Top Ten Tuesday | Shame, Shame, Shame...

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Books That Have Been On My TBR the Longest and I Still Haven’t Read' which is basically the story of my life. So this is going to be embarrassing.

We all have them, don't we? Those books we keep telling ourselves we need to read but then, year after year, they fall by the wayside for other things. I have quite a lot of those books, in fact, so today I'm talking about the books I haven't read despite having owned my copies for quite a few years now.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini: I'm pretty sure I've owned my copy of this book since I finished my undergraduate degree, which means I've owned it since 2013 and still haven't read it. It's about time I got on that!

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Even worse I'm fairly certain I picked my copy of this one up while I was still at uni. It's one of those books I tell myself I'm going to read and never get to, so I really do need to try and get to it soon.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber: Like the majority of the books on this list this is another one I came across in a charity shop and picked up because, as a huge historical fiction fan, it's one of the classics of the genre that I feel like I should have read by now. I'm not as eager to pick this one up as I am the others on this list but I'd like to cross it off my TBR at some point.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: Considering I did my dissertation on women in dystopian fiction it's incredibly embarrassing that I haven't read this one yet and, sadly, I know it's still so relevant. I want to read it, I just know it's going to make me angry and upset and I need to be in the right mood for that kind of book.

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly: I've owned my copy of this for a few years now and still haven't read it which is ridiculous considering it's historical fiction with a dash of dark fairy tales. So many things I love!

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke: It's the size of this book that intimidates me but my friend Natalie @ A Sea Change loved it and I'd really like to cross it off my TBR.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: Similarly, at around 1,500 pages, this book is so daunting to me. It's the one classic I'd really like to try and cross off my TBR, though.

Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman: Another one I found in a charity shop and still haven't read because I'm the worst. Sharon Kay Penman is an author I definitely need to have under my belt, though, she's so highly regarded in the realms of historical fiction.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett: My parents got me this one for my first Christmas home from university. This means I've owned my copy since 2010. Oh dear.

The Lady's Slipper by Deborah Swift: Yet another one I discovered in a charity shop and would really like to read because I had the pleasure of meeting the author while studying for my MA and she was lovely. This piece of historical fiction is actually set around the area where I went to university so it'd be lovely to revisit it in this book.

Which books made your list this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | My Summer TBR!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find out everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Books on my Summer TBR list', so here are some of the books I'd most like to read this summer!

The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.

The Morning Gift

by Eva Ibbotson

Twenty-year-old Ruth Berger is desperate. The daughter of a Jewish-Austrian professor, she was supposed to have escaped Vienna before the Nazis marched into the city. Yet the plan went completely wrong, and while her family and fiancé are waiting for her in safety, Ruth is stuck in Vienna with no way to escape. Then she encounters her father’s younger college professor, the dashing British paleontologist Quin Sommerville. Together, they strike a bargain: a marriage of convenience, to be annulled as soon as they return to safety. But dissolving the marriage proves to be more difficult than either of them thought...

The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

Rebel Heart

by Moira Young

It seemed so simple: Defeat the Tonton, rescue her kidnapped brother, Lugh, and then order would be restored to Saba's world. Simplicity, however, has proved to be elusive. Now, Saba and her family travel west, headed for a better life and a longed-for reunion with Jack. But the fight for Lugh's freedom has unleashed a new power in the dust lands, and a formidable new enemy is on the rise.

What is the truth about Jack? And how far will Saba go to get what she wants?

The Book of Lost Things

by John Connolly

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own -- populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.

Fingersmith

by Sarah Waters

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways... But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

Rosie Hopkins thinks leaving her busy London life, and her boyfriend Gerard, to sort out her elderly Aunt Lilian's sweetshop in a small country village is going to be dull. Boy, is she wrong.

Lilian Hopkins has spent her life running Lipton's sweetshop, through wartime and family feuds. As she struggles with the idea that it might finally be time to settle up, she also wrestles with the secret history hidden behind the jars of beautifully coloured sweets.

The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

In a city full of thieves and Communists, danger and death, spirited young Lydia Ivanova has lived a hard life. Always looking over her shoulder, the sixteen-year-old must steal to feed herself and her mother, Valentina, who numbered among the Russian elite until Bolsheviks murdered most of them, including her husband. As exiles, Lydia and Valentina have learned to survive in a foreign land.

Often, Lydia steals away to meet with the handsome young freedom fighter Chang An Lo. But they face danger: Chiang Kai Shek's troops are headed toward Junchow to kill Reds like Chang, who has in his possession the jewels of a tsarina, meant as a gift for the despot's wife. The young pair's all-consuming love can only bring shame and peril upon them, from both sides. Those in power will do anything to quell it. But Lydia and Chang are powerless to end it.

The Witch's Daughter

by Paula Brackston

My name is Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith, and my age is three hundred and eighty-four years. Each new settlement asks for a new journal, and so this Book of Shadows begins…

In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate at the hands of the panicked mob: the Warlock Gideon Masters, and his Book of Shadows. Secluded at his cottage in the woods, Gideon instructs Bess in the Craft, awakening formidable powers she didn’t know she had and making her immortal. She couldn't have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.

In present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life for herself, tending her garden and selling herbs and oils at the local farmers' market. But her solitude abruptly ends when a teenage girl called Tegan starts hanging around. Against her better judgment, Elizabeth begins teaching Tegan the ways of the Hedge Witch, in the process awakening memories--and demons—long thought forgotten.

Vivian Versus the Apocalypse

by Katie Coyle

A chilling vision of a contemporary USA where the sinister Church of America is destroying lives. Our cynical protagonist, seventeen-­year-­old Vivian Apple, is awaiting the fated 'Rapture' -­ or rather the lack of it. Her evangelical parents have been in the Church's thrall for too long, and she's looking forward to getting them back. Except that when Vivian arrives home the day after the supposed 'Rapture', her parents are gone. All that is left are two holes in the ceiling...

Viv is determined to carry on as normal, but when she starts to suspect that her parents might still be alive, she realises she must uncover the truth. Joined by Peter, a boy claiming to know the real whereabouts of the Church, and Edie, a heavily pregnant Believer who has been 'left behind', they embark on a road trip across America. Encountering freak weather, roving 'Believer' gangs and a strange teenage group calling themselves the 'New Orphans', Viv soon begins to realise that the Rapture was just the beginning.

What's on your summer TBR?

J.