Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the girls over at The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a prompt and ask book bloggers to answer that prompt in the form of a top ten list.

This week's prompt is: Top Ten Books I'd Want on a Deserted Island


If I were going to be on a desert island, which isn't really my idea of a good long-term vacation, I'd want two types of books: favorite books and long books.

1) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: This falls definitively under the category of long books. When else am I going to get a chance to read this except when I'm lying around a small island in the middle of nowhere waiting for the others to construct a coconut radio?

2) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: And I obviously mean the version with all five books in it. A favorite and a long book all wrapped up into one awesome package. Besides, where else would the word's "Don't panic" be more appropriate?

3) Imajica by Clive Barker: Another favorite book that's also a long book. Its story of a world so far away and yet so close would be a good way to ignore the fact that my own world is so far away and yet so close.

4) The Stand by Stephen King: The really long, uncut version, of course.

5) The Landmark Herodotus: I've read The Landmark Thucydides and I own this one as well but I haven't actually sat down to read it yet. I'd need a good, long, map-ridden Greek history book in order to get through an ordeal like being stranded with a bunch of plane passengers that I can't stand and an invisible polar bear.

6) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: I love this book and I feel like reading it from time to time would help me feel better about not being back in the midst of civilization. "Oh right," I would say, briefly looking up from my book to watch small boys slaughter a pig, "that's what sucks about modern society."

7) When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris: Actually, you know what? I'd want, like, a large volume filled with his essays. That way I'd never run out of things to laugh about. In fact, I'd probably just take Sedaris with me and ask him to write me funny stories on tree bark or something.

8) The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis: You know, the one that has all of the books in one volume? Again, people, I'm looking for things that are long. Who knows when that raft we'll make from gum wrappers and paper clips will be finished?

9) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: This is one of my favorite novels ever and I can read it over and over again without getting sick of it.

10) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: Out of all of the books I've read for this blog, this is the one that I still love the most. As I sit on that island, thinking about the zombie apocalypse that I narrowly escaped by stealing a boat and sailing out to my own private Idaho, I'd want something beautiful and moving to keep me company.

-Gabe