Calling all bookworms: book recommendations?
 

So I'm compiling my summer reading list and I'm sure there's quite a few of us fellow bookworms out there. Do you have any reading suggestions for me or anyone else?

To give you an idea of what I like: I gravitate towards literature (mostly classic) . I enjoy well-written, thought provoking books. I especially enjoy juvenile literature. Also I'm a Christian, so I don't like anything with gratuitous sex/language, etc. in it. It's not that I'm a prude, it just makes me feel uncomfortable and ruins the rest of the book for me. I enjoy drama, mystery, fantasy (fairy tale and magic kind, not the other stuff), historical fiction and so on. I'll try anything once! My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It is closely followed by The Giver by Lois Lowry . . . those are my two recommendations for you. :)

Currently on my summer reading list:
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

:book2:

Check out Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. It's a teen lit novel. It's very cute. John Green's vlog with his brother Hank led me to check out the book. I've read The Fault in Our Stars, it was amazing.

As long as it's not a typical romance. :p Don't get me wrong, I love romance, just not the majority of romance books. To me, they mostly fall into two categories: 1)the trashy Harlequin romance type and 2) the inspirational cheesy Amish romance type. No judgement on those that might enjoy them, but to me they make me want to throw the book against the wall and cuss out the characters (and I don't cuss)!

I've heard nothing but good things about The Fault in our Stars. It sounds really sad, but I'm a sucker for a book that can make me cry (is that weird?)! I also recently started following the vlogbrothers--they are awesome!

No it's not a typical romance, feels very real and innocent.

I also enjoyed "The Giver" when I read it (years and years ago). I would recommend:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (classic)
The Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer (go on, make fun of me if you like, but they're fun! And no gratuitous sex)
The Ender or Shadow Series by Orson Scott Card (sci-fi/fantasy)
The Redwall Series by Brian Jaques (fantasy)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (classic)
The Diary of Anne Frank (classic)

I once tried to make a list of books that I love and would recommend to others. The most I could limit it to was 100 (but it could have easily been about 1,000!). I'm not going to share that whole list, so here are a few random ones:

Moonheart by Charles de Lint (fantasy)
Spirit Walk by Charles de Lint (fantasy)
The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (literary fiction)
Snake Ropes by Jess Richards (literary fiction)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (literary fiction)
Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda (literary fiction)
Witch Light by Susan Fletcher (historical fiction)
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (historical fiction)
The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall (historical fiction)
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (historical fiction)
Everything that Virginia Woolf wrote (classic lit)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (classic lit)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (classic lit)
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (classic lit)
Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson (ya)
The Sunflower Forest by Torey Hayden (ya)

ETA: One more that I particularly think you might like: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Ooh, I like your suggestions! I've already read Jane Eyre and Anne Frank--they are two of my favorites! And Alice Walker and Brian Jacques is already on my to read list. I haven't read much sci-fi stuff, so Orson Scott Card sounds interesting. Unfortunately I'm a Twihater . . . but I'll forgive you since your other suggestions were great. :)

Haha--don't you love being a bookworm? I said TKAM was my favorite, but there's a ton that could hold that honor . . . how do you just pick one? I also have a spreadsheet on my computer that is my 'to read' list. It's currently 250 books long and grows daily!

I've only read three books on your list: The Great Gatsby, Jacob Have I Loved and Their Eyes Were Watching God. I really enjoyed all of them. I haven't heard of the rest--I'll have to head over to amazon and check them out.

And lest you people think I hate romance, here's some of my favorite romance novels:
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (classic, also suggested by Missy Krissy)
-Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (juv/teen fantasy)
-The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery (classic, L.M.M. wrote Anne of Green Gables, but she also wrote some great books for adults)

Have you read Life of Pi? I read it recently and really liked it.

I recently read The Orchardist. Historical fiction set in Washington state at the turn of the 20th century. Now I'm reading Running the Rift, historical fiction set in Rwanda. Both fit your criteria of no sex or language, and both ave high Amazon reviews and are a bit off the beaten path.

Jacob, Have I Loved is one of my favorites. Lately, I have been into YA books.

One book I read that really touched my heart was Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. It definitely is one of those YA books that is written for a younger crowd just because of vocab and dialogue but young boy's weight loss issues and what it would mean to his friend is really interesting and his his realization that there are worse things than being fat.

The book does deal heavily with abuse and other issues that might be upsetting just to put that out there!

The new edition of Anne Frank is worth a read if you haven't done so. I read it in high school and college but it was the old edition.

The Key of Elyon by Charmain Brackett. It s a nice Christian influenced theme.
Elyon's Cipher by Charmain Brackett, sequel to the above.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy (I hated this one ended!)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Hunger Games Trilogy

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

:)

I have a couple thousand To Read books on my Library Thing shelf! Plus a couple hundred unread books lurking about my home. :D

I adore books. :book2:

I love a good book list. Mine is several pages long at the moment! Here are a few of my absolute favorite books.

Siddhartha -Hermann Hesse
The Hounds of The Morrigan -Pat O'Shea
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
The Silmarillian and all the Histories of Middle-earth -JRR Tolkien
Lord of the Rings -JRR Tolkien
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev

If you're looking for something to conquer, I would recommend Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. There is one scene of violence, but it's a meditation on justice and morality. It's a giant book (like all Russian novels), but it really left me feeling... strange. The same for The Brothers Karazamov. I absolutely fell in love with one of the characters in that one.

But uh, I've recently been going through a phase of reading giant Russian novels, but here's some of my faves that fit your list:

Beloved (lit fiction) - Toni Morrison (My whole African American lit. class was crying when the professor read a passage midway through this book.)
As She Lay Dying (classic) - William Faulkner (If you like Flannery, Faulkner is her male counterpart during the same movement in southern lit.)
The Color Purple (lit fiction) - Alice Walker (I second the above recommendation)
I also second the recommendation of anything by Virginia Woolf.
Frankenstein (classic) - Mary Shelley
1984 (Sci-fi) - George Orwell
Brave New World - Alduous Huxley (Sci-Fi)
The Road (lit fiction) - Cormac McCarthy (There is some disturbing violence here, but I wouldn't call it gratuitous.)
Wuthering Heights (classic) - Emily Bronte
The Awakening (classic) - Kate Chopin
Cold Mountain (lit fiction) - Charles Frazier
Walk Two Moons (YA lit) - Sharon Creech
The Hunger Games Trilogy (YA lit) - Suzanne Collins
The Coquette (classic lit) - Hannah W. Foster
The Secret Life of Bees (coming-of-age) - Sue Monk Kidd
Running with Scissors (hilarious memior but has some more adult subjects) - Augusten Burroughs
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Marquez

And my favorite two books that don't really fit your list, but I think everyone should read before they die:

Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

Yay! Hooray for all us well-read bookworms. :D I'm going to have to come back later and go through these when I don't have a final exam to study for. 'Cause if I start, there's no stopping me! Anyways, you guys have great recommendations. There's a lot I've read already, but a lot more that I haven't even heard of.

If any of you like reading book blogs (I do), I'm a big fan of Robert Bruce's 101 books blog (just google it--can't post the link here). He's reading through Time magazine's 100 greatest novels and reviewing them and is very entertaining.