Top Ten Tuesday: Beach Reads
Top Ten Tuesday is a great meme created by Jamie at The Broke and the Bookish that combines top ten lists and books. She’s come up with a great list of weekly discussion topics and I hope you’ll join in the discussion by commenting on this post or some of the other ones (you can find the list of participating blogs in this week's Top Ten Tuesday post on her site).
This week’s topic is Top Ten Beach Reads.
Beach reads was a really hard topic for me – I don’t have a particular type of book I like to take to the beach. All I want in a beach read is something engrossing because I’m usually trapped there for hours. See, my husband insists on going to his favorite beach, which is 1.5 hours away and the water is freezing cold, which means when we go, we go for all day and I don’t go in because the water is so cold. So I need something I can get lost in. I usually take several books just in case I’m not in the mood for one of them or I’m not pulled in. So, for that reason, short story collections are often a good beach read for me—don’t like what I’m reading? Wait two pages and it will be something completely different. So, my “beach reads” list is actually a list of my favorite short-story collections/anthologies.
1. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories that Scared Even Me by Alfred Hitchcock (editor)My dad gave me his copy of this book (that he’d read as a kid) when I was a kid, which instantly made it one of my most treasured possessions—which is why I stuck with it when 95% of the stories proved to be well above my language skills level initially. I didn’t always understand what all the words meant, but the book still managed to scare the crap out of me. I can’t even tell you how scary these stories are—a monster made of river slime that mutilates a dog; a guy who steals dead bodies and preserves them in his basement to create a family; a children’s birthday party gone horribly wrong when that one weird kid gets revenge on his bullies; a war between pedestrians and motorists (I think we’re still fighting that war). Holy crap! These stories still scare me—and yes, I still have the copy my dad gave me.
2. Witch’s Brew by Alfred Hitchcock (editor)This is the junior edition of Stories That Scared Even Me and was much more age appropriate for me as a pre-teen. One story, Hell-Bound Train, has stayed with me my entire life—it’s the story of a man given a pocket watch that can stop time—just once—by the devil. The man spends his entire life waiting for the “perfect moment” to stop time, but never encounters it. It’s a reminder to never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
3. Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives by David EaglemanI loved, loved, loved this book more than I can tell you. Thought-provoking, worrying, tantalizing, and frightening, this is the greatest collection of “What If” tales I know of. My husband and I spent a wonderful afternoon discussing each one, debating the different scenarios of what the afterlife might look like.
4. Animal Heroes by Ernest Thompson SetonI found this book when I was a kid in a box of used book’s given to my grandmother and I still have it. My favorite story was “Slum Cat” – the story of a stray cat turned into a cat show princess, pampered and petted but who never took to the pampered life and kept returning to the alleys every chance she got. It makes me cry every time.
5. Rapunzel’s Daughters and Other Tales by Josie E. Brown, Rose Mambert, and Bill Raciot (editors)Fairytale retellings – what’s not to love?! A wonderful anthology by contemporary writers—so many stories in here made me cry they were so beautiful.
6. In the Shadow of the Gargoyle by Thomas S. Roche, Nancy Kilpatrick, and Nancy Holder (editors)Another great anthology by contemporary authors with many beautiful, haunting stories.
7. The New Death and Others by James HutchingsWeird, fanciful, silly, touching, funny—this collection has it all.
8. Weird Tit-Bits by White and Allen (editors)I found this book at a used bookstore table at a SF/F convention (Readercon to be exact) and was amazed to find several works that I had never heard of by some of my favorite famous classic authors (including Charles Dickens). A great collection of strange stories.
9. The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories by Yasunari Kawabata, Jr.Haunting, lyrical, and beautiful—even when you don’t quite understand what the author means—this autobiographical collection of short stories will stay with you. Reading this book is like sharing someone’s dream, one so beautiful you don’t want to wake up.
10. The stories of Eva Luna by Isabelle AllendeAnother brilliant, beautiful, lyrical collection of stories by a gifted author. Unlike The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories, this one is more like a box of chocolates—tangible, earthy, and real.
And there you have it! What do you think of my list—any surprises? What about you—what are some of your favorite beach reads?
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