Top Ten Books I Had VERY Strong Emotions About - Top Ten Tuesday #7

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Books I Had VERY Strong Emotions About (cry, laugh, hurl across the room, etc.)

I like books that generate strong emotions in me. I even like these books that I want to burn. (Don’t get me wrong I’m utterly against destroying or banning books. It is just sometimes I hate a book that much that I want to burn or drown my own copy. Fortunately or unfortunately I’ve never done it.) In my opinion there is nothing worse than a book that makes you *shrug* and forget about it in next five minutes. Unfortunately, most of the books written are in the shrug category, at least for me. So I have a respect for authors and books that made me feel something more, even if the feeling is negative. Here is Top Five Books that Made Me Laugh, Top Five Books that Made Me Cry and Top Five Books that Made Me Want to Start a Bonfire.

Top Five Books that Made Me Laugh:

1. Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov. I was reading this book as an assignment in 10^th grade. My mother was running into my room multiple times to check that I wasn’t choking, because I laughed so hard. This book isn’t a comedy. It is a satire on Russian Revolution.
2. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. First I saw the play, when I was in middle school, then I saw the movie and only after that I read the play. And every time I laughed out loud and I still think that this is probably one of the funniest things that I’ve ever read.
3. The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella. While I was reading this book, my husband was running into the room where I was reading to check on me, same as my mother did, when I was reading Heart of a Dog. I’m either sounding really scary when I laugh like that or I have a very caring family.
4. Shopaholic Series by Sophie Kinsella. I was waking up my husband with uncontrollable giggles, while reading first book in bed. I couldn’t shut up about this book afterwards, so in the morning I was retelling the funniest moments to my husband and either I was very convincing or Sophie Kinsella is so funny, but at the end my husband decided to read it too.
5. Moscow to the End of the Line (aka Moscow-Petushki) by Venedikt Erofeev. This is another satire, this time on the USSR life during 1960^th. I guess it is really depends on your point of view is this book going to read hysterically hilarious or depressively sad. It was both for me, maybe a bit more funny than tragic.

Top Five Books that Made Me Cry:

1. What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson. This is a book about afterlife and about power of love. These two are very cheesy themes, however Richard Matheson managed to tell this story in a very touching manner, avoiding clichés and not ignoring a very solid research base.
2. Poetry by Sergei Yesenin. I loved Yesenin very much. I’ve reread my copy of his poetry collection so many times that it started to fall apart. His farewell poem makes me cry every time (I don’t really like this translation, but this is the only one I was able to find):
“Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.
Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let's have no sadness — furrowed brow.
There's nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer. “

3. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I knew the story before I read it. Who doesn’t at least vaguely familiar with it? I wasn’t expecting much from the book when I finally decided to read it. However, the end hit me pretty good and yes, I actually cried, cried not as much for Frankenstein’s monster, but more for unjustness and unfairness of life.
4. Looking for Alaska by John Green. This book didn’t really make me cry, I just had a terrible lump in my throat almost the whole time I was reading it.
5. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. Tears after finishing this book weren’t tears of sadness; they were tears of anger, tears of fury. Spoilers! I couldn’t believe that this book came to a such a corner where the only way of resolution was for a strong willing to live girl to sacrifice her life for a weak girl who didn’t value her life at all and was about to commit suicide. End of Spoilers!

Top Five Books that Made Me Want to Start a Bonfire:

1. Fallen by Lauren Kate. I don’t even want to comment on this one, because I already wrote a review (the only thing that changed since my review – I understood that I cannot read either second or thirds book in this series). 
2. On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I also wrote almost all I thought about this book in my review – a book with self-centered, chauvinistic pigs for characters. 
3. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Another required reading for school – 11^th grade. Believe me, I understand the tragedy described in the book, but I just simply couldn’t read this boring repetitions. Maybe I was too young for this, maybe I would view it different now or in 10 years, who knows? 
4. Germinal by Émile Zola. And one more required reading for school – 9^th grade. Mines, cold, diseases, hunger and rapes – mine 9^th grade’s psyche wasn’t able to sustain it. 
5.  By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters. Oh, the eternal whining of spineless character!