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

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This weeks Top Ten topic is …

Top Ten Favorite Books I Read Before I Was A Blogger

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Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. I can’t remember if I came across the books or the films first, but I do know that I adore the first three books in the Vampire Chronicles. I have tried the later books and liked but not loved them for the most part, though Rice’s later determination to show that the relationships between the male vampires was purely platonic left me cold. What I really love about this book in particular is the voice, Louis was so different to any vampire I had come across before and then there was Lestat…

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The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce. It is no coincidence that this author and this series end up on a LOT of my TTT posts. I read this when I was about 12 maybe 13, so probably around 1998/9, and just fell in love with the characters and the world. For me this book did, and still does, encapsulate everything I LOVE in a good fantasy book: swords, sorcery, and of course a talking cat 😉 Alanna became the sort of female lead I wanted to read in every book, and I’ll admit I still have a soft spot for kick-ass female heroes.

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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I’d like to say that classics aren’t my thing, but that would be kind of a lie. Adult classics aren’t my thing. I think P&P is the only adult classic that I have ever fallen in love with and read and re-read. I’ve tried other books by Austen, but none of them have really held a candle to this one. P&P, especially when I first read it, is everything I dislike about a book but I ended up falling in love with it.

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The Redemption of Athalus by David and Leigh Eddings. The talking cat sold this book to me 😉 No, in all seriousness what sold me this book was the fact that when we first meet him Athalus is everything the hero of a book shouldn’t be, and he’s actually quite proud of it. I loved reading the interplay between him and Emmy, it never fails to make me smile.

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Bitten by Kelley Armstrong. The first werewolf book I loved. Before this I was very definitely a vampire girl. I trawled the horror shelves – because I came across this series in the pre-PR/UF days – and happened upon this book. I’ll be honest, the cover didn’t exactly enthuse me but there was something about the blurb… To this day Elena and Clay remain my favourite werewolf characters, and I’m rather sad that the series is now over.

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The Forbidden Game by L. J. Smith. All I have to say is Julian Julian Julian! When I first read it the trilogy blew me away. I hadn’t come across anything quite like it before, and I haven’t since. It’s actually quite a creepy story, and a very dangerous one for the characters. But it gave me an interest in Norse mythology, and opened my eyes to new possibilities.

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What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge. I said earlier that classics weren’t really my cup of tea, but this book here proves that wrong. I got this book, along with other children’s classics, from my Gran and I just loved Katy Carr and her siblings. I’ve read the first three books in the series, and I’d LOVE to get my hands on the last two books but it seems to be nearly impossible to do so.

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The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. I read this book only because the films were coming out, and Dad said I should read the books first. I was sceptical. First, in a single volume the three books look HUGE. Second, Tolkien’s language is incredibly dense and descriptive – not really my cup of tea, I kept looking for the action. Slowly I found myself drawn into the world, and whilst there are times when I think Tolkien could have been a little less wordy I found myself drawn to the characters and the world he created. It is an epic story, no pun intended and I’m glad I tried it.

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Merry Gentry by Laurell K. Hamilton. A friend from school recommended Hamilton’s Anita Blake series and I had devoured all the books published to that point and was looking for something else to read, when I came across by chance another series written by her. It was about the sidhe and faerie. The thing I most love about this series is that Hamilton was open from the start that it would include a lot of sex. You can’t walk into this series and not realise by the end of the first book that sex is going to be a big thing in the series (which you totally can’t do with the Anita Blake series). I’m hoping Hamilton will write more of Merry’s adventures, but we’ll see.

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The Hollows by Kim Harrison. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before in previous TTTs how I came across this series – through the recommendation of someone I’d met through a different books fandom. But what I LOVE about the series is the humour that underpins it. Reading this series makes me smile 🙂

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What are your favourite books that you read before you started blogging? Do you agree with my choices? Let me know in the comments below, or link up to your own Top Ten Tuesday entry so I can read your list.

