The Terror of Knowing

Welcome one, welcome all, to Top Ten Tuesday! For those who are unaware (or who might need a reminder) Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by book bloggers and list lovers, The Broke and the Bookish, and is now hosted fantastically by Jana from That Artsy Girl! Each week a topic is chosen for bloggers to respond to.

This week’s topic is Books That Have Been On My TBR the Longest (and I Still Haven’t Read!) Now, because this is practically the story of my (reading) life I’ve actually done this topic previously and the answers still remain pretty much the same, with the exception of Madame Bovary which I have now read (go me!). But I do really like this week’s topic so, inspired by Kelly over at Kelly’s Rambles’ post about the books that have been on her Kindle the longest, I decided to take a leaf out of her book and check out my Kindle collection for the books I bought a long time ago and still haven’t read. I have a tendency to forget ebooks and my Kindle exist at times so this should be fun…

A small caveat: I probably won’t include all the classics I enthusiastically downloaded when I first got my Kindle – since they were free, I just went crazy with the downloading of things I’ll never in a million years actually read. We’ve all done it, let’s not mention it again and move on.

10. Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell

I enjoy David Mitchell’s comedy and his writing… that’s probably about as far as the thought process went when I bought this. It’s likely that it was also cheap, because I’m a sucker for ebooks priced under £2 and can’t help myself – I get ridiculous ‘gotta catch ’em all!’ urges when books are so cheap. If I’m presuming correctly, this is a bit like the Charlie Brooker books I own where they’re essentially compendiums of previous columns from the newspaper, and I like the short format so I’m sure that eventually I’ll dip in and out of this when I’m in need of a laugh… hopefully anyway!

9. The One You Really Want by Jill Mansell

This one isn’t even on my Goodreads TBR shelf… so that should say something about how impulsive of a buy this was and how the rapidly closing window of opportunity (read: desire) to read this has definitely slammed shut. But I own it and it’s on my Kindle so it’s kind of hard to delete it entirely but I’ll likely never get around to this unless I’m stuck on holiday somewhere and I’ve read all the other books on my Kindle already.

8. Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

As far as I know this is a sci-fi thriller book and that’s pretty much all I know. It isn’t on my Goodreads TBR shelf so, much like the Jill Mansell book above, it’s hard to imagine that I actually still possess a desire to read this. I think I bought it because it was cheap and Regan from Perusse Project had hauled it… but then she didn’t rate it highly so I likely forgot about it completely. So it goes…

7. Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

This one is actually on my Goodreads TBR shelf – huzzah! From what I can gather it’s about a pond and the girl who… defends it? I presume that there’s some kind of drought and that’s the whole dystopian set-up, but I don’t know/can’t guess much more than that. I’m not sure why this is on my TBR since it’s YA dystopian and, as discussed many times previously, I’m not the hugest fan of those kinds of stories anymore, and never was the biggest fan of them to begin with, truth be told! However, this one has received quite high ratings from fellow readers whose opinions I trust so maybe one of these days I’ll finally see what this is about and give it a shot.

6. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke

From its marketing this seems like a decadent Gothic romance sort of story and that, combined with its title (a phrase I’ve always been a sucker for), is likely all the reasoning I had before I purchased it on Kindle. I’ve heard pretty mixed things about this, if I’m honest, with many 1-star and 5-star ratings from people in the book community, so I’m not sure what to make of that. Logic dictates I should actually just read it and make my own mind up, doesn’t it?

5. The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

This book did the rounds a couple of years ago through the Booktube community and, obviously, I picked up the Kindle edition when that happened. The entire reason? The cover. I wasn’t even super hyped for the premise, I was just all about that cover. I still am, if I’m honest. And now the hype surrounding it is pretty much dead in the water so I have no pressures or preconceived expectations. But will I ever actually look into it further and, better yet, actually read it? Who knows!

4. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

I’m fairly sure this was either free on Kindle or pretty damn close to free on Kindle so that was the entirety of my thinking behind acquiring it. I’ve since read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and I liked it quite a bit but I tried The Blind Assassin once and just could not get into it… so it seems like Atwood will probably end up being hit and miss with me. However this one is only a novella and it was part of the Canongate Myths series where contemporary authors rewrote classical myths. I’m going to go ahead and assume this is about Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, but beyond that I don’t know much about her at all so I’m looking forward to finally getting to this one someday.

3. The Elite by Kiera Cass

This book is yet another case of ‘I wanted to read the first book and the sequel was cheap so might as well buy it now in case I end up liking the first book’. It’s a dangerous mentality to get into, folks, but I just can’t help myself. As it happens the aforementioned first book in this series, The Selection, is kind of cheesy and ridiculous but it’s fun for a bit of fluff and whilst it might not have the best plot, or the best writing, it’s definitely oddly readable so when that slightly frivolous mood strikes, I will likely continue on with this series. 

2. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

I really enjoy Rainbow Rowell’s books – I’ve read Landline (on Kindle as it happens) and Carry On (all in all not a huge fan tbh) and I’ve recently re-read Fangirl (a forever favourite) but I’m yet to finally read Rowell’s other books. All I know about this is its cute (duh, it’s Rainbow Rowell) and it’s set in high-school, I presume, as the protagonists are like 16?? I don’t know much, but I know it’s Rainbow Rowell, and I trust her to produce a cute but emotional contemporary novel. I also own this in paperback so I really have no excuses for not having got to this yet since it sits there on my bookshelves, rather boldly given its yellow/lime cover and spine, as a physical reminder that I’m yet to read this.

1. Red Rising by Pierce Brown

I know, it’s shocking that I’m yet to read this. It’s even more shocking when you learn that I also own the Kindle edition of the second book in this series, Golden Son, which I bought around the same time as Red Rising. I’m still yet to pick up this series. I’m not even sure if I’ll like this series, because it’s categorised as that dreaded phrase (YA dystopian), but I’ve heard so many good things about it and it is one of Stephanie from Adventures in a Bibliophile‘s favourite books so I trust her opinion and should read this sooner rather than later! We’ll see if that actually happens this year since I’m (meant to be) participating in Anna’s Series To Finish 2018 project and this is a series I need to start as well as (hopefully) finish!

That’s all folks, those were the Top Ten Books that have been on my Kindle for the longest! I’m starting to think maybe I should set myself a personal project to clear out my Kindle and finally get around to reading some of these once and for all!
What books have you wanted to read for the longest time and still haven’t? Do you tend to forget a source of books i.e. Kindle or audiobooks like I do?
Or do you have a Top Ten Tuesday list of your own? Be sure to link it below – I’d love to take a peek at it!

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