Top Ten Tuesday | Never Say Never Apart From When You Should

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 I’ve Decided I’m No Longer Interested In Reading', and it was a difficult theme for me to make a list for at first because I'm one of those people who doesn't like to say 'never'. 

My tastes are always evolving and changing, so there are books I might not want to read now that I'll suddenly have a craving for in a year's time, so today I decided to go with a list mostly made up of books I've started reading before, given up on and am sure I won't go back to.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell: I remember this book being everywhere years ago and I was intrigued because Eleanor is overweight and it's so rare to see an overweight heroine in fiction - it's particularly rare to see an overweight heroine in fiction whose story isn't about losing weight in some way. I've since seen quite a few reviews from people of colour, however, who've said the way Rowell portrays Park made them uncomfortable which really put me off reading it and now it's been so long since it came out that I don't care. The only things of Rowell's I've read are Attachments and Midnights in My True Love Gave to Me and I didn't love either so I think she's just not for me.

Divergent by Veronica Roth: I tried reading this one years ago when YA dystopian fiction was all the rage and while I easily could have forced myself to finish it I didn't want to. I thought it was boring and the society as a whole didn't really make sense to me. The Hunger Games is creepy because it's easy to see how society might have got to that, but I couldn't understand in what world these factions were considered a good idea by any government. I don't think I'm missing out on anything and I know a lot of people who loved the trilogy hated the ending, so I'm going to keep my distance.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: Tried it and didn't like it and I was disappointed! I've heard so many good things about Stiefvater's writing and about this series in particular that I was hoping to enjoy it, but sadly her style isn't for me. Also, as someone who's lived in Wales and worked alongside people whose mother tongue is Welsh, I couldn't get past the butchering of 'Owen Glendower'. His name's Owain Glyndŵr.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han: I wanted to try one of Han's novels after really enjoying her short story in My True Love Gave to Me, but, again, her work isn't for me. This is another one I easily could have finished if I'd forced myself to, I just didn't want to force myself to finish something when I could be reading something else.

Where She Went by Gayle Forman: I liked If I Stay a lot and I picked up a copy of Where She Went with the intention of reading it, but I never did and now I'm not that interested. I think If I Stay is fine on its own.

Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James: It's only in the past year or so I've started to get into Austen and I wanted to pick this one up so I could watch the BBC adaptation starring Anna Maxwell Martin, whom I adore. Unfortunately the book was another I couldn't get into and I ended up watching the adaptation only to be pretty underwhelmed by the story as a whole, so I have no interest in reading the book.

Rebel Heart and Raging Star by Moira Young: Blood Red Road is one of my favourite YA novels. I love the way its written and I love Saba and I love Jack and it pulled me out of a reading slump when I really needed to be pulled out of one. I had every intention of continuing with the trilogy but then I saw more and more reviews that the latter two books weren't as good and eventually I lost interest in it. Blood Red Road is enough for me - why does every YA novel have to have a sequel?

A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab: Schwab is another one of those authors who I should love and just don't. A Darker Shade of Magic, in particular, should be right up my street considering it's historical fantasy but Schwab's writing style and I don't get along. Oh well!

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber: I'm always fascinated by novels that combine science and science fiction with religion, so I thought this one would be right up my street. I started reading it, got about a third of the way through it, and still nothing had happened. My patience only goes so far so I put it aside and I have no real desire to try again.

Which books made your list this week?

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?

Adult Fiction for YA Readers!

I've met quite a lot of readers in the past who read only YA and want to read a little bit of adult fiction, but don't know where to start. So today I thought I'd recommend some adult fiction for YA lovers by selecting a few adult books that share some similar themes to certain YA books!

The Gargoyle is Andrew Davidson's debut, and so far only, novel, and I fell in love with it when I first read it. I'll admit it's nothing like A Thousand Nights, really; the main character is a severely burned and suicidal pornographer. So why do I recommend it to fans of A Thousand Nights? Well, it's another book with a nameless protagonist and one that is heavily reliant on oral storytelling. While in the hospital, the protagonist of The Gargoyle meets another patient who claims they were lovers in a past life, and she continues to visit him to tell him love stories from throughout history. In some ways she is his Scheherazade. It's a stunning book, and I highly recommend it!

I only discovered Robin Talley this year and I think she's such an important voice in the world of YA. I thoroughly enjoyed Lies We Tell Ourselves - you can check out my review here! - and when it comes to adult historical LGBT+ fiction then I can't recommend Sarah Waters enough. Waters has written six novels, all historical fiction, and five of those six have a queer female protagonist. Fingersmith is a wonderful place to start with Waters' work; it's a fantastically twisty and turny novel, highly inspired by the Victorian sensation novels that Waters loves to read, and like Lies We Tell Ourselves it has a wonderful LGBT+ couple at its centre. You can check out my review here!

