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.

This week’s Top Ten is 10 books written before I was born – either that you have read or on your TBR. I have decided to list 10 books that I have read. I was born in 1972 so I started with the sixties and worked backwards. I tried to make it a varied list – both in time and in genre. I could easily have picked 10 science fiction books. Writing this list has made me want to read some of these again.

1. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott (1868) I first read this when I was about twelve. My mam gave me her copy from when she was a child and it always felt a bit special to be reading it. Jo is still one of my favourite literary characters and was a huge influence on me as a young tomboy.
2. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov. (1967) I first read this in the early nineties. It was one of the first books I read at university. Bulgakov rewrites Faust and the story of Judas as well as accurately depicting Russian life in the 1930s. This is my favourite novel which surprises me every time I reread it.
3. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) I read this at university as well. It’s a disturbing tale which describes the mental breakdown of the narrator when she is forced to rest and not allowed to write or work. Her mental state deteriorates and she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper in the room where is staying. One of the first feminist classics I read.
4. Diary of a Madman and other stories – Nikolai Gogol (1835) The best stories in this collection are probably the title story which highlights the mental disintegration of a petty official who is struggling for the attention of the woman he loves and The Nose where a colonel wakes one morning without his nose. Later, he finds that his nose has achieved higher rank than him. Excellent satire.
5. The Talented Mr Ripley – Patricia Highsmith (1955) This was quite a recent read – it had been on my TBR list for quite a long time. A very enjoyable thriller although it was impossible not to imagine Jude Law and Matt Damon as the two leads.
6. A Single Man – Christopher Isherwood (1964) This is my favourite Isherwood novel. A very moving story about a gay man, George, trying to come to terms with the death of his partner. The action takes place over the course of a single day and we get to see George’s emotional struggles.
7. Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes (1959) This is a surprisingly emotional read considering it is essentially science fiction. Charlie, a mentally disabled young man, and Algernon, a mouse are given a operation that allows them to become extremely intelligent. This allows Charlie to see exactly how badly people treated him before. Then Algernon’s intelligence starts to deteriorate and we see the tragedy of Charlie doing the same.
8. The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger (1951) This is another of my favourite books. I’ve read it a couple of times and I’ve taught it as a GCSE text to very nonplussed teenagers. I could reread this book over and over and not get bored.
9. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut (1969) Another science fiction classic here. Also quite an emotional read. Vonnegut takes us from the bombing of Dresden to the story of Billy Pilgrim who has come unstuck in time. Funny, satirical and anti-war, this is an excellent read.
10. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde (1890) One of the best of the gothic novels that I’ve read. Another rewriting of the Faust legend, Dorian wishes for eternal youth, while his portrait grows old and ugly. A beautifully written moral tale.

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.

This weeks topic was New-to-Me Authors I Read in 2020, I wasn’t sure whether I’d read 10 new authors last year but when I looked on Goodreads, I realised that I had actually read 18 new authors. Here are ten of them.

1. The Book of Evidence – John Banville – This has been on my long list of things I’d like to read for a long time. it sounded exactly like the sort of thing I like to read. Criminal, not particularly likeable narrator, murder of a completely innocent person – it sounded ideal. However, this did not live up to my expectations or all the praise heaped on it. Disappointing.
2. Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams – I saw this on a BBC programme The Novels that Shaped Our World and it sounded interesting. And it was, in terms of race and how black women are treated, but I did find the narrator’s voice a little irritating. I’m too old now to be able to relate to the issues facing twenty somethings.
3. Faggots – Larry Kramer – This has been on the TBR for a long time. It describes the lives of gay men in the seventies before the AIDS crisis. Although the novel is about the search for love, there is definitely a lot of sex and bondage. Definitely not for the faint hearted.
4. A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula Le Guin – Le Guin is another author I’ve been meaning to read for a while but on the basis of this I’m not sure I’ll read any others. This was well written but I didn’t really take to the main character or his quest. Not enough tension for me.
5. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov – This was a strange read. Humbert was a unpleasant and irritating narrator always justifying his heinous behaviour. It was interesting and clever rather than enjoyable.
6. Born a Crime – Trevor Noah – This was an excellent read about Noah growing up in South Africa where his birth is considered a crime as the relationship between his white, Swiss father and his black mother is punishable by five years in jail.
7. The Hand That First Held Mine – Maggie O’Farrell – O’Farrell creates two very different timelines in this novel and at first they seem to have very little in common. There is Lexi, living in post-war Soho, having left the suffocating morality of her parents house and Elina, and her husband, Ted live in present day London with their new child. As the novel progresses, Ted starts to remember long forgotten events and it becomes clear that there are more links between him and Lexie than were first apparent.
8. Normal People – Sally Rooney – I decided to read this before the TV programme last year and I can’t say I understand why it has been quite so popular. It’s not badly written but it left me a bit cold.
9. Contact – Carl Sagan – This was an interesting read because it was such an unusual angle on the subject. As this was written by a scientist, it was a very calm, sensible read with much close detail. A little lacking in emotion maybe but generally enjoyable.
10. Miss Chopstick – Xinran – I needed to read a author starting with X for last year’s reading challenge. This detailed the lives of three sisters who move to Nanjing at the turn of the 21st century. An interesting look at recent history.

