Author: whatcathyreadnext

#TopTenTuesday Books I Enjoyed But Are Rarely Talked About

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Top Ten Tuesday new

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 Books I Enjoyed But I Rarely Talk About. My slight twist on the topic is to focus on books I loved but which few others talk about.  In other words, hidden gems.  To generate my list I sorted my Goodreads Read shelf to find books published before 2019 to which I gave 5 stars but that have less than 200 ratings or reviews.  Some have a lot less.  In fact, I was shocked by how few some of them still have!

It’s probably significant that a lot of them are published either by small publishers or self-published, demonstrating how difficult it is to grab readers’ attention in a crowded marketplace.  Of course, that’s where us book bloggers come in! Links from the book title will take you to my review.

If you’re interested in finding more ‘hidden gems’ check out my earlier post on a similar topic.

The Moving BladeThe Moving Blade (Detective Hiroshi #2) by Michael Pronko (Published in Raked Gravel Press in September 2018, 165 ratings and 48 reviews)

When the top American diplomat in Tokyo, Bernard Mattson, is killed, he leaves more than a lifetime of successful Japan-American negotiations. He leaves a missing manuscript, boxes of research, a lost keynote speech and a tangled web of relations.

Read my review of the previous book in the series The Last Train here.

The Cold North SeaThe Cold North Sea (Ingo Finch #2) by Jeff Dawson (published by Canelo in December 2018, 60 ratings, 9 reviews)

A game of spies, a brutal murder, the fate of an Empire…

The North Sea, October 1904 – When Russian warships bombard the Hull trawler fleet, killing innocent fishermen, public outrage pushes Britain and Russia to the brink of war, the sparks from which could inflame the entire Continent.

Read my review of the previous book in the series, No Ordinary Killing here.

The Glass DiplomatThe Glass Diplomat by S. R. Wilsher (published in August 2018, 8 ratings, 8 reviews)

In 1973 Chile, thirteen-year-old English schoolboy Charlie Norton watches his father walk into the night and never return. Taken in by diplomat Tomas Abrego, his life becomes intricately linked to the family.

Read my review of the author’s previous book, The Good Father.

Blackbird RoadBlackbird Road (Jake Caldwell #3) by James L. Weaver (published by Lakewater Press in September 2018, 26 ratings, 18 reviews)

With his wedding day fast approaching and his PI boss heading out of town, ex-mob enforcer Jake Caldwell decides to take one more job before a much needed vacation. But in a matter of days, his client is assassinated and her six-year-old son kidnapped. Jake needs to stay one step ahead of the bad guys if he’s to have any future at all.

Read my reviews of the previous books in the series, Poor Boy Road and Ares Road.

The Price of CompassionThe Price of Compassion (The Golden City #4) by A. B. Michaels (published by Red Trumpet Press in August 2018, 51 ratings, 18 reviews)

April 18, 1906. San Francisco has just been shattered by a massive earthquake and is in the throes of an even more deadly fire. During the chaos, gifted surgeon Tom Justice makes a life-changing decision that wreaks havoc on his body, mind, and spirit.

The facts of the case are troubling; they’ll have you asking the question: “What would I have done?”

The Black Earth CoverThe Black Earth by Philip Kazan (published by Allison & Busby in April 2018, 55 ratings, 7 reviews)

1922. When the Turkish Army occupies Smyrna, Zoë Haggitiris escapes with her family, only to lose everything.

Alone in a sea of desperate strangers, her life is touched, for a moment, by a young English boy, Tom Collyer, also lost, before the compassion of a stranger leads her into a new life.

El HachoEl Hacho by Luis Carrasco (published by Epoque Press in February 2018, 39 ratings, 22 reviews)

Set in the stark beauty of the Andalusian mountains the book tells the story of Curro, an olive farmer determined to honour his family tradition in the face of drought, deluge and the lucrative temptations of a rapidly modernising Spain.

EntanglementEntanglement by Katy Mahood (published by The Borough Press in March 2018, 153 ratings, 49 reviews)

2007. At the end of a momentous day, Charlie, Stella and John cross paths under the arches of Paddington Station. As Charlie locks eyes with Stella across the platform, a brief, powerful spark of recognition flashes between them.

But they are strangers aren’t they?