It's been years since I read Things I Want My Daughters to Know, but I absolutely loved it when I first read it. The Year of the Rat and Things I Want My Daughters to Know are very different novels, but at their heart they're both stories that tackle grief, and in particular the grief that comes with losing a mother.

I admit these two may in fact have more dissimilarities than similarities; one main protagonist is a teenage girl while the other is a grown man, and one focuses on travelling through space while the other barely focuses on the travel at all. That being said, I do think fans of Across the Universe, and any other YA sci-fi like it, should give The Book of Strange New Things a chance. There is a lot about Christianity in it, but it isn't a Christian book; the main character, Peter, is travelling to a new planet to preach the Bible - the 'Book of Strange New Things' - to the natives there while, back on earth, his wife Bea begins to struggle with her faith. It's quite a slow-moving book, but it's fascinating.

Which adult books would you recommend to YA readers? Alternatively, which YA books would you recommend to people who don't read much YA?

Sci-Fi Month | TBR

Sci-Fi Month is hosted by Rinn @ Rinn Reads, and this year I'm participating!

You can find my introduction post here. Today, though, I thought I'd talk about some books I'd like to cross off my TBR this month. I own a lot of unread sci-fi books but there's no way I'm going to get to all of them, so these are just the ones I'm particularly hopeful that I'll get to!

Bitch Planet, Vol.1: Extraordinary Machine by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentino De Landro: The first volume in what looks like a very fun graphic novel series. I'm basically hoping that this is going to the sci-fi equivalent of Rat Queens.

Copperhead, Vol.2 by Jay Faerber, Scott Godlewski and Ron Riley: I enjoyed the first volume of Copperhead (reviewed here!) so I'm looking forward to reading the second!

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: I received an eARC of this debut from NetGalley and I've heard nothing but amazing things about it, including a rave review from my friend Natalie @ A Sea Change. It's being likened to Firefly, so I'm excited to read it!

Winter by Marissa Meyer: It's finally November, which means my most anticipated release of 2015 is nearly here at last! I'm so excited for this book I may vomit.

Blackout by Mira Grant: I really to stop putting finishing this trilogy off. I just don't want it to end, and I'm worried it's going to break my heart even more than the previous two books already have. Sci-Fi Month is the perfect time to finally finish this trilogy off!

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber: I've already started this one, I'm about a quarter of the way through it, and I'm really enjoying it so far, but then I put it aside so I could read some spooky books throughout October. I'm hoping to finish this one soon.

What are you reading this month?

Top Ten Tuesday | Recent 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 everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Ten Books You Recently Added To Your TBR'. For this I turned to Goodreads, and picked the ten books I'm most eager to read from the fairly recent additions to be TBR shelf!

Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley: This hasn't been released just yet, but it sounds utterly enchanting. I'd definitely like to get my hands on a copy, even if I keep wanting to say 'magnolia' every time I see the title.

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott: When it comes to non-fiction it's history books I read the most, and as someone who loves learning about women in history this book really interests me.

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber: I'm always really interested in stories that combine religion and science, so a story about an intergalactic preacher is right up my street.

This Strange Way of Dying by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I loved Moreno-Garcia's novel, Signal to Noise, so I'd love to read some more of her stuff and this collection sounds great. Plus I've been really into short story collections lately.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell: I just love how bizarre this story sounds. It has quite mixed reviews - I'm fairly certain it's an extension of a short story in one of Russell's collections, which is something that doesn't always work - but I'd like to give it a go myself purely because I haven't come across anything like it before.

Resistance is Futile by Jenny T. Colgan: I'm a big fan of Jenny Colgan's contemporary stuff, but she also writes sci-fi and I think this book is sort of a combination of science and a rom-com. It sounds really cute, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a copy!

Mosquitoland by David Arnold: This book just sounds really quirky, and I've heard wonderful things about the way it's written. I'm a sucker for a pretty sentence.

Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear: This just sounds really cool.

Also

The Princess and the Guard by Marissa Meyer: I love The Lunar Chronicles, and I need my fix before Winter is finally released in November!

Summer Days & Summer Nights ed. by Stephanie Perkins: This won't be released until 2016, but I really enjoyed My True Love Gave to Me so I'm hoping this anthology will be a lot of fun, too. Even if it is missing all the fun of Christmas.

Which books made your list?