Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I Can’t Believe I Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

• Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. 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.
• Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
• Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Top Ten Books I Can’t Believe I Read.  My list is only going to include books I was surprised by in a good way as I don’t talk about books I disliked out of respect to the author and other readers whose opinions may be different.  Therefore, my list consists of books I enjoyed that were slightly out of my comfort zone in some way. Click on the title of each to find out more about the book and read my review.

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The Long Book – And The Birds Keep On Singing by Simon Bourke

I’ll admit it; I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to long books – by my definition, anything over 500 pages.   I’m not completely sure why I have this aversion to big books but it’s probably down to the time investment a long book involves.  What if I don’t like it?  I could have read one or two other books in that time.   Despite its size, I really enjoyed this book and it made me think I shouldn’t dismiss books purely on size in future.

The YA Book – The Smallest Thing by Lisa Manterfield

I can’t deny it; I definitely no longer qualify as a young adult…by quite a long way.  Generally, I stay away from books that are categorised as YA thinking they won’t appeal to me.  However, this book was part of a blog tour being run by a tour organiser I enjoy working with and I liked the premise of the book: a modern day story set in the original plague village of Eyam.   I really enjoyed the book which just goes to show that a well-written book is a well-written book regardless of genre.

The Paranormal Book – The Thirteenth Gate by Kat Ross

Uh-oh, another genre Cathy ‘doesn’t do’?  Afraid so.  I guess I just like my stories to be grounded in reality although I do enjoy classic ghost stories so I suppose I’m less consistent than I think.  This was another blog tour book and it’s one of the reasons I enjoy taking part in blog tours because they encourage me to be a little more adventurous than I might otherwise be.  It helped this book had a historical setting – historical fiction being my favourite genre – and the 19^th century atmosphere seemed to lend itself to the paranormal element so it felt like a natural part of the story.

The Fantasy Book – Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

You guessed it, another genre I generally steer well clear of.  Add in fairy tale, folklore and mythology and you’d usually find me running a mile.  I really can’t remember how it came about I read this book but I really enjoyed it.  Once more, it was probably the historical angle, the story being set partly around the siege of Leningrad.

The Off My Radar Book – The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson

Before this book appeared on the shortlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017, I’d never heard of either the author or the book.  This surprised me as I’m a great fan of historical fiction.  To come across a book so completely off my radar that had ended up on the shortlist of a major literary prize was intriguing. I’m not sure the description would have particularly attracted me to the book either.  However, because I wanted to read everything on the shortlist, I finally managed to track down a copy.  I didn’t like it as much as some of the other shortlisted books, but I did enjoy it and could see how its originality had attracted the judging panel.

The Too Crazy Sounding To Be Ignored Book – Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar

A Czech astronaut launched into space to investigate a mysterious dust cloud covering Venus discovers he has a strange companion (with a liking for Nutella) who may be real or imaginary.    I really don’t know what motivated me to pick up this book.  I guess it was either going to be weird in a bad way or weird in a wonderful way.  Happily, it was the latter. Bold, imaginative and compelling.

The Unlikely Mash-Up Book – Fata Morgana by Stephen R Boyett & Ken Mitchroney

Time travel, a World War II B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, a post-apocalyptic alien world and a touching romance.  It’s a curious combination that sounds like it shouldn’t really work but somehow it did. I described it as ‘a glorious mash-up of The Twilight Zone, The Flight of the Phoenix and The Time Machine (not so much the H G Wells book as the 1960 film starring Rod Taylor)’.

The Animal Narrator Book – Dan Knew by F. J. Curlew

Another admission coming…I’m not really a dog or a cat person. A book where the narrator is a dog is not going to naturally appeal to me.  However, when a fellow member of a Facebook group for bloggers and authors contacted me about participating in the blog tour for her book, I was happy to give it a try.  It turned out to be a fascinating story and a celebration of the rich, mutually-sustaining relationship that can form between humans and animals.

The Second Time Around Book – Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro

I wasn’t a terrific fan of the first short story collection I read by Alice Munro (Runaway).  I found the stories rather too bleak and in fact preferred the film adapted from them, Julieta.  So, I was slightly apprehensive when selecting another Munro collection as my read for the #1968Club.   As it turned out, what I’d described as ‘bleak’ before I now felt was better characterised as ‘acutely observed’.  It just proves it’s always worth giving an author’s work a second chance.

The Summer Romance Book – The Summer Springsteen’s Songs Saved Me by Barbara Quinn

You know, I hadn’t realised quite how picky I can be when it comes to books before I started compiling this list. I would actually have said I have quite a wide taste in books. Hmm.  However, at least it does show I’m willing to experiment from time to time. Contemporary romance isn’t a genre of books I usually go for but this book was being promoted by a publisher I follow, Lakewater Press, so I thought I’d give it a go.  And, yes, I know – shock, horror – I liked it. In fact, I found at least twenty reasons to like it.

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Next week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic: Books That Have Been On My TBR The Longest