Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
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Good morning and Happy TTT to everyone!
This week asks us to cast our mind back to those books that we planned to read, were excited to read, had bought with every intention of reading… and, for whatever reason, we never got around to. Why might we not get around to them? I cannot speak for anyone else but, for me, it is often than they were eclipsed by other new books, by a NetGalley release, by a favourite author publishing a new book – or simply because time slipped away…
Exiles, Jane Harper
A mother disappears from a busy festival on a warm spring night.
Her baby lies alone in the pram, her mother’s possessions surrounding her, waiting for a return which never comes.
A year later, Kim Gillespie’s absence still casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather to welcome a new addition to the family.
Joining the celebrations on a rare break from work is federal investigator Aaron Falk, who begins to suspect that all is not as it seems.
As he looks into Kim’s case, long-held secrets and resentments begin to come to the fore, secrets that show that her community is not as close as it appears.
Falk will have to tread carefully if he is to expose the dark fractures at its heart, but sometimes it takes an outsider to get to the truth . . .
Why did I not get around to this?
Although I loved The Dry, with its revelations about Falk, I found the second book less convincing and preferred The Survivors. Perhaps you can only really do one great book in which a dark secret past is revealed – otherwise it becomes almost farcical melodrama.
Chances of Reading in 2024? 6/10
Victory City, Salman Rushdie
In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga, ‘victory city’.
Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s as she attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception.
Why did I not get around to this?
I do find Rushdie rather hit-and-miss as a writer, however iconic he is – an iconic stature elevated further by those horrific and brutal attacks.
Chances of Reading in 2024? 5/10
Shy, Max Porter
This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy.
You mustn’t do that to yourself Shy. You mustn’t hurt yourself like that.
He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him.
Got your special meds, nutcase?
He is escaping Last Chance, a home for ‘very disturbed young men’, and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past and the heavy question of his future.
Why did I not get around to this?
Porter is an exceptional writer and does wonderful things with voices and character. Lanny was a masterpiece in my humble opinion. However, the contents of this one – for a father of an autistic child with her own set of special needs, the subject matter feels very close to home. And with the anxieties caused by finishing one school and starting another last year, this was a deliberate choice to wait…
Chances of Reading in 2024? 9/10
The Happy Couple, Naoise Dolan
Meet the wedding party:
THE BRIDE AND GROOM
Celine and Luke are meant to get married and live happily ever after. But Celine’s more interested in playing the piano, and Luke’s a serial cheater.THE BRIDESMAID
Phoebe, Celine’s sister, is meant to finish college and get a real job. Instead she pulls pints, lives with six flatmates, and has no long-term aspirations beyond smoking her millionth cigarette.THE BEST MAN
Archie, Luke’s best friend and ex-boyfriend, is meant to move up the corporate ladder and on from Luke. Yet he stands where he is, admiring the view.THE GUEST
Vivian, Luke’s other best friend and other ex, was meant to put up with Luke’s bullshit when they dated. But she didn’t. And now she is contented, methodically observing her friends like ants.As the wedding approaches and these five lives intersect, each character will find themselves looking for a path to their happily ever after – but does it lie at the end of an aisle?
Why did I not get around to this?
I loved Naoise Dolan’s debut novel, Exciting Times, and who doesn’t love a wedding and all the social tensions and satire and comedy and pathos that can come with it. Somehoe, however, it did just languish on my TBR pile…. I’m not even sure why…
Chances of Reading in 2024? 7/10
Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she’s been in love with him since childhood.
Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives – even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.
Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her.
As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán might just find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies . . .
Why did I not get around to this?
Another book that I was excited about – loved Moreno-Garcia since Mexican Gothic, even if I haven’t felt her other novels have quite reached the same mark – but just never got around to. I was planning on reading it around Halloween and work did get stupid busy around then…
Chances of Reading in 2024? 7/10
The Fraud, Zadie Smith
Kilburn, 1873. The ‘Tichborne Trial’ has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be – or an imposter.
Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her novelist cousin and his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects England of being a land of façades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness, his future depending on telling the right story. Growing up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica, he knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realise.
Why did I not get around to this?