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

This weeks Top Ten topic is:

Top Ten Authors That I’d Put On My Auto-Buy List

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE since I last participated in this meme – I last participated back at the beginning of October apparently – but I’m hoping to get back to posting regularly.
I haven’t read everything published by any of the authors on the list (though I think there are a couple where I’m close), so my choices are based on what I have read. The authors themselves are a mixture of adult, young adult, and crossover writers (and by crossover I mean that the author has series aimed at both adults and young adults).

10. JULIE KAGAWA
I first came across Julie Kagawa because I find the different interpretations and re-imagines of Puck/Robin Goodfellow from Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream really interesting – in fact, I actively hunt them out. I noticed that there were a lot of “Team Puck” banners on book blogs, so I decided to investigate. . . I found the world of The Iron Fey really interesting. Then I came across her Blood of Eden series, and I really enjoyed it. So as two out of two series is pretty good odds I think, she’s on my auto-buy list.

9. MEG CABOT
I first came across Meg Cabot through The Sheroes website, which at the time she co-ran with Tamora Pierce. Then I read the first couple of books in her The Princess Diaries series – I think I read up to book six or seven before I grew out of them. Then I read her All American Girl series and enjoyed it, so I moved on to Jinx, before utterly falling in love with The Heather Wells Mysteries. This was the first adult book series by Meg Cabot I read, and I really love the titles – they are so fun – and the story. When I heard about The Underworld series I HAD to read it because a) it was connected to the Persephone myth, and b) it was written by Meg Cabot. So as you can see, Meg Cabot definitely deserves a place on my auto-buy list!

8. RACHEL VINCENT
I came across Rachel Vincent more by accident than design, but then I could say that about all the authors on this list. I was browsing a local charity shop when I came across a copy of the first book in her Shifters series. I loved the book and quickly devoured the entire series – I think, including tracking down the books, it took me about two maybe three weeks to read everything. From there I moved to her young adult series Soul Screamers, where I loved her use and re-imagining of folk-lore. And because I liked them so much I tried her next adult series Unbound, which I really enjoyed. So Rachel Vincent too has a place on my auto-buy list.

7. HOLLY BLACK
I was browsing a local bookstore when I came across Ironside and fell in love with the book. I really enjoyed the way Holly Black saw the faeries that inhabit the world in the book, they were at the time one of the darkest in young adult books that I had seen. I also really enjoyed the characters, which is in part why I’ve never read the rest of the series. Then (I can’t remember how I came across them) I found The Curseworker Books and utterly fell in love with the world and the characters. There is just something about the series that I utterly adore, and for that reason Holly Black has a place on my auto-buy list.

6. SARAH REES BRENNAN
Sarah Rees Brennan is a little different to any of the other authors on this list because I found her through the Harry Potter fandom. I was told she was a really good writer and if I could get hold of a copy of her original work I should read it, so I read. The Demon’s Lexicon is a brilliant trilogy. I cannot recommend it enough. I also read Sarah Rees Brennan’s tumblr, which I find both an interesting and entertaining read – kind of like her books. Recently I have read the first book in her new series The Lynburn Legacy and really enjoyed it. Having loved her novels – and the short stories I’ve come across – I have had to add her to my auto-buy list.

5. KIM HARRISON
I found Kim Harrison by browsing the shelves at my local bookstore, and through the recommendation of a friend who wrote the most fantastic reviews/comments on The Hollows. I read Dead Witch Walking and fell in love with both the book titles in the series and the main character Rachel Morgan. I found myself quickly devouring the books and loving the humour in them. Fast forward several years, and I entered a contest on Kim Harrison’s blog and got hold of a copy of Once Dead, Twice Shy (which is the first book in her Madison Avery series, which is a YA) and loved it. I’ve also read at least one short story. I love the way Kim Harrison uses humour in her books, so she got added to my auto-buy list.

4. PATRICIA BRIGGS
I think Patricia Briggs is another author I found through browsing a local bookstore. Paranormal shelves tend to be filled with mostly books about vampires or witches, so I always keep an eye out for books about werewolves/shifters which is probably how I came across Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson series. I believe that when I stumbled across the series there were only four books, but I was instantly in love with the world and characters. I liked the fact that Mercy didn’t fit the typical stereotype of a woman in a paranormal romance and that she was a car mechanic. Through my love of those books I heard about the spin-off series Alpha and Omega, and I found I loved that series too – though Mercy Thompson is still my first love. So that’s how Patricia Briggs got added to my auto-buy list.

