#TopTenTuesday Forgotten Backlist Titles #TuesdayBookBlog

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.

Top Ten Tuesday Forgotten Books

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Forgotten Backlist Titles, the idea being to spread the love for books that people don’t talk about much anymore. I’ve focused on the first ten books I ever reviewed on my blog. They may not all fall into the category of untalked about books but in many cases they’re ones I’d forgotten I’d read! Revisiting my early attempts at reviews has been a little painful so show some compassion to the newbie blogger that was me in 2016. 

The Hour of Daydreams by Renee M Rutledge 
World’s End by Upton Sinclair 
Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar
Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson
The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey
Operation Finisterre by Graham Hurley Thomas Hoover
Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Legacy of the Lynx by Clio Gray
Hell’s Gate by Laurent Gaudé
The Ashes of Berlin by Luke McCallin

Having compiled my list, I was interested to see how many (if any) books the authors have written since the ones I reviewed, and if I’ve read any of them. Here’s what I found:

Renee M Rutledge has written children’s books but no further adult novels
Upton Sinclair died in 1968 but, amongst others, wrote ten further books in the series that started with World’s End
Jaroslav Kalfar has written one further novel, A Brief History of Living Forever, which I read and reviewed recently
Miranda Emmerson‘s next novel was A Little London Scandal which I read and reviewed in 2020
Donna Morrissey has a new novel, Rage the Night, which is due to be published in August 2023 and is available to request on NetGalley
Graham Hurley is a prolific author and since Operation Finisterre I’ve read and reviewed four more of his books – Last Flight to Stalingrad, Kyiv, Katastrophe and his latest, The Blood of Others. He has also written at least two crime series
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀‘s latest novel, A Spell of Good Things, was published earlier this year
Clio Gray‘s latest book, Stumblestone, was published in 2022
Laurent Gaudé has written further novels but none appear to have been published in English
Luke McCallin wrote a fourth novel in his Gregor Reinhardt series, Where Gods Does Not Walk, which I read and reviewed in 2021

#WWWWednesday – 26th July 2023

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 Stranger in my GraveA Stranger in My Grave by Margaret Millar (Pushkin Press)

A nightmare is haunting Daisy Harker.

Night after night she walks a strange cemetery in her dreams, until she comes to a grave that stops her in her tracks. It’s Daisy’s own, and according to the dates on the gravestone she’s been dead for four years.

What can this nightmare mean, and why is Daisy’s husband so insistent that she forget it? Driven to desperation, she hires a private investigator to reconstruct the day of her dream death. But as she pieces her past together, her present begins to fall apart…

A Fenland GardenA Fenland Garden by Frances Pryor (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

A Fenland Garden is the story of the creation of a garden in a complex and fragile English landscape – the Fens of southern Lincolnshire – by a writer who has a very particular relationship with landscape and the soil, thanks to his distinguished career as an archaeologist and discoverer of some of England’s earliest field systems.

It describes the imagining, planning and building of a garden in an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile place, and the challenges, setbacks and joys these processes entail. This is a narrative of the making of a garden, but it is also about reclaiming a patch of ground for nature and wildlife – of repairing the damage done to a small slice of Fenland landscape by decades of intensive farming.

A Fenland Garden is informed by the empirical wisdom of a practising gardener (and archaeologist) and by his deep understanding of the soil, landscape and weather of the region; Francis’s account of the development of the garden is counterpointed by fascinating nuggets of Fenland lore and history, as well as by vignettes of the plantsman’s trials and tribulations as he works an exceptionally demanding plot of land. Above all, this is the story of bringing something beautiful into being; of embedding a garden in the local landscape; and thereby of deepening and broadening the idea of home.

The Black CrescentThe Black Crescent by Jane Johnson (ARC, Head of Zeus)

Hamou Badi is born in a mountain village with the magical signs of the zouhry on his hands. In Morocco, the zouhry is a figure of legend, a child of both humans and djinns, capable of finding all manner of treasure: lost objects, hidden water.

But instead, Hamou finds a body.

This unsolved murder instils in Hamou a deep desire for order and justice: he trains as an officer of the law, working for the French in Casablanca. But the city is trapped in the turmoil of the nationalist uprising, and soon he will be forced to choose between all he knows and all he loves…


Recently finished

Before We Were Innocent by Ella Berman (Aria)

Unnatural Ends by Christopher Huang (Inkshares)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Hollow ThroneThe Hollow Throne by Tim Leach (ARC, Head of Zeus)

180 AD. North of the Wall, Sarmatian warrior Kai and his adopted tribe, the Votadini, struggle for survival, cast into unfamiliar lands by Roman reprisals.

When news arrives that an old enemy is in charge of the Votadini’s hated foes, a confederation of tribes known as the Painted People, and has roused them to action, Kai heads south towards the Wall, hoping to ally with the Romans against this resurgent threat.

Meanwhile, the Romans have heard tales of butchery and mayhem beyond the Wall. Lucius, Legate of the North, believes is is Kai and his allies who are responsible, and sends forth an expedition to capture his old comrade.

Can Kai and his loved ones survive the onslaught – or will the combined might of Rome and the hatred of their enemies spell the end for the warrior and his tribe?