I think I will blame work for this one too! Historical literary fiction is perhaps one of my favourite genres, when I have the time to devote to it properly and immerse myself into the world. I just think I didn;t have that time this year.
Chances of Reading in 2024? 7/10
The Night House, Jo Nesbo
WHEN THE VOICES CALL, DON’T ANSWER…
In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote town of Ballantyne, where all is not as it seems.
Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, no one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie.No one, that is, except the enigmatic Karen, who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number to an abandoned house in the woods. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices start.
Why did I not get around to this?
This looks fun and I have always enjoyed Nesbo’s writing… and this one does look fun, if perhaps a little YA – but then YA has never put me off anything before.
Chances of Reading in 2024? 5/10
The Land of Lost Things, John Connelly
Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world.
But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard.Now an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey – to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres’s childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father, to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting.
To the Land of Lost Things.
Why did I not get around to this?
I enjoyed The Book of Lost Things so much… but I cannot recall much except that I enjoyed it! I decided to put this one back until I had had a chance to re-read the first book, despite the assurances on the blurb that this was a standalone!
Chances of Reading in 2024? 8/10
Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez
His father could find what was lost. His father knew when someone was going to die. His father had talked to him about the dead who rode in on the wind. The dead travel fast.
Gaspar is six years old when the Order first come for him.
For years, they have exploited his father’s ability to commune with the dead and the demonic, presiding over macabre rituals where the unwanted and the disappeared are tortured and executed, sacrificed to the Darkness. Now they want a successor.
Nothing will stop the Order, nothing is beyond them. Surrounded by horrors, can Gaspar break free?
Why did I not get around to this?
Again, a book I’d picked up on the basis of fabulous reviews and an intriguing premise as an autumnal Halloween read… and never got to it. In addition to work, I did start a couple of books and slogged through a sizeable portion before DNFing them… that also explains why several of these books didn;t get started.
Chances of Reading in 2024? 6/10
In The Lives of Puppets, T. J. Klune
In a small home, built into the branches of a tree, live a human named Victor and three robots. These are a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, a small vacuum desperate for love and attention, and a fatherly inventor-android named Giovanni Lawson. Together they’re a family, hidden and safe.
Then Vic salvages an unfamiliar android labelled ‘HAP’. He learns that Hap and Gio share a dark past, where they hunted humans. And Hap unwittingly gives away Gio’s location. Before they know it, robots from Gio’s former life arrive – to capture and return the android to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams.
The rest of the unconventional family must travel across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommissioning. Or worse, reprogramming. Along the way, Vic must decide if he can handle his feelings for Hap – even if they come with strings attached.
Why did I not get around to this?
I love T. J. Klune and his tender funny cosy fantasies ever since reading The House on the Cerulean Sea and I will definitely get to this one before the end of this year – hopefully before his new book is published.
Chances of Reading in 2024? 9.5/10
A Prayer for the Crown Shy, Becky Chambers
After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home. They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe. Becky Chambers’s new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?
Why did I not get around to this?
Again, this was just about time – which is not much of an excise as the Monk and Robot books are pretty slim! Loved Psalm for the Wild Built so will definitely try to find time for this one.
Chances of Reading in 2024? 9.5/10
Please do let me know which gems I have missed out on and which of these you would advise me to read first… I really do appreciate every comment and view!
Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes
January 30: New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023
February 6: Top Ten Quick Reads/Books to Read When Time is Short (Books under 150 pages, or if you’re not a novella reader maybe spin this to be books you could read in a day or a single sitting.) (Submitted by Jennifer @ FunkNFiction.com and Angela @ Reading Frenzy)
February 13: Love Freebie (in honor of Valentine’s Day tomorrow)
February 20: Bookish Superpowers I Wish I Had (e.g. never accidentally buying the same book twice, every book I buy would be automatically signed/personally dedicated by the author, the ability to read faster, etc.) (Submitted by Cathy @WhatCathyReadNext)
February 27: Covers/Titles with Things Found in Nature (covers/titles with things like trees, flowers, animals, forests, bodies of water, etc. on/in them) (Submitted by Jessica @ a GREAT read)
