Top Ten Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s theme is Top Ten Gateway Books/Authors. Here’s my Top Ten:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling–this was my gateway book into fantasy and the wonderful world of Harry Potter. There’s a funny story behind my reading this actually: my younger brother had to read it for school when he was about 9 years old and I was 12, and since he hates reading so much it was taking him forever to finish it. I bet him that I could start the book and finish the entire thing before he could finish the second half of it, and I loved it so much that I ended up reading the first three books before he finished the first!
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare–my gateway into Steampunk. I really had no idea what this genre even was until I read this book, and once I picked this one up I was hooked!
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins–this was my gateway dystopian novel and also the book that made me realize how much I loved books with strong female protagonists. Katniss was one of the most kickass heroines I had ever read about and it made me want to read more books like this. Now, years later, dystopian novels are one of my favorite subgenres.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan–this book made me love zombie novels!! I have always been a huge fan of all things zombie but mainly just movies and video games. Once I read this book, it made me want to hunt down more zombie novels!
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins–while I had read some contemporary stuff before I read this, this was definitely the book that made me a huge contemporary fan. I literally could not put this down, and once I had finished it a second time I had to search for books just like it.
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot–I read this many, many years ago and I’m pretty sure this was what really got me started on my love for young adult fiction. This was such a great story and a great way to be introduced to my favorite genre.
Across the Universe by Beth Revis–this was definitely my gateway into sci-fi. I was a bit apprehensive about reading this one but once I started it, I couldn’t put it down. This book made me interested in the exciting world of outer space, and led to me reading other great sci-fi novels like Cinder and These Broken Stars.
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green–my first John Green novel, which made me want to read every book he’s ever written! This book was so amazing/heartbreaking, and I am slowly but surely working my way through the rest of John Green’s novels.
For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund–this was my gateway into retellings. This book was such an amazing retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and it really made me love retellings of all kinds–fairy tales, classics, and more! There’s just something about someone being able to reinvent a story that you’ve read before and make you feel like you’re reading something entirely new.
Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire–my gateway into New Adult. I loved this book and couldn’t wait to read more like it! Unfortunately, the New Adult genre is saturated with books that are borderline erotica, so my New Adult reading has been very limited. There are definitely a few gems out there though, and this was one of them!
What books/authors made your Top Ten this week?
Young At Heart 
I love steampunk books and, while Clockwork Angel wasn’t my first, it is a really good example of everything that is great in that genre. If you’ve never read the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger, you might give it a shot as it’s another great steampunk series.
My TTT
Thanks for the tip! I will definitely check that series out! Great Top Ten 🙂
What a great list! Across the Universe got me into science fiction too.
I love your list!
I have read The Infernal Devices and I didn’t realise this was steampunk. I guess that gadgets that were created by the husband and the bot army.. oh yeah now that I think about it! lol, I guess it is 🙂 If I had known this sooner, it might’ve made my list!
I’ve read TFIOS by John Green too & now I want to read the rest of his novels.
But my fave on your list is Beautiful Disaster. It wasn’t my first in New Adult genre but isn’t is just the best. I live for NA now. Have you read the rest of the Beautiful series?
I read Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and The Forest of Hands and Teeth as an adult reader, so they weren’t really my gateway to anything in particular (although I can see how they might have been if I’d been younger and hadn’t been exposed to some of those genres before). Actually, The Forest of Hands and Teeth was probably the first zombie novel I read, but I wasn’t impressed and I (mostly) steered clear of the genre until I read Warm Bodies (which I loved).
My intro to sci-fi made it onto my list, but it was a much older book (it was published in 1986 and was kind of cheesy; some of the books intended for younger readers written back then don’t seem as sophisticated as many of today’s are). I kind of wish some of the current sci-fi titles for young people had been my introduction to the genre; I might be a lot more into sci-fi now!