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Index Memes To Be Read Books

Classics Club Challenge

I have decided to sign up for The Classics Club reading challenge this year. Based on this sign-up post and this FAQs post, we can choose our own criteria for what maketh a “classic” and then we have to make a list of 100 classics that we want to read – not immediately – but over the next 5 years.

For my own “classics” criteria, I’m going with a mixed bag of books famous in a specific genre* OR any books published before 1974 (i.e. more than 50 years ago). Here follows the list!

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Best of List Memes

Top 10 Zippy Reads

Top 10 zippy reads? I am all for it these days – and that’s the theme for this week’s Top 10 Tuesday. Here are my recs, with equally zippy blurbs!

The Throme of the Erril of Sherill by Patricia A. McKillip
Tropes: Knight quests, Riddles, Puns, Folktales

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
Tropes: Snarky, Retelling, The Odyssey, Ulysses hero-not-hero

Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente
Tropes: Native American, Retelling, Snow White, Wild West

 Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa
Tropes: Anthology, Japanese folklore, Dark, Compassionate

Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
Tropes: Anthology, Science-Fiction, Bizarre, Quirky Horror

Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West 
Tropes: Essays, ROFL Funny, Old blockbuster movies, Punchlines

Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Terror 
Tropes: Surreal, Otherwordly, Lurid, Anthology, Poetic

How the World Became Quiet by Rachel Swirsky
Tropes: Anthology, Science-Fiction, AI & Identity Crisis, Evolution

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Tropes: Graphic Novel, Poetic, Feel-Good, Found Families

Princess Floralinda & the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir
Tropes: Snarky, 40-floor fall, Coming of Age, Unexpected friends

So, do any of our choices match? Do you have any zippy read recs? Let’s chat!

Categories
Best of List Books Memes Starred Recommendations

Favorite Books of 2023

Gifts from Santa

Happy New Year ’24, everyone! And at last, my favorite topic for the yearly wrap-up to Top 10 Tuesday: favorite books of 2023. We save the best for the end, and it is so much fun adding those best to Mount TBR. Here’s my list too.

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Books Starred Recommendations

December Wrap-Up

Three great December reads — all mysteries, all within this month, and all pretty good! I am already adding some of them to my Best of 2023 list.

Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Phenomenally well-written, terse suspense. Astronomer Vivvy Bouchet also has unsettling psychic insight and gets pulled into looking for a missing girl by cops. Is she a quack or is it real – nobody can make up their mind about it. As a narrator, Vivvy is unusually talkative but also just a bit unreliable, and this makes her a supremely interesting character. Equally interesting is her public fight with a cult-ish conspiracy podcaster Bubba Guns.
The tense pacing of the first half dwindles later, but Heaberlin still manages a very decent wrap-up at the end. I hear  the book’s already up for TV adaptation. And with a title like that, how can you possibly ignore this book? Highly recommended!

Wherever She Goes by Kelley Armstrong

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Another solid thriller from Armstrong. Recently divorced single mother Aubrey Finch believes she has spotted a kidnapping, but nobody wants to believe her. But Finch has other ghosts from her past, which compel her to pursue the case and in the process, reveal her own ghosts to the public eye. The pacing is excellent. If you can ignore the fact that most of Armstrong’s heroines seem very alike, you will like this one — not as much as the Rockton series, but still quite engrossing.

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Memes

Ten Memorable Book Quotes

Gifts from Santa

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week, we have a freebie and I am going with some memorable book quotes. Hope these stay with you the way these have stayed with me.

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Books Watchlist

Mini Reviews / Last Quarter(s) Wrap-Up

Mini Reviews

What’s been cooking for the past few months? Er, past few quarters (since my last mini reviews date back to pre-July)? At least for me, the last 2 months fared way better for my reading than the rest of the year, so I am thankful for that. All in the name of conquering Mount TBR!

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Memes To Be Read Books

SciFiMonth November 2023

The SciFiMonth Challenge for 2023 is being hosted by A Dance With BooksBookForager, Dear Geek Place and There’s Always Room For One More.

I’ve read only a handful of science fiction books till date, so I was very wary of signing up. But oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Here’s a list of scifi books languishing on my TBR pile since… forever… but maybe I can at least chomp off one of them by end of November!

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Best of List Books Memes

Ten Deliciously Dark Reads

Happy Halloween! And right on cue, we have Top 10 Tuesday giving out a Halloween freebie treat. I’m by no means a horror fan, but I will try to wrap up the month with top 10 spooktastic and deliciously dark reads.

1 / The Shepherd King series by Rachel Gillig

Phenomenally gothic and creepy. This duology took me completely by surprise and got me out of my reader’s block. Absolutely mindblowing world-building, plot AND writing.

2 / The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

In Udolpho, young Emily St. Aubere finds herself orphaned and in the clutches of her wicked uncle-in-law, Montoni. Montoni is up to no good, and more than one skeleton hides in his closet. This is Gothic suspense at its finest, and is highly recommended.

3 / Cry Baby Hollow by Aimee Love

I found this on Goodreads for lesser known Urban Fantasy reads. One of the reviewers said that the “Hollow” was for “holler” — and this is not about your friendly neighborhood wolf. It was such a change from the usual Urban Fantasy, recommended.

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Books Memes

In Praise of the Plot Twist

It’s time for Top 10 Tuesday again! This week we are looking at books that caught us by surprise – for better or for worse – and I’m sticking to the “plot twist”. Here are 10 books that went to a totally unexpected place for me.

Plot Twist!

1 | Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

All that obsession with the first Mrs. Maxim de Winter was bound to end some time.

2 | The Queen of Attolia/ The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

A thief ends up marrying the lady who cut off his hand.

3 | One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus

A brainiac, an athlete, a princess, a criminal and a “basket case” walk into detention.

4 | Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

No, Jane – Rochester is not the hero you thought him to be…

5 | Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

There are worlds within worlds, and nothing is as simple as it seems.

6 | Game of Thrones/ A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

Anyone remember the infamous Red Wedding scene (from the show)? Phew!

7 | The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Epic and sensational – not a Biblical premise anyone could’ve guessed.

8 | In the Woods by Tana French

The reveal of the culprit was slow and right at the end – made me rant full time.

9 | The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo

Not the whodunnit, but the how-dunnit was the real plot twist here.

10 | We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Heart-wrenching tale full of strange experiments and the repercussions.

So, what’s your list looking like? Any jaw-dropping plot twists, unexpected endings, other things that caught you by surprise?

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Memes To Be Read Books

Ten Hidden Gems: Because you said so

It’s time for Top 10 Tuesday again! I love picking up book recs from fellow bloggers — the lesser known, the better! There’s some extra happiness in locating those hidden gems, you know. So, here are 10 that I’ve picked up in recent months.