Top Ten Tuesday: All the books I want for Christmas

It's Tuesday and that means that it is time for a Top Ten list!
Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This week the theme is the books that we would like Santa to put under our Christmas tree this Christmas. I have been doing a bit of this already in the All I Want for Christmas... posts but doing a top ten is an opportunity not to be missed!
Here we go - in no particular order:

10) "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren
A Pulitzer Prize winner which has been turned into a film twice. It is a political drama set in Louisiana and it sounds like a one of those books that you can't put down once you've picked it up!

9) "Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish" by Tom Shachtman
An account of the Rumspringa tradition in the Amish society. I am curious to know more about how teenagers live in the Amish society and this would be a great book to start off with.

8) "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen
Need I explain? With all the hype this book has received - the great American novel of our generation and so on - I just have to read it!

7) "Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers" by Stephanie Levine
This book unveils some of the traditions of the Hasidic Jews in New York and it sounds really intriguing. Definitely a book I will have to read.

6) "Wait for Me" by Deborah Devonshire
The memoir of Deborah Devonshire - youngest Mitford sister and Duchess of Devonshire. Being a bit of a Mitford Maniac of course I must read this one!

5) "Youth in Revolt" by Payden
The title and the fact that it has been adapted to a movie starring Michael Cera is enough for me. I have to read it.

4) "A Good School" by Richard Yates
By the author of "Revolutionary Road", this book about boarding school boys promises to be a good read.

3) "The Leopard" by Guiseppe di Lampedusa
A classic and a must read!

2) "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov
This book has been praised on many of the blogs out there and I am really hoping to get my hands on it soon.

1) "Undoing Gender" by Judith Butler
Butles is a bit of a hero of mine and I really want to spend a lot of time reading and studying this work about gender structures.

Which books are you asking Santa to bring you this year?

All I want for Christmas is... "The Master and Margarita"

Firstly, I love the title "The Master and Margarita". Secondly, the reviews that I have read out there in bloggo-land has made me really want this book. You, my fellow bloggers, are praising it, calling this novel by Mikhail Bulgakov a masterpiece. So naturally I need to read it.

Here are some words from the review on Amazon.com:
"Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow."

What do you want for Christmas?

All I want for Christmas is... "Wait for Me"

I have a thing for the Mitford clan - you may even called me a Mitford maniac. As you can see on your left hand side, "The Mitford Sisters" is one of my favourite book and earlier I posted a review of Anne de Courcy's biography of Diana Mitford.

So of course I have to add Deborah Devonshire's new book "Wait for Me" to my Christmas wishlist. Debo, as she is often called, is the youngest Miford sister and she is now in her 90's. She is the kind of lady that I can't help but admire and her books should be full of delicious tales spiced with historic celebrities.

What will be on your wishlist?

All I want for Christmas is... "A Good School"

This is a weekly meme that's hosted by A Tapestry of Words -www.atapestryofwords.blogspot.com - where every week up until Christmas, you choose a book that you would like to see under your tree! You also have to say why of course.

So this week I will be wishing for "A Good School" by Richard Yates. The story is set in a boarding school on the evning of America's entry into WWII and features a range of characters - from a nervous teenager to teacher's daugther with a schoolgirl crush. It has been called a masterpiece and I really really want to read it. So Santa, please put this one under the tree for me. What are you dreaming of finding under your tree?