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.

This week’s topic is ‘books I meant to read in 2020 but didn’t get to’. Having had a look back through my blogs, I only posted one Top Ten Tuesday seasonal TBR list which was in the autumn. I decided not to do it much last year because I never keep to them so they become slightly pointless. As proved by the fact that I only read four books from the autumn one. I’m easily distracted – particularly by books on deal for my kindle and also, I received a lot of book tokens for my birthday, which is in November so again, new books distracted me.

Here is what is left of the Autumn TBR list:

1. Five Quarters of the Orange – Joanne Harris – Not sure why I didn’t read this one. I have intentions of reading more Harris. A couple of years ago I read Different Class which was excellent and I vowed I would read more so I bought three titles for my kindle. However, as I didn’t read them straight away, they will probably sit on the kindle for ages.
2. Live by Night – Dennis Lehane – I really meant to read this. I allowed myself to be distracted by The Book of Evidence by John Banville (and that wasn’t as good as I’d expected.) Definitely high up the list for the near future.
3. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing – I added this to the list in the hope that it would make me read it. I really feel I should read some Lessing but I didn’t really enjoy the one book I have read by her (The Third Child) so who knows if it will ever happen.
4. Shakey – Jimmy McDonough – I mistakenly thought this was an autobiography by Neil Young (rather than the biography that it is) and added it for Y for last year’s alphabet challenge. When it turned out not to fit I still made an attempt to read it. The style irritated me, however, so I put it back on the shelf.
5. The Notebook – Nicholas Sparks – I’m curious to know what all the fuss is about but part of me knows I’m not going to love this so I keep bypassing it.
6. Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee – Meera Syal – I’d like to keep this fairly near the top of things to read. It promises to be funny and I’m sorry I haven’t got to it yet.

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.

This week’s top ten is favourite literary quotes. No particular theme to these – just my favourite quotes.

1. “Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.” The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood.
2. “The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.” Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
3. “Would you be so kind as to give a little thought to the question of what your good would be doing if evil did not exist, and how the earth would look if the shadows were to disappear from it?” The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
4. “Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!” Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter.
5. “She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket” Farewell my Lovely – Raymond Chandler
6. “They faced each other at opposite ends of an illusion” Dancer from the Dance – Andrew Holleran
7. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” 1984- George Orwell
8. “The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.” Moving Pictures – Terry Pratchett
9. “Fuckin failures in a country of failures. Its nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don’t hate the English. They’re just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent, vibrant healthy society to be colonised by. No.. we are ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don’t hate the English. They just git oan wis the shite thev got. Ah hate the Scots.” Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
10. “I’m telling you stories. Trust me.” – The Passion – Jeanette Winterson

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.

This weeks list is the top ten books on your autumn TBR.

Here are the next ten books that I intend to read this autumn.

