Top Ten Books That Make Me Think...

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and Bookish

Top Ten Books that make me think how different life could be* 

One of my favorite things about reading is learning about different places and times, and about people who live differently from me. What would my life be like if I was born into that family? or country? or time period? Sometimes the answers can be sobering. Some of these books are fiction, some are memoirs or biographies. But all of them opened my eyes and impacted me in a big way.

NOTE: I apologize in advance for any mistakes in the details of these books. Some of them I haven't read recently, and I am writing from what I remember. Also, I realized after compiling this list that it is a bit heavy and depressing. 

In no particular order:

1) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (fiction)

The story of a friendship between two girls, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a fascinating look at life in rural nineteenth-century China. Probably the part of the book that I was the most blown away by was the section on foot-binding. These women truly believed that the practice made them more beautiful. It had a very real impact on their marriage prospects (the smaller the bound foot the more desirable). But it is also one of the most horrifically painful beauty practices the world has known. 

2) Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller (memoir) 

This is the memoir of a white girl raised in Africa by colonialist parents, during the Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) civil war. The author does not critique her family's behavior, and the book has been criticized because of that. But that is actually one of the things about this book that made it so interesting to me - it's unapologetic honesty. Everything about Alexandra "Bobo's" childhood is different from mine - the violence, vermin and scenery, and her family's perspective on life. I am still thinking about it. 

3) To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (fiction)

Most of my childhood was spent in the south, but it was still nothing like Scout's upbringing during the first half of the twentieth-century. Amidst amusing anecdotes of life in a southern town, it is a very serious look at racism. What happens when a black man is accused of a crime by a white man? Will he be convicted even if the evidence points to his innocence? I don't know if there's anything I could say about this book that could do it justice. It remains one of my favorite books of all times. 

4) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (fiction)

I cried more reading The Kite Runner than I have during any other book before or since. How different my life could have been if I was born in Afghanistan - and class really does matter. I realize this is a work of fiction and maybe this author piled every bad thing that could happen to a person in one book. But maybe this was close to the reality of someone's life and that is what moved me. 

5) Sold by Patricia McCormick (fiction)

13 year-old Lakshmi lives an ordinary life until she is sold into prostitution by her step-father. Told she can return home when his debts are paid off, she soon learns it's not that simple. Lakshmi lives in modern-day Nepal when this story begins, so this is not a historical novel. Children are still being sold into slavery today (even in the US). Although painful to read at times, Sold is written in free verse and I think it made the material more palatable. 

6) King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild (history)

This book tells the history behind the region of Africa along the Congo River (Belgian Congo or now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) that is hinted at in books such as Heart of Darkness and The Poisonwood Bible. It is more horrible than you could ever imagine. In the 1880s King Leopold of Belgium claimed the land, looted its rubber and carried out a genocide that killed over ten million people. This region is still suffering the affects of the decisions of one man. 

7) The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (memoir)

Aren't parents supposed to be responsible? And create stability for their children? Not Ms. Wall's parents. Essentially nomads, they traveled their large family all over the southwest and eventually into West Virginia and NYC. It isn't that they never had the opportunity to settle down, it's that they seemed mentally unable to do it. What is most impressive is that despite all this, the author was able to survive and thrive and make something out of herself. 

8) Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (fiction)
At 9 years-old, a young Japanese girl with blue eyes is taken from her small fishing village and sold to a geisha house. There she is trained in the arts so that she can be skilled enough to entertain men. Her virginity is literally auctioned off to the highest bidder, and it is a huge honor to be 'kept' by a man. I just cannot imagine living this life. 

9) Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rolvaag (fiction)

Oh goodness, I hated this book when I had to read it in high school. I cannot imagine the desolation and difficulty of moving from a small fishing village in Norway to the vast untamed prairie of the US. Living in a sod house, having very few neighbors and facing unending winters. I truly enjoyed none of it. But it made me think that perhaps everyone's life in the mid-west wasn't quite like Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie. And that opened my eyes. 

10) Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (fiction)

Okay, I got a bit depressed by my list so I had to add a book that isn't quite so heavy. Anne Shirley made me love Prince Edward Island and one room schoolhouses and Gilbert Blythe. Sometimes wonderful things do happen to older children who are adopted. Thank goodness for Marilla and Matthew. 

*I may have interpreted the theme incorrectly this week. It's possible that I just made up my own topic, but I picked a specific Thing to think about. If that is the case, forgive me.