top ten tuesday

Debut Novels I Enjoyed

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s topic is a Debut Novels I Enjoyed

Kelley Armstrong – Bitten
Alexandria Bellefleur – Written In The Stars
Poppy Z Brite – Lost Souls
Belinda Jones – Divas Las Vegas
Stephen King – Carrie


Stel Pavlou – Decipher
Sarah Penner – The Lost Apothecary
Anne Rice – Interview With The Vampire
Rick Riordan – The Lightning Thief
Alison Weir – Innocent Traitor

This was harder than I thought it would be – I thought of 3 straight off (Brite, King & Rice) but then it got a little trickier! It turns out a lot of the authors I love, I haven’t read their early work. There’s a couple who started self-publishing and those first books are ok, but it’s only their traditionally published later works I absolutely love. There are also a couple where I couldn’t figure out what was actually their first book.

I read much more non-fiction than fiction, so I’m tempted to save that as an idea and do 10 debut non-fiction books I enjoyed as well. Of course, knowing my luck, I won’t have read those authors early books either LOL

What debut novels have you enjoyed?

top ten tuesday

Authors I’d Love a New Book From

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s topic is Authors I’d Love a New Book From (These could be authors that have passed away, who have retired from writing, who have inexplicably gone quiet, or who might jut not be able to keep up with how quickly you read their books!)

Anne Rice
Poppy Z Brite
Dan Brown
Bill Bryson
Michael Cordy
Michael Crichton
Belinda Jones
Richard Laymon
Stel Pavlou
Andrea Penrose

top ten tuesday

Water

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s topic is Water so we’re going with books that either have a body of water on the cover, or in the name. Which gives us:


Isabel Allende – City of the Beasts
Mandy Baggot – Truly, Madly, Greekly
Trevor Baxendale – Something In The Water
Terry Goodkind – Wizard’s First Rule
John Grisham – The Pelican Brief


Belinda Jones – I Love Capri
CS Lewis – The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
Stephen King – Skeleton Crew
Sally Malcolm – Stargate: Atlantis – Rising
Ali McNamara – The Little Flower Shop by the Sea

This didn’t quite go where I expected it to go when I started poking through my books on Goodreads for things connected to water. I fully thought it would be another bright, colourful, summery, chick-lit selection, making up for the fact it’s grey, windy and wet out there. But then the first two I found were Stephen King and John Grisham!

top ten tuesday

Desert Island Books

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s topic isn’t inspiring me (I’m a no-crossovers kinda fandom llama), so I’m picking one from the archives: Books I’d Want On a Desert Island

I figured I’d want a good combination of books I know I’ll enjoy, long-ass books, and books I’ve been meaning to get around to reading but for some reason never have. And so this gives us:

Jean M Auel – Clan Of The Cave Bear
Marion Zimmer Bradley – The Mists of Avalon
Susanna Clarke – Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Ken Follet – The Pillars Of The Earth
Belinda Jones – On The Road To Mr Right


Stephen King – The Stand
Sharon Kay Penman – The Sunne in Splendour
Anne Rice – The Lives Of the Mayfair Witches
Anne Rice – Queen Of The Damned
Samantha Shannon – Priory Of The Orange Tree

(I’m also assuming that the shipping container with the rest of the books in series’ have been wrecked with me on my desert island)

What books would you take on a desert island?

top ten tuesday

Random books from my TBR

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s prompt is The First 10 Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf (close your eyes and touch/grab/point to 10 random titles and tell us what they are! And tell us what you thought if you’ve read them!)

OK so to be honest, I know where all the books on my shelves are, they’re organised by author surname so anything I grabbed wouldn’t be too random. But, Storygraph will display a random 4 books from my TBR, so I’m just going to reload the page a couple of times, and tell you about those instead

Jaimie Admans – It’s A Wonderful Night
I have known Jaimie online for… many many years at this point, her books are an auto-buy for me, even her Christmas ones – and not just because I consider her a friend, but because I do genuinely fucking adore the stories she writes.

Mira Grant – Feed
I loved the Parasitology trilogy, and this is more medical biotechnology horror but with more zombies – how can I not be super excited to read it?!

Belinda Jones – Divas Las Vegsa
I read most of the LoveTravel series about 8 or so years ago but it was one of those I never finished when I had the mental health crash after my mum died. So, book 1 is back on the TBR and I’ll hopefully get through them this time. I absolutely loved the books when I was younger and I’m excited to revisit and finish the series.

Kelley Armstrong – The Summoning
I read this many many years ago, read the whole series and loved them – scientist who’ve performed experiments on kids and given them powers. Lovely eerie paranormal horror, in the same vein as Stephen King’s Firestarter, but YA. It’s back on my TBR because it’s the oldest book shelved as ‘read’ on my goodreads without a read date.

Dan Jones – The Plantagenets
Another re-read, for absolutely no reason other than my sheer love for Dan Jones and how he brings history and some of my favourite figures to life. Originally read as a library book but now I’ve picked up a second hand copy for myself, and it has to be read before it’s shelved, right?

Neil McGregor – A History of the World in 100 Objects
We listened to a couple of bits of the podcast the other year as part of a history module I was studying, and I loved the idea – but struggle with podcasts – so picked up the book. And it’s sat on my TBR for a while.

Carrie Fisher – Shockaholic
I haven’t read any of Carrie Fisher’s books, I don’t know why – but Li has them all on Kindle and we share a Kindle library, so now I have them all on Kindle too. And they’re sitting waiting for me to read them

Alix E Harrow – The Once and Future Witches
This is one I picked up having seen it reviewed in the book community. It sounded amazing, I looked it up, it sounded even more amazing. I picked up in the shop, read the first page and… it’s sat on my TBR for like 4 months. It’s pretty close to the top though, I will admit.

CS Lewis – The Last Battle
I first read The Chronicles of Narnia 35 years ago. I revisit them every couple of years. I’m half-way through The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe right now and still as every bit in love with the books as I was when I was 7. And still trying to get to Narnia.

Ali McNamara – From Notting Hill With Love… Actually
Ali has become one of my favourite authors over the last few years, I’ve read most of her more recent stuff – but never her earlier books so I’m really looking forward to reading this one and working through her full bibliography again!