This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share recommendations. In keeping with Nonfiction November, I’ve opted for the top ten books I’d share with someone who loves memoirs:

1. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
2. March by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell
3. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
4. Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacobs
5. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
6. Becoming by Michelle Obama
7. My Mother Was Nuts by Penny Marshall
8. No Time Like the Future by Michael J. Fox
9. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
10. Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Anonymous

How about you? What memoirs have you enjoyed?

I stayed up late to finish a book and I have no regrets. (But, also, now I’m going to bed.)

Someday I’ll be done with this shawl. We’re now into shawl weather, so it makes it more likely, but I’m coming up on another two color rib section and that’s my least favorite part of this knitting project. Which way will the seesaw tilt?

I did finish The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling, so I am not in stasis in all aspects of my life, which is good. It was a cute witch-themed romance, which asked absolutely nothing of me except to keep turning the pages. I don’t want all my reads to be like that (and the romances I’ve liked best the past couple years have mixed in weightier issues with the lovey-dovey stuff), but there are some weeks when that’s just what you need.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader girl invites us to consider titles that we’d share with those who claim not to love reading.

I decided I’d break my list up into three audiences:

1. Kids:
   1. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick: Honestly, any of Selznick’s three historical fiction chunksters would work, but I have an especial fondness for this one set in a Paris train station and focused on early film and automatons. The way he alternates narrative and visual storytelling is unlike any other author I’ve encountered, making turning the pages compelling. Plus it will give kids who don’t think they like reading the satisfaction and confidence of having finished — and loved — a 500-page book.
   2. Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover: A verse novel about two basketball loving twin brothers where the rhythm of the narrative follows that of playing the game. If you’ve got a hoops-loving kid, I think this would be a great choice.
   3. Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker: In this graphic historical novel, Prince Sebastian and Frances, a dressmaker, share a secret, that he has a secret identity as cutting-edge fashion icon Lady Crystallia, leaving him little time for the girls his parents keep trying to pair him up with. Graphic novels are a great way to get kids who don’t love reading picking up printed material. If your kid has exhausted superheroes or collected comic books and wants to move on, this would still offer someone in a costume and figuring out how to live an authentic life when the world may not yet be ready for your truth.

   Young adults:

   4. Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down: This verse novel takes place during a single minute-long elevator ride and deals with gun violence, family, loyalty, and vengeance, with an open ending that will leave teens talking about what happens next.
   5. Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book: This follows the story of a boy raised in a cemetery by the ghosts of the people interred there and what that means when a threat from the living world tracks him down there.
   6. Illumninae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: This is another chunkster, but this time aimed at teens, rather than tweens, and set in space. Its epistolary style (told through emails, video logs, and other reports) makes for frequent stopping points and multiple points of view, plus there’s a killer AI who also gets to share its perspective.
   7. The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin: This story of fighting racism in the military during WWII is outrageous. The fact that we don’t know their story and that no one has been unable to reverse the outcome is a tragedy.

   Adults:

   8. Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History by Cait Murphy: I feel like sports fans are an untapped market for nonfiction. Baseball fans, in particular, tend to be a wonky bunch, who love to focus on stats and minutia. This is a story from early baseball (1908, rather than our most recent ’08) told in great narrative fiction style.
   9. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence: This is a laugh-out-loud story about a couple who goes on an amazing vacation and decides they’d love to relocate there permanently. When they buy a ramshackle house in need of many repairs, they must quickly adjust to repairpeople with different life approaches, what red tape means when you’re working with a second language, and how their primary residence becomes the vacation destination for everyone they’ve ever met. If you’ve got a DIY fixer-upper project of your own, this is the read for you.
   10. Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living by Bailey White: Any book that has me laughing aloud on a cross-country plane flight is probably a good one to share. And this one, about family in Georgia, is no exception.

   How about you? Any book you think would be great to share the written word with someone who may think they may not share your passion for reading?

   Category: books. There is/are Comments Off on top ten tuesday: books for non-readers.
   
   

No, the shawl isn’t done. But, honestly, I’m a little tired of showing you three rows here and three rows there, and so I’m showing you the potential second sock I might make next.

The book is a modernized comic/graphic novel interpretation of Nancy Drew by Kelly Thompson, Jenn St-Onge, Triona Farrell, and Ariana Maher. I enjoyed the first issue/chapter and am looking forward to polishing it off quickly. Oh, and it also features the Hardy boys.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see this week’s reading and crafting roundup.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share a Halloween-themed list. I thought I’d share ten bookish characters who might be fun to dress up as, since you’ve still got most of a week to put together your costumes:

1. Phryne Fisher: 1920s society girl/detective from Kerry Fisher’s mystery series
2. Pippi Longstocking: Swedish wild child and red-haired bad-ass from Astrid Lindgren’s children’s books

3. Anne Shirley: Speaking of red-haired children, puffed sleeves are in fashion in this year and I can’t help but think of her every time I go to a clothing store.
4. Dobby the House Elf: Fashion yourself some long ears and pair them with a bathsheet or two and mismatched socks. (The Harry Potter universe is a goldmine of Halloween ideas.)
5. Max from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are: Add a tail to a union suit-style of pajamas and top the look off with a crown.
6. Harold from Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crocket Johnson: Speaking of onesie-pj’s, pair this with an oversized violet coloring implement, and it won’t take someone long to guess. I’d probably replace the crayon with sidewalk chalk myself.
7. Nancy Drew: Pair a sweater-set and skirt with a magnifying glass, and you’re all set. (Actually, if you can get your hands on a magnifying glass, you can probably get several years’ costumes out of the way: Sherlock Holmes (combine with a trench coat), Harriet the Spy (combine with a notebook), and Miss Jane Marple (combine with a shirt-waist dress and knitting project) immediately spring to mind.
8. Arthur Dent from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Put on your bathrobe, grab a towel, and add a notebook on which you emblazon, in your most comforting font, “Don’t Panic!” Bonus points for carrying a cup of tea or getting the number “42” somewhere into your costume.
9. The Cat in the Hat: Make a red and white striped stovepipe hat out of construction paper, tie a jaunty red bow around your neck and fashion yourself some cat ears and a tail.
10. Princess Magnolia from Shannon and Dean Hale’s The Princess in Black series: Combine a black top and leggings or a skirt, a black mask and cape, and a crown, and you’re ready to go. Bonus points for transforming your unicorn, Frimplepants, into your trusty steed, Blacky, by giving him a black mask, too.

Got any other bookish Halloween ideas?