Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme where every Tuesday we look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point, ten) bookish examples to demonstrate that particular topic. Top Ten Tuesday (created and hosted by The Broke and Bookish) is now being hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and future week’s topics can be found here.
One of the most common (and enjoyable) activities for a book blogger is the compilation of a list of “wanted” books: just by reading the recommendations of our fellow bloggers we are able to add a considerable number of books to that list, further enlarged by the discoveries we make on our own.
But no matter how good we are in making inroads in our TBRs (and I’m afraid I’m not…), there is always a great number of titles that we are unable to get to, and more often than not contemplating the milestones of that “road not taken” makes us regret those missed opportunities.
In 2020 I posted a list of titles I wanted to read without fail, only to realize once again, not that he new year has started, that the road to Hell is, as I’m fond of saying, paved with unread books. Here are my missed chances:
Happily enough, since the start of 2021, I managed to read two of them: Best Served Cold and The Spider’s War: should I consider this a hopeful start for my list of missed 2020 books? Keeping my fingers crossed…
Space and Sorcery 
While the Sanderson can be daunting (4 books each more than 1000 pages), the first two were clear 5 stars for me.
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That’s good to know! Very encouraging… 🙂
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That series will have a kind of conclusion with the next&fifth volume (reliably expected in 3 years). Sanderson is planning to write 5 more after that. 18 years. Now, that’s a plan. So far, he staid on schedule.
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Much better than GRRM then! I have been “ensnared” by A Song of Ice and Fire since 2002 and there is no end in sight… 🙄
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Me since the 90s. I was heavily hyped until some 8 years ago, but now I don’t care anymore.
I like GRRM‘s short stories, though, and just bought his collection Dreamsongs.
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Dreamsongs is a very intriguing collection – not just for the stories themselves, but for the “real life” snippets between sections, that help us understand better the person behind the writer. And I know what you mean about not caring anymore: I’ve stopped holding my breath in anticipation long ago… (((SIGH)))
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There’s been a year when I checked his blog daily 😁
You‘ve read Dreamsongs? Do you have a review?
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I read the two volumes several years ago, before I started blogging, and only reviewed a few stories from the collection when I re-read them while listening to their audio version read by Claudia Black: THE SKIN TRADE (https://spaceandsorcery.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/review-the-skin-trade-by-g-r-r-martin/); THE GLASS FLOWER (https://spaceandsorcery.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/review-the-glass-flower-by-george-r-r-martin/); IN THE LOST LANDS (https://spaceandsorcery.wordpress.com/2014/05/07/in-the-lost-lands-george-r-r-martin/); WITH MORNING COMES MISTFALL (https://spaceandsorcery.wordpress.com/2014/04/22/with-morning-comes-mistfall-george-r-r-martin/)
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Thank you, maddalena 🙂
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I have two reviews published in Dreamsongs:
Sandkings https://reiszwolf.wordpress.com/2020/05/20/sandkings-%e2%80%a2-1979-%e2%80%a2-horror-sf-novelette-by-george-r-r-martin/
The Way of Cross and Dragon
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I remember Sandkings well (((shudder))) but I need to re-read The Way of Cross and Dragon because my memory is totally blank on that one…
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Doesn’t the review bring back memories?
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Sadly, no: it’s a total blank, as if I never read that one at all. That’s why I badly need a re-read… 🙂
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“The road to Hell is paved with unread books.” I love that and it sums up my life perfectly🤣 Good luck getting to these, if you’ve already read two of them, I’d say you’re doing very well😁
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Much depends on which kind of “distractions” will lead my astray: I know myself too well not to factor that in… 😉
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Looking forward to seeing what you’ll think of The Way of Kings! One of the most colossal but epic fantasy books I’ve ever read! 😀 But yes… That TBR of ours is monstrous! 😮
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Sanderson represents one of the most daunting reading adventures I can see in my future, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve kept procrastinating. But one of these days I will have to break the proverbial ice… 🙂
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Yup, the TBR is definitely a never ending uphill climb. But I keep thinking (hoping) one day I’ll have a little more free time and then I’ll begin looking back at all these potentially fantastic reads I never got around to. And it’s always far better to have too many than not enough great reads! 🙂
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On that I can only emphatically agree: more often than not I compare myself to a squirrel, only I amass books instead of nuts. Just having a well-stocked TBR, no matter how daunting that prospect is, makes me feel happy 😉
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Some nice books on this list, i say this as it seems they were on everyones list last year, do not know if they are all good or not
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The reviews I’ve read for most of them were very encouraging: the only one I’m uncertain about is the Turtledove series, but alternate history sounds intriguing anyway 🙂
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I’ll be looking forward to reading your thoughts on Circe, Best Served Cold and City of Brass! 😁
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Only time will tell… 😉
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Jade War I STILL need to catch up with, and I want to catch up with the City of Brass series too!
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Ah, well, then I’m in good company! 😉
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So many great books on here. My favorite is probably Circe–it was my favorite book read for the year when it came out. Hope you get to enjoy some of these soon.
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Circe is high on my to-do list, and I’m particularly sorry about not having read that one yet…
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That’s a great list, Maddalena! I can highly recommend Circe and The City of Brass, both of which I enjoyed and Circe is still a book that has stayed with me.
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I hope to read both in a short while: I don’t want to end 2021 with most of these books still on my TBR!! 😀
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Oh, I hope that isn’t the case either. But these days, I think we all need to give ourselves a pass – I find I’m a lot pickier about what I want to read.
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Problem is, every time I see a fellow blogger’s post listing the new books they have acquired or look forward to, I can’t help adding a few more titles to my “wanted” list… (((SIGH))) 😀
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We both share the desire to read Circe. Perhaps we should be each other’s encouragement. Buddy read it at some point as motivation.
Lynn 😀
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That sounds like a great idea! 🙂
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I am so happy you read Best Served Cold!! And The City of Brass is on my list too, I really wanted to read it in 2020 but… Nope! Let’s hope this would be the right year!
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Thankfully, books are patient creatures… 😀
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Omg Maddalena you should def read Jade War! I’m the world’s biggest shill for this series, I actually think it’s some of the best fiction I’ve ever read. I’m sure we’ve had this conversation before, but what did you think of Jade City?
I also really want to read John Gwynne’s books. I watched him on an online panel recently and he was wearing actual Viking chain mail and had an axe. That’s all I need to be convinced to read someone’s books.
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Jade City proved to me an amazing read, and a very different story from what’s usual in the genre – although it would be very difficult to pin *one* genre on this series: it’s SF? it’s UF? Not that it matters much… 😉 And I’ve promised myself that as soon as I finish a couple of books I badly want to read – one of them the newest Gwynne I received from Orbit as an e-ARC, I will absolutely read Jade War…
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Jade City is generally marketed as fantasy I think, but one of the things I loved about it was how its characters don’t think about jade as magic at all. It’s just a substance in their world with natural properties, like magnetic stuff in our own world. Really made that fantasy world feel very real to me.
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Yes, it’s more of a genre of its own – and when all is said and done, it hardly matters what kind of label we might want to give to this story: what truly matters is that it’s a great novel and that readers can enjoy it and look for more 🙂
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