Tag: toptentuesday

#TopTenTuesday Books I Think Will Be Future Classics #TuesdayBookBlog

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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.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Modern Books You Think Will Be Classics In The Future. I struggled to come up with a precise definition of what makes a book a classic. The best criteria I could come up was a book that will stand the test of time (i.e. will still be read in 50 years’ time), has universal themes or is ‘ground-breaking’ in some way. I took the easy option of picking books that have won literary prizes. I accept some of them don’t meet the definition of ‘modern’ and in fact could be considered ‘classics’ already.

  1. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Booker Prize 1981)
  2. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker (Pulitzer Prize 1983)
  3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood (Arthur C. Clarke Award 1987)
  4. Beloved by Toni Morrison (Pulitzer Prize 1988)
  5. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Booker Prize 1989)
  6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Pulitzer Prize 2007)
  7. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Booker Prize 2009, Walter Scott Prize 2010)
  8. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Pulitzer Prize 2015)
  9. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Booker Prize 2020)
  10. Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Booker Prize 2024)

#TopTenTuesday Ten Random Books From My To-Read List #TuesdayBookBlog

whatcathyreadnext12 Comments

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.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Books I Enjoyed that Were Outside My Comfort Zone. Although I’m not afraid to step outside my comfort zone from time to time, I generally stick to my favourite genres. I’d have had to go back years to find ten books to fit the topic so I’ve decided to repeat a version of last week’s topic – Ten Random Books From My Bookshelves – using books on my Kindle. I rarely keep ebooks once I’ve read them so these are all unread, selected at random. (Ironically, a couple of these probably are out of my comfort zone.) Links will take you to the full book description on Goodreads.

  1. Sealskin by Su Bristow – Donald is a young fisherman, eking out a lonely living on the west coast of Scotland. One night he witnesses something miraculous, and makes a terrible mistake.
  2. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray – The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under – but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman.
  3. The Mangle Street Murders (The Gower Street Detective #1) by M.R.C. Kasasian – 1882. Queen Victoria may sit on the throne and Robert Peel’s bobbies walk the street, but London is still haunted by the spectre of Spring-heeled Jack.
  4. The Alice Network by Kate Quinn – 1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family.
  5. The Curse of the House of Foskett (The Gower Street Detective #2) by M.R.C. Kasasian – 1882. Sidney Grice once had a reputation as London’s most perspicacious personal detective . But since his last case led an innocent men to the gallows, business has been light.
  6. Lost For Words by Stephanie Butland – Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. 
  7. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate – Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat.
  8. The Death of Mrs Westaway by Ruth Ware – When Harriet Westaway receives an unexpected letter telling her she’s inherited a substantial bequest from her Cornish grandmother, it seems like the answer to her prayers.
  9. The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich – When law student Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is asked to work on a death-row hearing for convicted murderer and child molester Ricky Langley, she finds herself thrust into the tangled story of his childhood.
  10. A Kind of Light by H.R.F. Keating – Two stories, two journeys into the darkness…

Have you read any of these?