3. LAURELL K. HAMILTON
I was 17 when I first started reading Laurell K. Hamtilon’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series through the recommendation of a friend who loved “horror” books as much as I did – yes, I found this series before paranormal romance and urban fantasy really existed. Laurell K. Hamilton was the first author I read where the main character was a vampire hunter (at the time I was heavily into vampires and reading Anne Rice and L. J. Smith’s  Nightworld series, to name a few).  I really liked the way Hamilton had Anita navigating the thin line between being good at her job and becoming a monster. I also liked the way that Hamilton had a reason as to why Anita got into the job, and it wasn’t because she was a vampire attack survivor. Then, around book 8 I think, the books got a LOT more adult and that threw me a little – it wasn’t what I expected from the series at all. But around that there were still interesting plots and I was curious about how Hamilton was going to develop the characters and before I knew it I was back to loving the books (on the whole) again. Somewhere in the middle of that I came across Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series. I knew going into this that it was definitely an adult series, that it was going to be dark, and that it involved the faery folk which was a big selling factor for me. I ended up loving Merry like I loved Anita, and really liking the world that Hamilton created. So, although there were stumbling blocks, Laurell K. Hamilton ended up on my auto-buy list.

2. KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten and Stolen were the first two books I read that had a strong female lead who just happened to be a werewolf. As you can probably guess from the fact that I took part in a Women of the Otherworld Challenge her Women of the Otherworld series is one that I love. To be honest though it wasn’t all love at first sight. I fell in love with Elena so much in Bitten and Stolen that I had a heard time adjusting to the fact that at book three in the series Kelley Armstrong decided to switch narrators, but I kept reading. Elena is still very much a favourite of mine, but I grew to love the other female leads in the series. Then I came across her young adult series Darkest Powers which is set in the same world as Women of the Otherworld but with different, younger, characters and I adored it too. Somewhere around this time I also read her the two books in her crime series Nadia Stafford and loved it. Then I moved on to reading her next young adult series Darkness Rising and loved it too, during which time her Women of the Otherworld series was drawing to a close. So having loved so many series by Kelley Armstrong she got added to my auto-buy list.

1. TAMORA PIERCE
Tamora Pierce is, without a doubt, the number one author on my auto-buy list. I will try anything she has written.

I first came across Tamora Pierce when I was a LOT younger, I’m pretty sure I started reading her around the age of 12, when I was heavily into devouring books which were high fantasy. It was quite hard, as most books in that genre back then were aimed at adults and usually had a male lead. Tamora Pierce’s books were different. My school had a book club, and we got given a catalogue to bring home so we could order books. It just so happened that one of these contained a book called The Magic in the Weaving which is the first book in the Circle of Magic series. I really enjoyed that book, and convinced my parents to get hold of copies of The Song of the Lioness Quartet where I met Alanna. At that point there was no holding me back! I devoured The Song of the Lioness Quartet desperate to know what was going to happen next. I then back-tacked to the Circle of Magic series and finished that as the books were published (I think). Then I read The Immortals Quartet and loved the world of Tortall (from The Song of the Lioness Quartet) even more. Then I got to The Protector of the Small quartet and wavered a bit. Kel was a difficult character for me, but I stuck with the series and ended up enjoying it. Then I returned to Emelan (from the Circle of Magic) in The Circle Opens quartet, before bouncing back to Tortall in The Trickster duology, before jumping back again to Emelan for The Will of The Empress. Then it was back to Tortall again for the Beka Cooper trilogy.

As you can probably see I’ve read a LOT of Tamora Pierce’s work, and I’ve loved (or at least liked) all of it. So I can say without a doubt that Tamora Pierce is the number one author who I would auto-buy.

What authors would you auto-buy? Do you agree with my choices? Let me know in the comments below, or link up to your own Top Ten Tuesday entry so I can read your list.