#TopTenTuesday Book Titles – DO Quote Me

Top Ten Tuesday

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 That 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.


For this week’s topic we’re invited to choose quotations from books that fit a particular theme. I’ve turned the topic slightly on its head by coming up with a list of book titles that are quotations from other works of literature.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (from the novel Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov)
This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik (from the poem ‘Jerusalem’ by William Blake)
Things Bright and Beautiful by Anbara Salam (from the hymn ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ by Cecil Frances Alexander)

And we can’t go far without coming across titles that are quotations from Shakespeare, can we?

Brave New World by Alduous Huxley (from The Tempest)
By The Pricking Of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie (from Macbeth)
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (from Macbeth)

And a couple more Agatha Christie titles…

A Pocketful of Rye by Agatha Christie (from the nursey rhyme, ‘Sing A Song of Sixpence’)
The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side by Agatha Christie (from the poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’ by Alfred Tennyson)

Top Ten Tuesday A Pocketful of Rye The Mirror Crack'd

And finally, a great borrower of Beatles’ song titles…

Please, Mister Postman by Alan Johnson
The Long and Winding Road by Alan Johnson

Top Ten Tuesday About A Boy Please Mr Postman The Long and Winding Road

 

#WWWWednesday – 19th May 2021

WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!


Currently reading

A Room Made of Leaves audioA Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville (audiobook)

It is 1788. Twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth is hungry for life but, as the ward of a Devon clergyman, knows she has few prospects. When proud, scarred soldier John Macarthur promises her the earth one midsummer’s night, she believes him.

But Elizabeth soon realises she has made a terrible mistake. Her new husband is reckless, tormented, driven by some dark rage at the world. He tells her he is to take up a position as lieutenant in a New South Wales penal colony and she has no choice but to go. Sailing for six months to the far side of the globe with a child growing inside her, she arrives to find Sydney Town a brutal, dusty, hungry place of makeshift shelters, failing crops, scheming and rumours.

All her life she has learned to be obliging, to fold herself up small. Now, in the vast landscapes of an unknown continent, Elizabeth has to discover a strength she never imagined and passions she could never express.

Pathfinders CoverPathfinders by Cecil Lewis (paperback, review copy courtesy of the Imperial War Museum and Random Things Tours)

Over the course of a single night in 1942, the crew members of a Wellington bomber reflect on the paths of their own lives as they embark on a fateful mission deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Based on his own experience as a World War I fighter ace, Cecil Lewis’s stunning novel examines the life of each man, rendering a moving account of each as not merely a nameless crew member, but as an individual with a life lived: “A life precious to some, or one. . . . These men with dreams and hopes and plans of things to come.”

This new edition of the 1944 classic includes a new introduction from an Imperial War Museums historian that puts the novel in historical context and shines a light on this vital and sometimes contested aspect of Britain’s involvement in World War II.


Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my review.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier

The Hunting Season (Daniel Leicester #2) by Tom Benjamin


What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Distant DeadThe Distant Dead (The Detective’s Daughter #8) by Lesley Thomson (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

London, 1940. A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. It looks like she’s another tragic casualty of the Blitz, until police pathologist Aleck Northcote proves she was strangled and placed at the scene. But Northcote himself has something to hide. And when his past catches up with him, he too is murdered.

Tewkesbury, 2020. Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man has been fatally stabbed. He is Roddy March, an investigative journalist for a podcast series uncovering miscarriages of justice. He was looking into the murder of police pathologist Dr Aleck Northcote – and was certain he had uncovered Northcote’s real killer.

Stella Darnell used to run a detective agency alongside her cleaning business. She’s moved to Tewkesbury to escape from death, not to court it – but Roddy died in her arms, and Stella is someone impelled to root out evil when she finds it. Now she is determined to hunt down Roddy’s killer – but then she finds another body…