Sleeping Through WarSleeping Through War by Jackie Carreira (published by Matador in January 2018, 37 ratings, 25 reviews)

The year is 1968 and the world is changing forever. During the month of May, students are rioting and workers are striking across the globe, civil rights are being fought and died for, nuclear bombs are being tested, there are major conflicts on every continent, and war is raging in Vietnam.

Against this volatile background, three women strive to keep everything together.

SMILE OF THE WOLFSmile of the Wolf by Tim Leach (published by Head of Zeus in July 2018, 152 ratings, 30 reviews)

Eleventh-century Iceland. One night in the darkness of winter, two friends set out on an adventure but end up killing a man. Kjaran, a traveling poet who trades songs for food and shelter, and Gunnar, a feared warrior, must make a choice: conceal the deed or confess to the crime and pay the blood price to the family.

What ‘hidden gems’ have you read that deserve to be talked about more?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 Shortlist #SUDTP20 @dylanthomprize

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2020 Shortlist Banner (Large)

The shortlist for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 was announced  on 7th April and comprises three poetry collections, two novels and one short story collection:

  • Surge – Jay Bernard (Chatto & Windus)
  • Flèche – Mary Jean Chan (Faber & Faber)
  • Inland – Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
  • If All the World and Love Were Young – Stephen Sexton (Penguin Random House)
  • On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)
  • Lot – Bryan Washington (Atlantic Books)

You can read my review of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong here. Sadly, the other book I read from the longlist, The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay, didn’t make it through.

Dylan Thomas Prize TimetableAbout the Prize

Launched in 2006, The Dylan Thomas Prize is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as the world’s largest literary prize for young writers. Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama.

Commenting on the six shortlisted titles, the chair of the judges, Swansea University’s Professor Dai Smith CBE said, “The shortlist for 2020 ranges across the genres of poetry, short form fiction and the novel, and each work manages to address upfront the pressing social and personal concerns and dilemmas of our time. But what suddenly stands out in stark relief, amidst the overwhelming global nature of the crisis in which all humanity now finds itself struggling to cope, are the universal values which these disparate books highlight: compassion, empathy, courage against despair, anger against indifference, love in despite of everything. In a very dark time these six supremely talented young writers do what all such writers do: they light the way, and so must be read for all our sakes.”

The Winner of the £30,000 Prize will be announced at 19:00 GMT on Thursday 14th May at a virtual Award Ceremony hosted by Swansea University.

About the Shortlisted Authors

Jay Bernard is the author of the pamphlets Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl (Tall Lighthouse, 2008), English Breakfast (Math Paper Press, 2013) and The Red and Yellow Nothing (Ink Sweat & Tears Press, 2016), which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2017. A film programmer at BFI Flare and an archivist at Statewatch, they also participated in ‘The Complete Works II’ project in 2014 and in which they were mentored by Kei Miller. Jay was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2005 and a winner of SLAMbassadors UK spoken word championship. In 2019 Jay was selected by Jackie Kay as one of Britain’s ten best BAME writers for the British Council and National Centre for Writing’s International Literature Showcase. Their poems have been collected in Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe, 2009), The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011), Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014) and Out of Bounds: British Black & Asian Poets (Bloodaxe, 2014).

Mary Jean Chan is a London-based poet, lecturer and editor from Hong Kong. Her debut poetry collection, Flèche (Faber & Faber), is the winner of the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry. Chan has twice been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem and is the recipient of a 2019 Eric Gregory Award and the 2018 Poetry Society Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. Chan currently lectures in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University.

Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger’s Wife, winner of the Orange Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and Inland. She was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. She currently lives in New York City.

Stephen Sexton lives in Belfast where he teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. His first book, If All the World and Love Were Young, is forthcoming from Penguin.

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. In 2019 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an Assistant Professor of English at UMass-Amherst. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.

Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honouree and the author of the collection, Lot, and the forthcoming novel, Memorial. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, Tin House, One Story, Bon Appétit, GQ, The Awl, and Catapult. He lives in Houston.

Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 Shortlist AuthorsTop, from left: Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan, Téa Obreht Bottom, from left: Stephen Sexton, Ocean Vuong and Bryan Washington

Have you read any of the shortlisted books? Which book do you think will win?