Top Ten Tuesday: Cheating! (Jan. 19, 2015)

Goodness! It’s Tuesday again, already? Where is the time going? 0.0 Well, I love Tuesday because it means it’s time for Top Ten Tuesday brought to us by The Broke and The Bookish, and this week’s theme is ‘Books I’ve Recently Added To My TBR.’ What a lovely idea.

However, if I were to do this theme, I’d literally just be repeating all the books I’ve done in the past few weeks. In other words, I’m cheating and taking from the archives. :p Here we go!

Bookish Bucket List

1. Read all the Brother Grimm Fairy Tales I own
I have a collection of Brother Grimm Fairy Tales in both English and German and I’ve owned them for some time. So, I think it’s about time that I sat down and actually made time to read all of them. Let’s do this!

2. Own ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ series
When I read this series as a child, I was actually reading the collection that my brother owned, meaning I’ve never truly owned my own copy of these books (same with Harry Potter). So, for that reason, I want to buy my own matching collection of the series to re-read and keep on my future bookshelf.

3. Re-read books from my childhood
I didn’t do a lot of reading as a child. So, this list shouldn’t be too long, but I do really want to re-discover the books I read when I was younger and try to remember what I loved so much about them. It’s about time, don’t you think?

4. Have a giant in-house library big enough to display all my books
This one may never happen, especially given how many books I’ll likely have by the time I buy a house, but I want to have a library/room/shelves enough to fit all my books on display. Even the books I read as a child (so my future children have access to them.) They’ll be divided by genre, and then by height. (I would do author name, but having varying book heights on one shelf REALLY bugs me. OCD.)

5. Finish reading ‘Pride and Prejudice’
To be honest, I’m not sure I ever actually finished reading this book. I know I started it. I know I struggled with it and I’m like 90% sure that I just gave up and set it back on my shelf. However, it’s a classic. I really enjoy the book (and the movie :p) and now that I’m older maybe the text won’t be nearly as difficult to understand.

6. Increase my collection of Shakespeare
I may be a typical book nerd when I say that I quite enjoy reading Shakespeare. Do I understand everything going on in the story? No, but that’s okay. I still enjoy his works and the classic story lines and plot twists that we still utilize today. That being said, I’d like to have a bigger collection of his works. I own all of three or four now (I don’t know exactly. My books are in boxes at the moment), and that is such a small number.

7. Read books in German, French, Dutch, etc, etc.
Language is important and understanding multiple languages is even more important to me. You get a sense of the culture when you learn their language. You also can understand a lot about a culture by reading the text and literature written in that language and while I’ve read a few short works for my German classes over the years, I’ve never read a novel or anything in the other languages I hope to learn. So, I plan to become adept enough in multiple languages so as to read full novels in those languages and understand them. (Though my understanding may be something along the lines of Shakespeare. :p)

8. Read the religious books of other cultures
This is another concept of understanding. I feel as though the world nowadays does quite have enough understanding of other cultures, people, religions, etc, and therefore are making inappropriate judgments of people. I don’t want to be that person.

I want to have a better understanding of the world and people around me, to be educated about their ways, and respectful of their choices. I think one of the best ways (other than spending time with those people) is to read the religious books of those people. It can explain entire ways of life and for me, that’s important to know.

9. Have a fandom for my books
Haha! This one is a bit more narcissistic than my last few and probably really reaching, but I think it would be really cool to have enough people read my book, and touch enough people with my story, for them to create a fandom based on my book. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Okay, maybe a fandom is kind of like a cult and the people are little crazy (so am I), but I think it’d be great to have enough influence on people that they come together and form a group to discuss your imagination. (Maybe I’m just weird. :p)

10. Face my book biases
In high school I developed a lot of book biases. I learned to dislike dystopians, classics, anything written in America before 1950, Edgar Allen Poe, etc, etc. These were stuffed down my throat and then I was forced to regurgitate and analyze, which is never a way to get a child interested in reading. Needless to say, it killed my desire to read for many years.

I have managed to throw some of my biases out the window: I love to read classics now (even I don’t understand them all the time), and I actually write dystopians. However, I still detest Edgar Allen Poe. His works were a dark time in Eighth grade. Even so, I want to try to read his works again to see if perhaps my biases of school clouded my judgment or if I really just loathe his work. Guess we’ll find out. :p

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I know it’s not the theme of the week, but what’s on your bookish bucket list?