Top Ten Tuesday

 

I've never done this before, but I think it might be a fun goal for the new year, except for January because, yah, that's gone already. The Top Ten Tuesday was started by That Artsy Reader Girl and I found it through Elza Reads.

I have read countless books that were written before I was born, in fact, some of these books are my favorites of all time! So this was not a difficult list to compile.

Number Ten - Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

This is one of those terrifying novels because I don't actually like any of the characters and I grieve for the depravity, sorrow, and loss of all the characters. It's a terribly tragic novel, and one I can easily imagine being penned by a girl who lived out on the moors. It's truly a cautionary tale of obsession.

Number Nine - The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)

I love The Sign of the Four because Holmes seems particularly amusing in it and we get to meet the woman who would later become Mrs. John Watson. I still resent the fact that Doyle killed her off with just a random mention in one of his later short stories. How unfair is that? The story is very exotic with theft and murder and adventures in India. We also get to experience a lively chase down the Thames and meet the Baker Street Irregulars, Holmes' little band of street urchins who find him answers when he's unable to.

Number Eight - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)

The movie is ghastly, but the book is brilliant. Fahrenheit 451 a dystopian tale where firemen actually start fires, where books are burned without remorse, and where people can live in a world of their own making if they can afford to purchase the ear seashells and the screens for their walls. It's terrifying and ghastly. A movie that's sort of similar is Equilibrium starring Christian Bale, quite a brilliant film, and it involves the same idea of censorship and destruction.

Number Seven - The Shining by Stephen King (1977)

The Shining is the story of one man's reluctant descent into insanity, provoked by the spiritual and supernatural evil residing in a hotel high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I only read this book for the first time last year, but it is brilliant, and I grieve for the loss of Jack Torrance, a man who desperately loves his wife and son, but couldn't find the alcoholism and the whispering voices of temptation alone. The ending is profound because it implies redemption, an implication realized in the epic sequel Doctor Sleep, published in 2013. As for film adaptations, I despise the 1980 film but love the 1997 miniseries because at least the miniseries got the characters right.

Number Six - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (published 1817, written in 1803)

I love Northanger Abbey the best of all Jane Austen's work because it is playful, the heroine loves novels, and she is allowed to grow and develop without losing sight of who she is as a person. Catherine Morland thinks the best of people but also knows what she does and does not like in the people she meets, like John Thorpe, an odious man well worth despising. Catherine and Henry Tilney are well-suited for one another and it's simply a delightful read. There has yet to be a decent film adaptation.

Number Five - The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis (1953)

If we're going chronologically, The Silver Chair is the 7th book in The Chronicles of Narnia series. I love it because we get to return to Narnia with one of the characters from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace, who underwent an extremely spiritual and emotional transformation due to his time in Narnia. It's specifically about a quest, finding the Prince Rilian who has been missing for a decade. And we get to see a partnership between Eustace and a girl named Jill Pole from his school, to say nothing of the brilliance that is Puddleglum, the marshwiggle. It has adventure and giants and danger and people who live beneath the earth's surface, and all sorts of glorious things. And best of all, it has Aslan continually acting as a guide for the children when they go astray, which happens quite often, especially when they stay with the giants. And I love that Aslan grieves the death of King Caspian and restores him to his youth when he takes him home to Aslan's country. It's a beautiful story.

Number Four - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader comes before The Silver Chair and is my favorite of the Narnia books because it stars Prince Caspian as a teenager instead of a child, and we get to see the outer edges of Narnia, all of the islands and their various purposes and peoples. It's a high adventure. I'm also partial to Eustace being turned into a dragon because he was a rather beastly little boy, but Aslan has profound mercy on him. It's a beautiful little book with lots of excitement. We also get to see Caspian fall in love with the daughter of a star. How often does that happen?

Number Three - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

I just love the pure craziness of this book. A crazy lady who wanders around in her tattered wedding dress and still has her wedding cake of decades ago decaying in the dining room? Who wouldn't love that! In my mind there really isn't all that much in terms of social commentary in Great Expectations, just a really creepy read that I find deeply enthralling and have loved since the very first moment I picked up a copy from the library. I suppose it's also an interesting look into how money can and does alter people the way it alters Pip and not for the better. For quite a while we barely recognize the sweet little boy at the beginning of the story.

The best film adaption in my opinion is the 2012 film with Holiday Grainger, Jeremy Irvine, Helena Bonham Carter, and Ralph Fiennes. I say this because the screenplay manages to capture all of the relevant details of the book without having to be 3 hours long. It also includes the marvelous character of Wemmick who lives in his version of a castle with a drawbridge and is utterly devoted to his elderly father, who he calls his Aged Parent. It's excellent.

Number Two - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is tragically underappreciated. The story begins from the perspective of Gilbert Markham, a young man suitably attractive to the ladies, but who is finding himself drawn to the mysterious female lodger Helen Graham and her son who have just moved into his neighborhood. As the story progresses, we switch from Gilbert's perspective to Helen's perspective and discover she is a woman who married for love, but to absolutely the wrong man, a man who would introduce her sweet and innocent son to all sorts of depravity. And so she left him, a woman on the run from her marriage to protect her child because she cannot obtain a divorce. It's a very unsettling tale, but an excellent commentary on marriage and divorce.

I wish I could praise the miniseries as much as I praise the book, but the miniseries is terribly lacking. It changes elements of the story that should not have been altered, and that is frustrating. Not even Toby Stephens could save it for me, and I love Toby Stephens.

Number One - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

And finally, A Christmas Carol, one of my favorite books of all time. Such a powerful message of redemption and change crammed into such a small package. I love how Scrooge undergoes his slow and steady transformation from cold and cruel miser to a generous benefactor. Salvation is at the heart of A Christmas Carol and the belief that anyone can change for the better. I read this book every Christmas and it always moves me to tears.