Top 5 Wednesday – Favorite Books Outside Your Comfort Zone

Have you ever stepped outside your bookish comfort zone? Did you like it or maybe the reads you’ve chosen assured you to stay in it?

I’ve been in both situations, but there are few books that made me want to read even more in a certain genre, but not enough to make it my usual shelf-of-choice.

I could probably count classics as one of these shelves, but it’s just too obvious ;). Plus I do reach for them from time to time, so let’s move to the shelves I usually pass without a though. Well, I usually go straight to Fantasy, YA shelves ;).

5

The biographies / memoirs

I tend to stay away from contemporary, realistic stories. Stories about the real world and real people, because reading is just one way to get my thought away from everyday life. But there are few exceptions, people who made me curious, who did something I liked, who were simply amazing. Two of these cases you can see on the covers  – I enjoyed what they did and I thought their books might be interesting and I was right! I promise I will write at least short reviews of these eventually.

4

Western

This was the first western story I really enjoyed reading. And till now I haven’t found any good one yet. True, I was kind of afraid to commit to any full-sized book (“Shane” has barely 133 pages), so I know there are some good westerns out there, I even have few on my TRB reads (one or two thanks to the fellow bloggers), but somehow I keep on skipping this shelf.

3

Contemporary fiction

Or the shelf I’d call – “I don’t know where to put these”. I’ve picked up “The Forgotten Garden” because of the title and the cover. It reminded me of the Secret Garden, so I wanted to check what it this book about. It might not be a state-of-art story, but it was enjoyable and the writing was beautiful, so I have no regrets on reading it. Goodreads says the book is over 500 pages long, but It felt like a much shorter read. The time seemed to fly when I dived into the story.

2

  

Historical fiction

Yet again it seems these might be just a bit too close to reality to me, but somehow I liked them. Well, with “Code Name Verity” I didn’t really know what I’m picking up as it was one of the SYNC audiobooks and when I’ve started listening and realized the setting and what’s going on I thought about leaving this book be, but it was so good! I simply couldn’t stop listening.

The second story “Crown of snow and blood” – I bought in on a whim. I don’t really know why, but it just felt right in my hands. I’m so happy I did that. Yes, it is a historical novel, but the author had a magical way of writing and tends to fit bits and pieces of fantasy here and there to make it all interesting.

And “The Family”… you might laugh, but I picked this one up because of Assassin’s Creed games. Mainly the ones with Ezio and the Borgia family. Because the book is about Borgia’s. It was really good, I was glad to hear a more realistic version of what happened.

1

 

Books about photography

Well, I admit I might not be good at making photos, but I do like taking my camera out from time to time. And to get better with it, I sometimes reach for some books that ought to teach you how to work with a camera. I was completely surprised when I picked up the first of David duChemin’s books – “Withing the Frame”. I was expecting yet another book with a bunch of tutorials, images with all the technical info’s under – the usual stuff. But this was different. Sure, it has the usual elements, after all, it’s supposed to teach you, but it’s also fantastically written. It makes you interested in the story behind the picture, makes you think about what you want to achieve by clicking the button.

If you’re ever interested in photography – check these books out.

What were the books that surprised you, the ones you’ve read even though you don’t normally reach for these kinds of stories?