1. A Country Doctor’s Notebook – Mikhail Bulgakov
2. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
3. FIve Quarters of the Orange – Joanne Harris
4. Live by Night – Dennis Lehane
5. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
6. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
7. The Notebook – Nicholas Spark
8. Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee – Meera Syal
9. Rabbit Run – John Updike
10. Shakey – Neil Young

I have five books to read for the Alphabet Soup Author Challenge including the book I’m reading at the minute which is Music and Silence by Rose Tremain. The others are Lolita, Shakey, and Rabbit Run. I’ve left myself a couple of fairly heavy books to read for the end of the year. I also still need an author for X so if anyone has any recommendations, I would be very grateful.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Girl. This week’s topic is book you would like to see adapted by Netflix. I don’t have Netflix (I may be the last person in the world to be able to say this.) so I just thought about what I would like to see filmed. I do think that this is a more complicated topic than it might appear. Good books don’t always make good films (The Book Thief, for example) and bad books often make great films (The Bridges of Madison County, for example). Nonetheless, here is my top ten.

1. Hag-Seed – Margaret Atwood
2. Middle England – Jonathan Coe
3. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
4. Different Class – Joanne Harris
5. Black Swan Green – David Mitchell
6. Survivor – Chuck Palahniuk
7. Contact – Carl Sagan
8. Cloudstreet – Tim Winton
9. Six Four – Hideo Yokajama
10. Bridge of Clay – Marcus Zusak

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.

This weeks list is the ten most recent additions to my TBR list.

I’ve decided to list five actual books and five from my kindle. When I first bought the kindle, I tried to not let it happen – a TBR shelf. I only bought a book when I had finished a book. But that turned out to be unfeasible because it meant a bit of messing around before I could start a new book. Apart from anything, Amazon’s daily emails with potential bargain books soon saw to it that I had a lot of books waiting to be read. Of course, it doesn’t take up any physical space but still, there are books that have been waiting a long time to be read.

Five from my actual bookshelves – I’ve been buying a lot of modern classics lately so most of these are quite old. I’m particularly looking forward to I Robot as it has been on my meaning to buy / read list for a long time.

1. I Robot – Isaac Asimov (1950)
2. The Collector – John Fowles (1963)
3. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett (1930)
4. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman (2017)
5. Choke – Chuck Palahnuik (2001)

Five from my kindle – I try not to spend a lot on kindle books – there isn’t much point when you can get such a lot for 99p. It means that I often buy things that I wouldn’t buy at full price. Paris Echo is probably the next read here. I’ve only ever read Birdsong so it would be interesting to read something else by Faulks.

1. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain (1933)
2. Paris Echo – Sebastian Faulks (2018)
3. A House for Mr Biswas – V. S. Naipaul (1961)
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain (1884)
5. 20000 Leagues under the Sea – Jules Verne (1869)

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. This weeks topic is books that you hated but are glad that you read. I changed that to books that were disappointing as I hate very few books.

1. The Japanese Lover – Isabelle Allende. It had been a long time since I had read any Allende when I read this last year. I was expecting some beautiful piece of magic realism akin to Eva Luna. This just a fairly average romance / family saga.
2. Mockinjay – Suzanne Collins. What a disappointing end to the Hunger Games. There are no games, for a start. The whole thing dragged and the ending was corny. Made me wonder why I had bothered.
3. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall. I know it’s a classic and really important in the LGBT canon but it really was a struggle. Stephen was a hard heroine to like and it all seemed woefully old fashioned.
4. Fifty Shades of Grey – E.L. James. To be fair, I was never expecting this to be good. But despite the fact that it is terrible, I am glad to have read it. It makes me feel a lot better about my own writing.
5. The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough. How this has got itself onto all those books you must read before you die lists is beyond me. It’s badly written, the characters are superficial and it is far too long.
6. Wonder – R. J. Palacio. This was underwhelming for me. I guess I just have no heart but this genuinely left me cold. It was extremely corny as well.
7. The Insurgent Series – Veronica Roth. Not quite sure why I persevered with these books. They certainly didn’t get any better.
8. The Casual Vacancy – J. K. Rowling. Just not as good as Harry Potter.
9. Hidden Figures: The UntoldStory of  the African American Women who Helped Win the Space Race – Margot Lee Shetterly – This was disappointing because I was expecting something different. I had just seen the film and thought that the focus might be the same but this starts much earlier and the focus is much broader. Not really what I was looking for.
10. The Angel’s Game – Carlos Ruiz Zafron. I loved The Shadow of  the Wind and was very excited to read this. (Always going to lead to disappointment, being over-excited!) But this was not even in the same league. I haven’t bothered reading any further on in the series.

