Top Ten Tuesday: Books That I Was Surprised I Liked As Much As I Did

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Over at The Broke and the Bookish (where I also review things), we like to do this thing called Top Ten Tuesday. Every week is a theme, everyone gets to create a list.

This week is a Freebie. I stared at the screen for at least 20 minutes before figuring out what I wanted to do. Here is what I settled on:


Top Ten Books That I Was Surprised I Liked As Much As I Did

So these are books I read for one reason or another, maybe recs maybe I just found them on the shelf at the library, but the outcome is the same. I was genuinely surprised at how much I liked them.

1. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
In high school, one of my teachers recommended this series to me. This was the second book he recommended and the first turned out to be a disaster. Oh, how much I hated it! But I gave this a chance too and I was so glad I did. This series to this day remains the only series I wrote a fan-fic for. Yeah. That's how much I loved it.

2. Soulless by Gail Carriager
This book keeps popping up on my lists. This time it is here because I literally pulled this off the shelf in my college library with a limited collection and said, "What's the worst that could happen?"

3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I don't even remember why I read this book. I know I didn't think much of it, especially after I learned of the damn triangle of love. But again, I was proved wrong by the general awesomeness that is this series.

4. Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Don't everyone hate me at once, but I have a predisposed prejudice to YA fiction. I don't know why, because I do enjoy a lot of it. I think it has to do with the same general one girl, two guys plot I keep seeing in Goodreads summaries. So any YA novel I pick up I always have that chip on my shoulder. Well this pretty solidly knocked it off.

5. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
One of my friends kept telling me to read this book. I was intimidated 1)by its size and 2) by its genre. But wow did I love this book.

6. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Yay! Shakespeare misconceptions! In college, I was forced to read this book. As with most things we are forced to do I was predisposed to hatred and resentment. Well that and WS can be pretty rough to read. Well this book is hilarious and awesome. I was glad I read it!

7. So Worthy, My Love by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
Let's go back to the very beginning. A very good place to start... so when my cousin handed me three romance novels at the age 12, I was a little skeptical about how she was describing them. This one was her favorite of the three. It was huge to my eyes. This was the second or third I read and I actually did like it, and it started up a love for romance that has been cultivated for 13 years.

8. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
I found this right after it came out. There was no Dexter show at this time so I had no idea what to expect. But apparently I should have expected awesome.

9. The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
Yeah, Pat Conroy and your military academy book. A 17 year old girl is not traditionally predisposed to liking military coming of age novels (without pictures :)) and so I grudgingly read this for class. But by the end, there was no grudging at all.

10. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkein
I was really into Lord of the Rings for a long time. Like all out nerd. Stay up late and talk on forums nerdy. I read the whole series and then started the Simarillion. It was the elf book and I liked elves, but it was Tolkien, and we had a love hate relationship at times. I liked it, and I was surprised at how easy it was to read.

So that it my TTT this week. How about you, dear readers. What book(s) have you read that you were surprised you liked as much as you did?