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 On My Spring TBR. This topic is extremely timely as it’s the first day of Spring (allegedly) and the weather has seemed a little brighter and sunnier, even if the bitterly cold winds haven’t completely disappeared. Still, the weather is definitely trying to shake off the wintry weather we’ve been having lately so I’m now looking forwards to Spring and all the books I am planning to read in this transitional period as Winter slowly lets go. Let’s take a look at the top ten books I’ve put on my Spring TBR…

10. The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman

Can you believe I still haven’t read this non-fiction essay collection despite the fact I love Neil Gaiman and I’ve had this for months because I pre-ordered it? No, I can’t quite believe it either, I need to pull my socks up! This is a hefty hardback too, which is possibly why I’ve been able to make excuses for so long because there’s no way I could carry this to/from work for the sake of reading it on my commute. And although I don’t read that much non-fiction, I am trying to be better about it, so I should really try to get to this once and for all.

9. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

This book has been EVERYWHERE as of late – and rightly so. I waited for this to be released in paperback before picking it up recently and I’m really looking forward to reading it. Like, I think a lot of people, I can be guilty of thinking of black history as rooted in the American experience which is ridiculous given that I live in the UK. This has been blurbed by Nikesh Shukla who put together The Good Immigrant collection which I very much appreciated (“enjoyed” seems an odd word to use) so I really ought to have picked this up already as it promises to be “a powerful and provocative argument on the role that race and racism play in modern Britain”.

8. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

Next up on my list we have a book that I definitely should have already finished because I was lucky enough to get an eARC through NetGalley and it was released early in March, and yet I haven’t read/reviewed it yet because I am a terrible person. Late last year, Stephanie from Adventures of a Bibliophile gave this a rave review and it put the book on my radar – a quick request on NetGalley and I thankfully had a copy. But I’ve yet to read it, despite all these things working in its favour, I really need to fix that.

7. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Next on ‘Emma had an eARC of this and did nothing about it’, we have The Hazel Wood. I worked out that this would be included in one of my Fairloot boxes so I neglected reading the eARC in favour of waiting for the finished copy to arrive. Now that I’ve finally stopped staring in awe at the stunning cover, I should probably actually read this since my housemate/friend Liz has read this and wants to talk to me about it and thinks I’ll really enjoy it. All the signs are pointing to me loving it so I really ought to dive into this twisted and dark fairytale story.

6. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

And here comes the first of the books that should help with my pledge to read more classics. I loved North and South by Gaskell and I’ve also studied Mary Barton at university, but I’ve never picked up her other works. This seems a lot more manageable than Wives and Daughters (though I do also really want to read that at some point!) so I’m definitely going to try to get to it this Spring.

5. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster

And the second of my classics picks for Spring is an E.M. Forster novel. I found myself really pleasantly surprised by A Room with a View and Howards End which I read in 2017, so I would like to read some more of Forster’s work – starting with his debut seems like an obvious thing to do so I’m going to go back and try this novel I think. I know precisely nothing about it, but I think that might be the way to go…

4. The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton

Guys, this is a YA fantasy retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear – how brilliant is that?! I jumped at the chance to apply for an eARC of this as soon as it came on NetGalley because of the Shakespeare connection. And that’s about all I know. And it’s all I do want to know before I tackle this bad boy. I’m really hoping for great things from this so fingers crossed it doesn’t disappoint!

3. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

You’d have to have seriously stuck your head in the sand to have not noticed this book on some many bookish peoples’ Most Anticipated of 2018 lists. And it has been released to amazing reviews from a lot of sources that I deeply trust. So it probably comes as no surprise that this is firmly on my priority TBR list. All I know is that (I think) it’s about maji being targeted and killed by orders of a ruthless monarchy and someone called Zélie teams up with a rogue princess to fight against the prince who wants to get rid of magic once and for all. I mean, that sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

2. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

Much like Children of Blood and Bone, this book has been EVERYWHERE on peoples’ Most Anticipated lists and as the reviews have started to come in, it seems that this hype has been for good reason. This is allegedly a rich and detailed fantasy set in the Middle East in the 18th century… and (I’m slightly cheating here) I’ve actually already started to read this so I can confirm that it is indeed as compelling and rich as its early reviewers have suggested. I ended up getting an eARC of this very late in the game so I’m trying to get through it as soon as possible to make sure I can put up a review – watch this space!

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Loyal readers of my blog may well remember that back in 2017 I took part in a War and Peace Newbies Readalong and I had a whale of a time participating in the readalong but fell horribly behind due to going on holidays to the US towards the end of the readalong schedule, meaning I never did finish this mammoth of a book. I only have about 300 pages left – I say “only” but that’s practically the length of a book in its own right – so it would be such a shame to properly abandon this and have to re-read it ALL if I ever tried to read War and Peace again. I’m getting to the point now where I’ve started to forget some things that happened in the book so I’ve decided Spring is the time during which I absolutely have to refresh my memory of the story by re-reading my readalong progress blog posts and then crack on with finishing those last 300 pages once and for all. Wish me luck, please? I have a sort of inkling that I’m going to need it!

That’s all folks, those were the Top Ten Books on my Spring TBR! What books are on your Spring TBR? Do you do seasonal/monthly TBRs – how do they work out for you, do you usually stick to them, or are they (to quote Pirates of the Caribbean) “more guidelines than actual rules”? Let me know what books are on your TBR or link me to your own Top Ten Tuesday post if you have one!

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