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This weeks theme is Ten Books I Struggled to Get Into But Ended Up Loving or Ten Books That Were A Chore To Get Through or Ten Books I’ve Most Recently Put Down.

I don’t often finish a book because I really hate abandoning something that has already taken up some of my time but I do struggle sometimes especially when it comes to classics. This list is a mix of books that I have struggled with – some I thought I would love but didn’t, some I didn’t finish and some that I’m glad I persevered with.

1. Lorna Doone – R. D. Blackmore. I thought this was going to be an exciting adventure. I’d seen an adaptation and that was very good. They must have just taken the best bits and avoided all the filler. Far too slow. I’d recommend the 2000 BBC adaptation with Richard Coyle and Aiden Gillen. Much more fun.
2. Gateway to Fourline – Pam Brondos. The pace was too slow with this one. It is the start of a series so I think the author wanted to include a lot of background and information. The characters were a bit flat too. I won’t be reading on.
3. The Mysterious Affair at Styles – Agatha Christie. I love a good detective story so I thought I’d give Christie a go. This wasn’t much fun though. The characters were unlikeable, the plot was cheesy and Poirot was so annoying I wanted to reach into the text and throttle him.
4. The Short Drop – Matthew Fitzsimmons. This is a more modern text. It has a lot of five-star reviews on Goodreads but I have no idea why. It was obvious what was going to happen next and the plot was cliched. I finished it but it was not very satisfying.
5. The Last Girl – Joe Hart. This was a struggle to finish. It was full of tortured metaphors and overblown language which distracted from the plot. Another series I won’t be continuing.
6. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne. I didn’t even get halfway through this one. I found the style impossible to get on with. A shame because it is an interesting idea.
7. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemmingway. It was a good job this was so short otherwise I’d never have finished it. I just didn’t see the point.
8. The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough. There were a number of reasons that this was hard work. The plot was cliched and unrealistic. The conversations read as if written by someone who had never spoken to anyone before. It was melodramatic and Meggie was too much a martyr to inspire much empathy.
9. Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott. I did finish it and some of it was exciting and interesting but Scott’s habit of describing every single meal and conversation really made the pace drag.
10. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy. This was quite a recent read. It took me five months and some days I could barely even look at it, never mind read it. However, I am glad that I finished it. Not just for the prestige of saying I’ve read it either. There are a lot of interesting characters and the relationships were well drawn. I was less keen on the war elements and the epic battles.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. Given the time of year, this weeks topic is Back To School Freebie: anything “back to school” related like 10 favorite books I read in school, books I think should be required reading, etc. I have decided to pick ten books that I think should be required reading.

1. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood – I know that everyone is saying this but given the current political climate, this really is the most apt dystopian novel. Not only that, it makes you think about reproduction and women’s body’s in a new way.
2. The History of the World in 10 and a 1/2 Chapters – Julian Barnes – This really explores the idea of what the novel can be. There are stories, histories and discussions about art, as well as the story of Noah’s Ark from the point of view of a woodworm.
3. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – Roddy Doyle – Doyle successfully captures the thought process and speech of a young boy perfectly. A joy to read.
4. If This is a Man – Primo Levi – Levi describes his time in the concentration camp in unflinching detail and without once ever showing any hatred or anger.
5. The Life of Pi – Yann Martel – At the beginning of this text, Pi Patel claims that his story will make you believe in God. The following novel explores spirituality and psychology as he tells about his journey with the Bengal Tiger, Richard Parker.
6. Like People in History – Felice Picano – A history of the gay movement from the 70s to the present day, told through the relationships of the narrator, Roger.
7. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath – A feminist classic which shows the difficulties of depression.
8. Jingo – Terry Pratchett. This is one of my favourite Pratchetts. A very clever satire about political assassinations and cleverly pointing the finger at who you would like to be to blame.
9. His Dark Materials – Phillip Pullman – A much better series than Harry Potter. This explores spirituality and science as well as being a superb adventure story.
10. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak – The narrator of this novel is death. He offers a different perspective on the second world war. It is about fascism and the difficulties ordinary citizens faced during that time. It might be aimed at children but it never once feels like it.