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Best of List Index Memes

Ten Changes in Reading Habits

This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has an interesting theme – how our reading habits have changed over time. This actually proved to be a fun walk down memory lane. Let me count the ways, then!

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Books Memes

Ten Lesser Known Books

This week’s Top 10 Tuesday is about listing books that you have picked up – or avoided – because of the hype around them. I fall in neither group — I’m a little wary of Hyped Books, so while I add them to my TBR, but save them for a later day. Instead, it’s the lesser known books which catch my eye… hoping to find some hidden gem perhaps?

So — here’s a list of some obscure books that I really think deserve a lot more love! Er, you may have seen these recommended around these parts before…

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Memes To Be Read Books

Classics Club Challenge: CC Spin #38

Several months ago, I had decided to participate in the Classics Club Challenge and signed up with a bucket list of 100 classic literature books that I wanted to read. Occasionally, a random number is also generated by by the hosts at The Classics Club, and you can play along by reading that entry number from your chosen list. Rules are here.

This is my first CC Spin, and the Lucky Spin Number this time around is …

…. Number 17

On my list, entry #17 is Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot (1857). If I remember correctly, I chose this book because Eliot seems to have had a difficult relationship with her father and she has reflected some of that tension in this book. Plus, Eliot is one of my favorite all-time authors.

Not a very promising book cover, that. But let’s see…

Are you participating in CC Spin #38, or generally in the Classics Club Challenge this year?

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Memes To Be Read Books

Spring ’24 TBR

This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has us looking at our Spring ’24 TBR. I don’t know about you, but I’d be lucky to finish these off for the whole year! Still – subject to change and all that – here’s my set:

Folks, how have you been? Anybody else feeling the reading blues lately? Or, er, since last year? What are your solutions — and of course, your own Spring ’24 TBR lists?

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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!

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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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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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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.