no other reason than it being in the public domain so easily accessible to me as a blind girl from a non-English-speaking country. I ended up really liking it, unlike the other books I read for English literature.

2. Don’t Wake Up by Liz Lawler. This was really outside of my comfort zone. I usually read YA and had never read a thriller before. The blurb spoke to me though. I ended up finishing this book in a few days, which is extremely rare for me.

3. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. Though Fangirl has been on my TBR forever, I decided to read Attachments first. It is outside of my comfort zone too, as I rarely read romances or adult fiction in general. I really liked this one though.

4. Cruel to Be Kind by Cathy Glass. Of course, I need to include a memoir in this list, as that’s my favorite genre. I was told about Cathy Glass’ books many times by my trauma survivor friends in the UK and Ireland, but never got to read her books until I picked up this one in 2017. It isn’t the best book of hers I’ve read since, but it was the book that got me into Cathy Glass.

5. Unspeakable by Abbie Rushton. Will I ever have a top five list without this one on it? ☺️ This was a book I really expected to like, but it turned out even better. I loved the plot. It’s a shame I still haven’t read Consumed yet.

Books I’d Add to My Personal Library

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is about books you’ve read that you’d add to your personal library. What is meant are books that you don’t own a physical copy of and wish you did. Well, I can’t quite use physical books, as I can’t read print and Braille books are very clunky. However, there are still books I wish I owned that I borrowed from the library. Here goes.

1. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I read it in its Dutch translation in one of my last years in primary school and, though I didn’t enjoy it that much at the time, I’d love to read the original English right now. My father read it in English at the same time that I read it in Dutch.

2. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne. My father read my sister and me the best Dutch translation by Nienke van Hichtum. This yet again isn’t a book I’d necessarily want a physical copy of, though that’d be nice, but I’d love to read it in its original language.

3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I read this in my senior year of high school. Though I easily accessed it online back then, legally or not I’m not entirely sure, I would love to own a copy.

4. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green. I borrowed this one from the UK’s National Library for the Blind and actually read it as a physical Braille book. Back then, you could send Braille books free of postage anywhere and the NLB offered its service to international customers. Bookshare, the U.S.-based online accessible book service, at the time didn’t, which was the main reason I used the NLB. I loved this book.

5. Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kusiisto. Another book I borrowed from the NLB. I loved how much I could relate to Kusiisto’s experienfce, going blind gradually from the same eye condition I suffer from.

6. Aspergirls by Rudy Simone. I had this book as an eBook, but lost it when I moved from Adobe Digital Editions to the iBooks app on my iPhone. I didn’t actually finnish this book, but would love to.

7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I read the first book in this series in its Dutch translation at age twelve. Though I really don’t think I’ll ever read the other books, as they get really weird or so I’m told, I’d love to have a copy of this one.

8. All of Astrid Lindgren’s books. I don’t know whether they’re available in English, so I’d go with the Dutch translations.

9. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. I read it in Dutch when I was about thirteen, but I borrowed it from the library back then. I’d love to own a physical copy of both the original Dutch and the English translation.

10. Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. This was an intriguing autobiography by a man with Asperger’s. I read it in its Dutch translation before I had access to many English-language books and would love to own a copy of the original English.

Which books would you add to your personal library?