Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

This week’s topic: Ten book recommendations for ___________

I had to think long and hard for this topic this week as a) I’m painfully behind in my television shows and movies and b) I feel like I’ve covered so many books from all kinds of genres and character types. So for this topic, I decided to just go with quirky reads as I was reading some pretty zany reads around the time that I put this list together 😛

In no particular order:

1. The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde (see author tag) — Pretty much my inspiration for this week’s list as I just finished reading two more books from this series at the time that I started thinking about this topic. I love how this series is such a mash-up of genres: alternative timeline/1980s, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, a meta on books/reading/storytelling…It can be pretty funny, pretty zany, but also pretty heartwrenching. It’s a book lover’s delight. If you haven’t read this series, I cannot recommend it enough.
2. The Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett (see author tag) — I love the worldbuilding in these books and on the outset it may seem like merely fantasy but the satire in these books are absolutely astute and loaded, not the humanity of the characters (ultimately) and of course the quintessential British humour involved.
3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (see post) — Never got around to writing a proper review for the novel but the off-beat and dry British humour always reminded me of Terry Pratchett’s books, just set in space. The novel just starts with Arthur Dent just wanting his hangover to go away and he ends up getting whisked off to outer space as Earth is demolished to make way for an interstellar highway. And that’s just the beginning…
4. The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone (review) — Geek culture meets mystery in a Veronica Mars-esque manner (complete with the observations on the people she meets)? Yeah, it makes for a bit of a zany read xD (and yay that there’s another two installments to this series!)
5. The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky (review) — This book was so quirky! Poor Peter Glebsky just wants to enjoy his downtime in peace and quiet and finds himself not only surrounded by some really strange vacationers staying at the inn but lands himself in the middle of a mystery and odd alien events that felt a bit like an episode of The X-Files.
6. The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (review) — Speaking of protagonists who wanted little things and ended up getting thrown into some crazy events, here’s another book with quite the premise: Egon Loeser just wanted to get laid and ends up taking quite the romp across 1930s Berlin and elsewhere…It gets pretty mad. But it’s also pretty funny.
   

7. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (review) — For something a little less sci-fi-y/genre-mashing, here’s a book set in the contemporary times. The zaniness stems from this Ukrainian family living in England, in particular these estranged sisters trying to deal with their elderly father and this really young woman he wants to marry whom they think is out for his money. This little blurb doesn’t even do it justice, my book review outlined some of the mad things they had to deal with. Hence why it’s on this list 😛

And that’s my list for this week. Couldn’t quite think of ten but seeing as I mentioned a few series this week, it should be enough 😉 Have you read these books/have some of these books on your wish-to-read pile? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you! 🙂