Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 Contemporary Books That Would Be Great Paired With A Required Reading Book

It's that time of the week again!  The Broke and the Bookish host a weekly bog list called  Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's theme: Top 10 Contemporary Books That Would Be Great Paired With A Required Reading Book (like Perks of Being A Wallflower with Catcher in the Rye) OR Top Ten Books That You Wish Were Taught In Schools

Let's get started! (In no particular order....)

1. Boy21 and Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone:

In Boy21, the two boys (plus a third secondary character) form a make shift reading club and read the first in the Harry Potter series. It is referenced often in the book, especially in the similarities in Finley and Harry.

2. The Dinner and Anna Karenina:

The main character in Herman Koch's The Dinner quotes Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy often.  While I have never read Anna Karenina, I added it to my to-read list after reading The Dinner. 

3. Silver Lining's Playbook and  The Great Gatsby or A Farewell to Arms:

Pat in Silver Lining's Playbook reads quite a few classics during the book (and spoils the endings if you haven't read them).  Two that he seems to focus on quite a bit are The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. 

4. Inferno and Dante's Inferno:

While I was not a huge fan of Dan Brown's Inferno, he based a lot of the facts of the book on Dante's Inferno.  Yet anther reason I need to read it. 

5. Inkheart and Peter Pan or Takes from the Arabian Nights:

In the book Inkheart, the main character can read characters out of books and bring them into his world.  Two characters that join the world we know come from Tales from the Arabian Nights and Peter Pan.

6. The Fault in Our Stars and Julius Caeser (or An Imperial Affliction):

The title of The Fault in Our Stars comes from a line in the play by Julius Caesar. I wouldn't mind reading An Imperial Affliction, but hey, it's not a real book. :) 

7.  Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald and anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald is obviously based on Zelda Fitzgerald, so really any F. Scott Fitzgerald book would be a good tie in. 

8. The Great Divorce and the Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

I read The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis without knowing that it is, in fact, his response to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. 

9. In Cold Blood and To Kill a Mockingbird:

Truman Capote is Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird so I suggest reading the book he's famous for. 

10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

So I figured that a lot of people would come up with tie ins for The Perks of Being a Wallflower since the main character reads a ton of classics, but I went another way. You should watch the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  In fact, you should find a theater that shows the movie late at night and go for the experience. Then you will fully understand several scenes in the book.