Top Ten Tuesday #54: I Had to Get My Own Copy

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic:

Books I Loved So Much I Had to Get a Copy for My Personal Library

A great topic because I have a few such books. I’ll borrow them from the library, get a few pages in and realize that I love the story or the writing too much to continue with the library copy because I want to highlight all the lines and passages I love. So I end up purchasing my own copy. These are the books that happened with.

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Velvet, Vol 1: Before the Living End by Ed Brubaker, illus. by Steve Epting

This was such an entertaining read. I got the first issue for free and knew I had to get all the full volumes. It’s a historical thriller set in the 1970s about a female spy who’s framed for a murder.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan (illus.)

I’m so happy to own a copy of this book. It’s a silent fantasy graphic novel about a man seeking a safe place for his family to live. The story is told using pictures, no words.

Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future by Lauren Redniss (illus.)

Such a great read that I learned loads from. It’s an illustrated nonfiction book about the weather, how what we do affect it and how it affects us. I believe it’s intended for teens and up.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

I completed this one in a day and knew I’d have to get all Allen’s books. It’s a fabulist novel about the Waverley sisters, who are estranged, and their garden in which grows an apple tree that bears fruit that foretells the future when eaten.

Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

This is such a great book that I wish more people would read and talk about. It’s a historical-fiction novel with touches of magical realism that takes place in Uganda from 1750 to 2004, following the descendants of Kintu Kidda, who “unleashes a curse [in 1750] that will plague his family for generations.”

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

One of the oddest books I’ve read and entertaining despite the subject matter. It’s a historical high-seas adventure with a touch of magical realism set in 1830 about a former slave who stows away on a ship to avoid marrying someone, not knowing that it’s a slave ship bound for Africa to pick up the mysterious Allmuseri people.

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

I love this book and am enjoying the series a lot, which I haven’t yet completed. It’s the first in a fantasy series and is about a man returning home, after years away at war and having been enslaved, seeking a quiet place to retire but instead becomes secretary to a princess and caught up in various political machinations.

The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri (transl.)

I love the prose in this book and the story was very interesting. Set in southern Italy, it’s a fantasy novel about a group of friends who signed a pact among themselves saying they’ll always meet up in their home town once a year, but this time one of the friends doesn’t show up. The others go looking for him and realize he’s involved in some weird stuff.

The Diviners series by Libba Bray

This hasn’t really happened yet because I only have a copy of the last book, which I’m currently reading, but I intend to collect them all. The books are great. They are YA historical paranormal/horror series set in the late 1920s New York City about a girl who can see into the pasts of people whose personal objects she touches.

In the Garden of Spite by Camilla Bruce

I haven’t yet bought a copy for myself, but I will. Instead, I keep buying copies for others because it’s so good. It’s a historical thriller set in the Midwest in the late 1800s about a female serial killer and is based on the life of a real person.

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So, have you ever bought a copy of a book you borrowed?