Top Ten Books That Push My Comfort Zone

Today's Top Ten Tuesday list is Books I Enjoyed that Were Outside My Comfort Zone (or books you’d like to read that are outside your comfort zone!). 

I don't step outside my comfort zone often so I didn't have ten titles that I've already read to give you. Instead I decided to split my list between books I have enjoyed that were outside my comfort zone, and books I haven't read yet that are going to be outside my comfort zone whenever I get around to them.

These are my top 5 books I liked that were outside my comfort zone:

1. Red White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston– Romance isn’t really my thing, and I don’t try to hide it, and I don’t hesitate to call out books when romance is inserted for seemingly no reason at all… So it was odd that I picked up a romance novel (and even watched itits movie) but I did and found it to be kind of cute.

2. Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips – This is a weird one, I picked from the library because I needed a Q entry for the A-Z Challenge 2025. It’s halfway between historical fiction and true crime, as it’s a fictional retelling of a real crime.

3. Zodiac Unmasked by Robert Graysmith – This was my first true crime read ever; the Zodiac (2007 film) with Jake Gyllenhaal is probably one of my favorite movies so I suspected ahead of time that I would like the book.

4. Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham – This was outside my comfort zone on two levels, the first being that I don’t usually like audiobooks and that was how I found this non-fiction, and two I don’t really read non-fiction unless it’s about horses.

5. Troublemaker by Leah Remini – Memoirs are on the list of stories I don’t usually read; I find that sometimes the authors have an inflated idea of self-importance. But Scientology is an intriguing subject, and I learned all about it from someone who actually lived it.

Those are the top 5 books I read and enjoyed. Here are the top 5 books I want to read that are outside my comfort zone:

1. A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez – I don’t read a lot of classics, often finding them boring or too out of date. But I hear this is a good one so I’m working up to it.

2. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher– Suicide seems like a rougher topic than I want to deal with, but it also sounds like it should be essential reading.

3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – I don’t read a lot of comedies, so I’m hoping this lives up to it’s hype.

4. The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure – Holocaust stories are always depressing and intense. It’s a real thing that happened and it shouldn’t be forgotten, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to tackle a book on the subject.

5. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – Seems a bit mushy for my tastes not sure how much I really want to read it.

Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?