shakespeare | Watching the Words

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers create their own lists based on the chosen topics and post links to our lists. It’s a way of all sharing our thoughts and our love of books. And who doesn’t love lists??

So this week’s challenge was to list the top ten books that make me swoon… The problem? I’m not really much of a swooner… So these may not be swoon-worthy so much as great love stories.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – Rudy & Liesel, young, innocent love…
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – Clare & Henry throughout time…
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell – Scarlett & Rhett – frankly my dear…
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Daisy & Gatsby, poor, poor Gatsby…
Fault in our Stars by John Green – Hazel & Augustus, so sweet & so sad…
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell – in all their quirky teenage wonderfulness…
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy – And her doomed love for Count Vronsky…
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte – Catherine & Heathcliff wandering the moors…
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein – The tree & the boy…
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare – Not my favorite, but how can it not be on the list???

So this week’s challenge was to list the books that I find most intimidating. This was a little difficult for me – I’m not typically intimidated by books – just interested or not interested. I’ve read and loved Anna Karenina, Les Miserables, and Atlas Shrugged. Length does not intimidate me most times, I am mostly afraid that I will not like a book and some of the lengthy classics listed below require a lot of effort for little gain if I don’t enjoy them and there are so many books out there that I really, really want to read!

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust – 7 volumes and about 4300 pages, need I say more???
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – I loved Anna Karenina, but I have never been inspired to tackle this tome.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville – The idea of an epic struggle with a whale just doesn’t make me want to dive into this one…
Ulysses by James Joyce – I know that it is a 20^th century classic and that it is supposed to be beautiful, but I have heard far more about how long and difficult it is…
Complete Works of William Shakespeare – I have read Shakespeare – Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo & Juliet, ... but I just don’t see myself having the focused concentration required to get through it all while appreciating it.
The Bible – I’ve read it, parts of it, just have never attacked reading it from cover to cover – maybe someday.
Paradise Lost by John Milton – Over 10,000 lines of poetry? Probably not…
Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin – With the HBO series so popular, a lot of people are devouring this series – but the books are so long and there are so many of them, it seems like a commitment I don’t want to make right now!
Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon – Another series with a lot of long books in it… I hear good things, but I’m not reading to dive in yet…
Boring Non-Fiction – I’ve written plenty of research papers and didn’t like to read my own. I certainly have no desire to read books that are basically research papers that are hundreds of pages long…