Top Ten Tuesday: Underrated books - must reads!

The topic of this week's Top Ten Tuesday is Underrated Books as in books you can't believe aren't more popular, books that are more obscure and so on. I love this topic. There are so many books that I can't believe aren't getting more hype or that I love but that have not received the acclaim that I think they deserve. So here we go - don't forget to pop by The Broke and The Bookish to join in!

10) The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Many of you know the musical and have probably seen either that one or the film - but have you read the book? Otherwise, I can highly recommend it. It is a short but great story about Christine Daaé with the amazing voice, her childhood sweetheart and the opera phantom who is in love with her. It is not your typical love story but it is a really sweet and sometimes scary story.



9) Ronja, the Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren
One of the best children's book ever about the strong, independent girl Ronja who lives in the forest. If you haven't read it yet, you have to get it now. It is a classic.



8) Havana Real by Yoani Sanchez
This is a non-fiction book, a collection of blog posts from the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, giving us a glimpse into the life of a family in Cuba who are struggling to make ends meet even though they are among the well-off. Yoani is a really cool woman with a strong voice and lots of opinions. Amazing book, was completely unable to put it down once I had started it.



7) The Exception by Christian Jungersen
A deeply disturbing book about adult bullying the work place. The point-of-view keeps changing between the characters which makes it really difficult to be black and white about who are the evil ones and who are the good ones. It is a bit of a thriller, a suspenseful read that deserves many readers!



6) Namedropper by Emma Forrest
This was one of my favourite YA books when I was a teenager. It is a coming-of-age story about a Viva whose world seems to be populated with characters - from the gorgeous best friend Treena to her gay uncle Manny with the Liz Taylor obsession this book takes us from North London to California and back as we follow Viva learning a thing or two about life. It is full of pop culture references and my 15 year-old self loved it.



5) Dewitt, Helen: The Last Samurai
Ludo is a gifted child, a child prodigy, a kid for whom learning is the best way of entertaining himself. So while his mother struggles to keep up with the five-year-olds wish to learn Japanese and make enough money to get them through the day, Ludo wonders who his father is. A really beautiful book with great characters that you cannot help but love.



4) Stolen Spring by Hans Scherfig
This on is a Danish classic, a must-read on the Danish high school curriculum and for a very good reason: it is a real treasure! A literary feast of amazingness! It is the story of a group of school boys in a very disciplined school where the teachers use their powers to degrade the students - especially the latin teacher Blomme is a real nasty piece of work and the book centers on the mystery of his death. If you are a fan of classic school novels from early 1900s, then this one is for you.



3) The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce
Forget about Twilight and House of Night and all those paranormal romance vampire books that are flooding the market at the moment. This is as much of a vampire classic as Bram Stoker's Dracula, if you ask me, except they aren't vampires - they are vampyres, darkangels that feed on souls. When Ariel's mistress, the beautiful Eoduin is taken by a darkangel, she follows her to try to free her from the vampyre's clutches.



2) Nordkraft by Jacob Ejersbo
If you liked the film "Trainspotting", you will love this book. Ejersbo's novel is a masterpiece about living a hard life full of drugs, alcohol and abuse on the bottom of society. This is a book about the people we see on the street and that makes us thankful for our lives. It is so gripping and thought-provoking that it moved me to tears.



1) The Sopranos by Alan Warner
One of my favourite books (it has been for years) is this fantastic tour de force about a group of Catholic school girls on an outing from their small village to a larger town for a choir competition. The amount of mischief (doesn't cover it at all!) they get into is disturbing - getting drunk, getting their uniforms stolen... it is all just the beginning of the adventure.

Review: "The Last Samurai"

This is one of those books that have been on my TBR list literally forever. Or at least since it came out about ten years ago.... I think we can agree than ten years is a looooong time on a TBR list? :-) However, this one was worth the wait! Actually I am glad I didn't read it ten years ago - would probably not have gotten as much out of it as I did now.
"The Last Samurai" by Helen Dewitt is a really different book but different in a good way, a fantastic way. It must have taken forever to write it but it is a modern stunner.
The book has two narrators and two main persons, Ludo the child wonder and his mother Sibylla. Sibylla comes from a family of academic disappointments. Intellektual, intelligent people who never managed to use their intellects as they dreamt of. Sibylla is a language-nerd who will swallow page after page about cultures and languages - the more obscure the better - and she makes a living typing odd magazines into an internet database. Ludo is her son - he has a father but Sibylla doesn't want him to know about his father...
Ludo is a child prodigy. A wonder boy who learns Hebrew and Arabic by himself while other kids of his age watch Sesame Street... He is nothing like an average child but somewhat like a Mozart maybe... And poor Sibylla has to try to keep him occupied and raise him while debating with herself if satisfying his constant need for more knowledge will hurt him. How do you as a mother tackle a child that is unable to play with other kids or go to school? Who teaches himself japanese and dreams about the perfect father?
Sibylla, forever without money, takes him on the Circle Line, the metro ring in London, so that at least he can keep warm while reading and studying and makes him watch "The Seven Samurais" over and over to give him male role models.

I loved the plot and the two characters. The hapless Sibylla who can hardly take care of herself not to mention a small wonder boy and who values books over anything else including food, is endearing! And Ludo, the clever little fellow who really really wants a father figure to look up to, is cute. The isolation that his intellect leads to is difficult to read about even though he doesn't completely understands it himself and his hunt for a dad is an emotional journey both for Ludo and for the reader.

If you like books with depth that encourages intellectual mind games and features great charaters, then you should definitely try "The Last Samurai".

Back again!

Wild monkeys playing

I'm back again :-) Having spent the last two weeks in Thailand enjoying the food, the culture, the weather and the company I am now back on the blog and ready to review the books that I have spent my days reading in the Hilton's hotel garden underneath palm trees and flowery trees with beautiful white blossoms.


The beach

I was quite ambitious about my reading and brought several books:

"Tiger, Tiger" by Margaux Fragoso
"The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov
"The Last Samurai" by Helen Dewitt
"A Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin
"The Russian Debutante's Handbook" by Gary Shteyngart


Bangkok seen from the river

However, I only made it through the first three and half way through Shteyngart's novel but then I also spent a lot of time listening to "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. As you can tell from the list, it was quite an eclectic bunch of books I brought with me and I was quite surprised by some of what I read - more will follow in the reviews in the next couple of days. For now I will sign out and enjoy a lovely relaxed Sunday but first I will share a few holidays snaps with you. Have a great day :-)


Hilton garden - perfect from reading!