Top Ten Tuesday - Most Unique Books You Have Ever Read

This is my first time doing a Top Ten Tuesday. I have seen them, and I know this is late but this is a topic that I wanted to be a part of.  It is hosted over at The Broke and Bookish!

What makes a book unique? It can be said that it is the plot, or the pacing, or the character development. Personally, just because a book is set on an imaginary planet and is told from the perspective of a foot stool, doesn't make it unique (the foot stool can have real and essential human emotions, okay?) If the foot stool falls for its long lost love, the kitchen cupboard, all we have now is two very unlikely characters playing out a very well known story in space. I'm having flash back to Jimmy Neutron...

Anyhow, so when thinking of my top ten most unique books, I was able to have some fun.

1.)This is All - The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

Have you ever read this book? Probably not, but if you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about. On the outside it doesn't seem like it would be unique, but this is one huge book and when I was fifteen, it was pretty much the greatest thing I had ever had the pleasure of reading.

It's the story of Cordelia's life from the age of fifteen and on, it is heartbreaking, original and told through her own "pillow books" so you feel as if a part of you is her. Through one part of the novel I distinctly remember having to read only the front side for two hundred pages and then only the back side for the next two hundred, because that was how Cordelia's pillow book was. Wild and crazy, and out of place, but this book, as far as teenagers go, is as unique as it gets.


2.) American Gods

I know not everyone has a crazy obsession with Neil Gaiman like I do, but this book really cemented in my head how spectacular of a story teller he really is. I often times have called him an alien because he excells at children's books, graphic novels, and adult stories all of which are fantastic. He has so many different elements that he works with, it drives me crazy.

American Gods is unique because it was the first book that I'd ever read that literally took everything you knew about something, put it in a bowl and started to blend.

It took so many things from so many places and then tipped them all upside down until I was halfway through thinking to myself, "What... is this really... happening?"

In one word, fantastic.


3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone

This book is unique for me because it was the first book that made me love something, and it was the first book that I fell so in love with that I would rally behind it.

I grew up in the South and when Harry Potter was released there was a lot of controversy because it dealt with witchcraft, and people down here are afraid of everything.

So here I was, an eight year old reader clutching her Harry Potter and hearing numerous people tell me how wrong it was. This was the first time I ever knew anything about censorship and for Harry Potter, I stood against it.




4.) Breakfast at Tiffanys

Not the movie, the book. Though both are two of my favorites, the book is unique because it is such an unhappy story - but it is also not. Holly Golightly is an incredibly unique character. There is no one else like her on the planet and Truman Capote did a fantastic job of displaying that.

She's unique, she's messed up and everyone knows it. She lives her life however she feels like it knowing that she's probably just messing up all the way.

She's a character that is unforgiving. She loves you and she doesn't, she's intelligent and she's dumb, and she does all of these things together, simultaneously, so that at the end of the book you don't know what just happened for sure.


5.) Wuthering Heights

No book is as depressing as this one, but I mean that in the best way possible. I love this book, really and truly love it. I love how the worlds are so intertwined and how the choices of one person really changes the outcome of the next generations and so on. Maybe that isn't unique to most people, but to me this book has power. It's more than just your regular classic, it has feeling and depth and it is a gothic romance almost in reverse. It is incredible, it is spooky, and it is filled with so much character depth that I could spend hours discussing how much of a jerk Cathy is (but how she's really just misunderstood) read it if you haven't.

Everyone needs to.

I'm alas only doing four, but be sure to leave me with your books that you find unique!