Bookish: Book Theme – Life

Each month I do a blog post based on a Goodreads group called ‘Play Book Tag.’

The group choose a theme and then people share, discuss, recommend and review books that fit the theme.

The theme for February had me singing the below song in my head over and over again. Thanks Goodreads group. Thanks.*

*If you can’t detect the sarcasm, trust me – it’s there.

It’s that thing that gets in the way of stuff we want to do. It’s also that thing that we fill up with really cool things and cool people.

But how does this translate into books?

My first thought was ‘life writing’ aka autobiographical works but it seems that the topic of ‘life’ is more broad then that. From what I can see the books listed as ‘life’ appear to include the below:-

• Life writing/ autobiography (phew, I wasn’t massively far off)
• Fictional stories that are about specific life events i.e. a wedding, divorce, a particularly complex incident
• Fictional stories that are about the expanse of a character’s whole life or a wide section of their life experience
• Non fictional accounts of a specific topic designed to help guide or motivate others, think broad self help.

If I go off the above categories than I guess examples would include the below:-

Life Writing/ Autobiography

• Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Fiction About a Specific Life Event

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kasey

Fiction About a Characters Life

• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Piccoult

Non Fictional/ Self Help/ Motivational

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
• The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

This is based off of the ‘Popular Life Books’ list on Goodreads which contains 1,250 entries. The top ten are: –

1. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Alborn
2. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
3. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
4. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
5. How to Win Friend’s and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
6. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Alborn
7. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
9. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
10. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

I’ve heard of all but #4 and #9 and have read none.

My usual question: What do I think?

It’s a very male heavy list this month and seems dominated by motivational or real life experience books.

I don’t think this is my genre if I’m honest although I have read autobiographies (including the ones I listed) and have enjoyed them very much, despite them being sad and harrowing reads.

I’ve got a copy of The 7 Habits on my desk at work and I keep swearing that I’ll get round to reading it and my colleague has read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. She likes the ethos behind the book but says its quite repetitive because the same message is being delivered just in different ways. The message amounts to – ‘don’t worry about what other people think of you.’

For every fan of Elsa it basically means, ‘let it go.’

I can’t choose any favourites from the list because I haven’t read any. I also haven’t read a great deal of motivational/ self help books but if I look at the categories I listed above I guess I would go for:-

The Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson – it isn’t a self-help or motivational book but a practical guide to writing via the snowflake method. I’m trialing the method out to see if its suits me.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – it’s not a favourite because as you know, I’ve not read it but I do want to give this one a go.

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai – I know this is considered autobiography but because I have decided autobiographies count as ‘life’ I wanted to include this. Again, it’s not really a favourite because I haven’t read it but this is on my TBR as I really want to read it.

What are your thoughts on the ‘life’ genre? Do you agree with how I’ve categorised what counts as ‘life’ or was some of them a stretch?

Let me know if you’ve read any of the books mentioned in the post above and what your thoughts are!

See you in March for another ‘Book Theme’ – topic TBC