Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Enjoyed That Are Outside My Comfort Zone

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

The rules are simple:

• Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
• Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
• Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Books I Enjoyed That Are Outside My Comfort Zone (such as a genre you don’t typically read or subject matter you’re not usually drawn to). Links from the book titles will take you to my review and more information about the book.

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I love my historical crime but somehow vicious murders or a ruthless serial killer on the loose seem easier to deal with if there’s a space of several centuries between them and me. (Call me a scaredy cat if you like.) However, I do occasionally venture into the dark recesses of contemporary crime thrillers and here are a couple I’ve enjoyed recently (even if I did have to read them  in daylight hours only):

Motive X by Stefan Ahnhem

The Playground Murders by Lesley Thomson

Another genre I’ve often struggled with is fantasy or books involving any kind of magical realism. However, there are a few I’ve enjoyed:

The Things We Learn When We’re Dead by Charlie Laidlaw (a lost, dysfunctional spaceship run by an aging hippy captain)

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (magical retelling of Russian folk tale)

Fata Morgana by Steven R. Boyett and Ken Mitchroney (a time travelling WW2 B17 bomber crew)

The Thirteenth Gate by Kat Ross (a historical mystery with ghouls and daemons)

Regular followers of this blog may know I’m not a sentimental person and therefore not a huge fan of books involving romance, especially of the ‘slushy’ kind. However, where the characters are well-drawn and the story is believable I can be moved as much as the next person and I’m not averse to the occasional ‘light read’.

The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle

Stealing Roses by Heather Cooper

Grace After Henry by Eithne Shortall

Finally – and don’t hate me for this – but I’ve never been a pet lover and along with my aforementioned aversion to ‘slush’, books involving animals hold little appeal for me. However, even I was charmed by Flush by Virginia Woolf. Told from the point of view of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s spaniel, Flush, what stops it being overly sentimental (just) is Woolf’s characteristic sly, mocking humour.

What books have taken you out of your comfort zone?