Top Ten Tuesday: Santa, May I?

 Oh, the Top Ten Tuesday meme.  It's so much fun to participate, and all the more so when I have time to write up my answer the week before.  This week, the good folks at The Broke & the Bookish want us to list the top ten books we hope Santa (or the fairies, or the Christmas Pig, or your childhood guardian of choice) brings us.  Like the rest of the book blogging world, I love getting books for Christmas.  Unlike the rest of the book blogging world (or at least unlike most of it), people rarely gift me with books.  You see, I work in a bookstore and now everybody who might have bought me a book feels intimidated about buying books for me.  I get it, I suppose.  I have access to advance reading copies, not to mention a generous employee discount and a good relationship with sales reps who are generally happy to send me books, gratis.  But it also makes me sad because nobody ever gives me a book and says, with real urgency, Read This.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  Woe is I.  There are much worse problems to have, so without further ado, here is a list of books I'd love to receive:

1. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.  It's a door-stopper, but also a literary game changer.  I want this one.

2. Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi.  I just had a customer rave about this book to me.  (In fact, it was local writing sensation Kelly Link who raved about it, which makes me want to read it even more.  We just discovered that we both love Molly Gloss's book, The Hearts of Horses, so I had a booksellerly moment.)

3. If I Loved You I Would Tell You This by Robin Black.  This looks really good.  I've got a coworker  (Nieves--she's awesome) who has been raving to me about this book, and she's even let me borrow it. You see, I'm not a particularly good book borrower (don't ask me how, but when I handle borrowed books they inevitably end up damaged), but if it were my own, I wouldn't have to worry about damaging it.

4. Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan.  This is the sequel to The Last Werewolf and I can't wait to sink my teeth into it.  Pun absolutely intended.

5. General travel literature.  Especially if it's funny or about a warm climate.  A la Bill Bryson or J Maarten Troost.  Maybe Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes or even the 2011 Best Travel Writing anthology. 

6. What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes. 2010's Matterhorn was a monument of Vietnam literature, but it wasn't my piece of cake.  I think, though, that I would like Marlantes' non-fiction account. 

7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I never actually read this book, though I'm not sure how I escaped it.  But my husband recently read it and loved it, so maybe he'll give me his copy. 

8. The last book in the Incarceron series by Catherine Fisher.  Don't know when it will be published, but if there's an ARC floating around out there, I'd love for Santa to bring it to me.

9. Well-written memoirs of interesting women.  This year I read Alexandra Fuller's memoir/bio of her mother, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, which I loved. Anything else that fits the bill would be great.

10. Any book that the giver has read and loved and wants me to read, too, so that we can have a shared experience.

What about you?  What is the #1 book on your book wish list this year? 

NB: Last chance to win a copy of Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver.  Click here to sign up!