It's a Wonderful Dare!!

As many of you know, TY and I participated in a vomit-fest we called the Horrible Dare Challenge this summer wherein she had to endure incest and riding crops and I had to endure incest and child-snatching and we both had to visit Sweet Valley for, like, two hundred pages because that's all Francine Pascal and her ghost-writers could pound out at a time.  There was no small amount of gnashing.
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As an antidote, we have pulled together an It's a Wonderful Dare challenge which is basically my Top-Ten-List-Of-Books-That-TY-Has-Not-Yet-Read-And-Which-I-Think-She-Will-Enjoy.  The hastily-cobbled-together rules are as follows:

- You, T Y, must read 5 of the following 10 books by the beginning of next summer, June 21 2010.  More time is allotted for the Wonderful Dare challenge both because there are more books and because awesome books tend to be long (although Wideacre was both long and awful.  I'm sorry).

- For every book you read over and above the 5, I will send you a treat in the mail or sculpt you an internet-collage or otherwise reward you beyond the intrinsic reward of reading a truly great book.

- Because book-bashing is pretty universal but fangirlism is individual, if you hate any of these books I promise not to hate you in return.  Probably.

(aside: I wasn't going to post page #'s and just describe them as 'long,' 'really long,' or 'not terribly long' but then I dreamed that I looked up Fall On Your Knees for you and it was 800 pages long and I thought, That can't be right.  It's not, but it's not far off.  Forewarned is forearmed!)

THE LIST OF AWESOME!!!

1.  Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.  This book is one of the reasons I wish I'd ALWAYS had a book blog because I can't remember a damned thing about it, except that I loved it so hard.  Also, it's one of the shortest on my list and I know how you love a coming-of-age and seriously, just read it.  It will WIN you.  294 p.

2.  The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.  This is sort of cheating because I know you're trying to hack your way through it right now, and not really digging the talking dog and everything, so this is my way of saying POWER THROUGH, SOLDIER!  Seriously, this was my favorite book of the year.  I have no idea how many p. because I don't own it, but you've held it in your hands.  You have an approximation of the size.

3.  The Princess Bride by William Goldman.  Funnier. Than. The. Movie.  It is worth all 341 p.

4.  A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.  My non-fiction offering.  It is everything the title claims, except short.  It's kind of long.  But it's also nerdy and literary and witty and dry and it gets me all excited for SCIENCE!  478 p.

5.  This is your Connie Willis grab-bag: either Doomsday Book if you're up for a bit of gloom, or To Say Nothing of the Dog if you want more of a romp.  But there will be TIME-TRAVEL in BOTH OF THEM and you will not even care.  You will read them anyways.  TSNotD is 493 p. and I remember DB being rather longer, but to my chagrin, do not own.

6.  Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.  Have we talked about how I'm the only person in the bloggonets who doesn't like Neil Gaiman?  And that I've read American Gods and Anansi Boys and Neverwhere and was really underwhelmed?  But I loved this.  Maybe I love Terry Pratchett.  Maybe I would have loved this more if Neil Gaiman hadn't been anywhere near it.  It is amusing, anyways, and I'm big on amusing.  398 p.

7.  A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.  There are many who love the Hornster and while High Fidelity, with its high expectations, left me TOTALLY FLAT, Long Way Down slew me with humor AND pathos!  It is both amusing and sad.  Perhaps I am building it up so that it will end up being your High Fidelity, in which case I was...ahh...unimpressed.  Do not read this garbage.  Except, read it.  I have no idea how many p.  Some 250-300, I would expect.

8.  The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.  Victorian mysteries!  Skeevy counts!  MAD RELATIVES!  This is both a wicked-good detective story AND a barrel of monkeys.  567 p.

9.  The Minotaur by Barbara Vine.  See: everything I said re: The Woman in White except I don't think there's a skeevy count in this one.  Another one I do not own, but will place in the realm of 400 p.

10.  Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald.  This book broke my heart so hard.  It is twisted and there are unsavory bits and the whole thing is MESSED UP, but you will love eet.  Just over 700 p.

If we were all scienticians we would stroke our chins and mutter something about emergent patterns, about humor and length being pre-requisites for awesome, but we are not such things.  We own no white coats.  We will simply apologize that no one is speared with a trident in any of these books to the best of our recollection, although at least one of the books has pirates.

Also, it is one of the greatest tragedies of my life that you read the Outlander series before I got to you so that I could not be the one to introduce you to Jamie.

Anyone else who is not T Y, you are obviously permitted with my exhortations to read any and all of these books.  Sadly the rules aforementioned to not apply to you, as I will not be sending you treats in the mail and do not promise not to hate you if you fall afoul of my favorites.

JOKES!  Sort of.  Let the Wonderful Dare begin!  (T Y's counter-challenge.  I am...ex-HEIGHT-ed)