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Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 epistolatory books I enjoyed and hope you do too

I haven’t participated in Top Ten Tuesdays for ages, but as it’s freebie week, I decided to enter one of my book lists. Do visit the hosting blog, The Broke and the Bookish, and click through to some of the other participating blogs.
  1. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. Non-fiction. Lovely, lovely collection of letters between Hanff and the staff of a bookstore in England, written over a period of 20 years. Recommend the movie as well. 
  2. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Written as a series of accounts of the theft of a precious stone, using different styles and voices. It’s long, but worth reading. 
  3. Letters to Alice, Upon First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon. What the title says, plus much more besides. Discusses not only Austen, but the art of writing as well. 
  4. Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos. A novel told entirely in letters between the characters, a couple of scheming French aristocrats playing a dangerous game of seduction. 
  5. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. A correspondence between a young demon and his "uncle" Screwtape, a senior demon. Occasionally funny, often insightful meditation on Christianity and on good and evil. 
  6. Dracula by Bram Stoker. Written as a collection of letters, diary entries and other writings of various characters occupied with the pursuit of the eponymous count. 
  7. Daddy Long-Legs and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster. Two entertaining romances told entirely in letters. The first one is just a little bit icky due to the age difference between the corresponding couple, but the letters are delightful. The movie makes the age gap even bigger and is therefore somewhat icky. 
  8. The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Written as a series of letters from the protagonist, a poor black woman in the rural southern USA, to God, telling a heartbreaking but also eventually heartwarming story. Recommend the movie as well. 
  9. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend, and the first two sequels. I haven’t read the rest, so can’t recommend them. The angsty and very funny diary entries of an adolescent boy doomed to perpetual loserhood. 
  10. Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson. I found this YA novel, which is presented for the most part as journal entries by Amy, fresh and funny. I hope they make a movie out of it.
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Comments

Lee @ Rally the Readers said…
Great topic! I've never read any epistolary novels, but I do have Amy and Roger's Epic Detour on my to-read list.

Thanks for stopping by!
July 11, 2012 2:40 am
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