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| "Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly bookish shareable, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! |
The year always starts out with the best of intentions: I'm going to post a new blogpost four times a month! I'm going to read at least one book a week! I'm going to actively engage with my blog-affiliated social media platforms!
And then you're staring into your computer screen at midnight on a Monday because you realized earlier that day that you haven't read anything new or posted on your blog in over a month. And that is NOT the way this year is going to go down! I've still got a month and a half to course correct this tilting vessel before it sinks entirely.
Hence, the last-minute post assembly... someone's going to do the heavy lifting around here, and if it can't be the Spirit of Slow, Deliberate, Intentional Action possessing me, it's going to be the scrambling, beady-eyed Demon of Late-Night, Stream-of-Consciousness Word Vomit that has been a recurring figure in my life since college (They're a regular around these parts in November, anyways).
Anyways.
Recently I was putting together a short list of recommendations for a friend, someone who is already a fairly robust reader in their own right, and who required a little bit of extra thinking outside of the box, in order to hit upon something widely enjoyed, that she wouldn't have already read before (I eventually settled on Martha Wells' Murderbot series, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, and Erik Larson's Devil in the White City).
Trying to pick out books that are much-loved, without being already-read, is tough. But then again, there are oodles and oodles of much-loved authors out there, who I've heard of regularly, and haven't had the opportunity or inclination to pick up yet myself.
There are plenty of buzzy authors that I HAVE read, of course... to varying degrees of success. Sarah J Maas was a college fixation for me, who now feels like she occupies a weird grey area between too juvenile and too adult, too complex and too basic; J. R. R. Tolkien has served as the focus for an excruciatingly inaccessible read for me, ever since I struggled my way through Fellowship in my freshman year of college across the course of an entire month; Sally Rooney's distracting attention to aesthetic choices overshadowed her artistry, in my opinion, which is why I haven't attempted her since; Taylor Jenkins Reid, probably one of the most popular authors currently publishing today, still owns acreage in my brain and bookshelf due to Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones, but has lost some of my attentions because of how unmoving I found Malibu Rising to be in comparison.
So the "Top Ten Tuesday" topic of the day - that of popular, "mainstream" authors whose work has somehow never ended up getting consumed by my brain - felt appropriate to the kinds of thoughts I've been having recently anyways. How convenient that one of the collections posted on Goodreads last week was "Goodreads Members' 76 Most Popular Books of the Past Decade," so I could have an easy-to-scroll place to go over where my personal proclivities had been represented... and more importantly, had not.
1. Rebecca Yarros
Yarros' Fourth Wing has been unilaterally adopted by what feels like the entire Internet, which means I've been aware of "that one horny dragon book" for a while now. And to be honest, I was so close to not even being able to include her on this list, being that I had waited through five months of a library holds line to get my hands on it this past summer... only to totally bail when it conflicted with my rigorous Summer Reading Challenge plans.
To be honest, I have heard a LOT about this book at this point, and who knows if I'll end up picking it up in the future. But I know what it's like to have a highly-anticipated read come out when you're obsessed with a series, which meant the recent Reels I've seen on Instagram of people getting excited about Iron Flame's drop were still pretty darn fun to see.
2. Patrick Rothfuss
If we were able to organize my physical TBR shelves by which books have languished on them the longest, The Name of the Wind would rank among some of the most... patient. Dusty. Long-suffering? I was recommended this title personally, by a friend, back in my college days, but despite the hype, it just hasn't been in the cards yet. One day, though. I think?
3. Pierce Brown
Even my relatively Sci-Fi-averse younger brother has managed to read through Red Rising, which makes it all the more embarrassing that his Sci-Fi-enthusiastic older sister hasn't. I think it might just be because of the impact the first page has... it's the kind of thing that makes me feel like I'll have to be in a particular mood to read it, and that mood just hasn't actually managed to land quite yet.
4. R. F. Kuang
Despite the fact that Babel came through the bookish universe like a wrecking ball when it was published; despite the fact that not just one, but several people have recommended it, including the "Staff Sections" bookshelf in practically every bookstore I've entered in the last year or so; despite the fact that it sounds absolutely incredible... I just haven't been able to swing it yet. Again, the curse of being a mood reader! But I don't just have one, but two, of Kuang's books on my shelves... I'll have to get around to The Poppy War eventually, too!
5. Brandon Sanderson
Listen, whatever mean names you want to call me about this one, I can guarantee you my younger brother has already done so much worse in his head. It is probably one of the most irritating sources of regular heartache that he experiences, that I have never picked up a Branderson book... especially because quite a lot of his other friends haven't read them, either, and he just really, really needs a buddy to talk about them with. And unless I suddenly get struck with some kind of Superman-esque ability to focus on complex tasks for a consistent, lengthy amount of time, that's not going to happen for me for a while.
6. Celeste Ng
This is going to sound nuts, but I occasionally have a really hard time working up the interest to read a particular book, when I know a TV series adaptation exists somewhere out there in the universe, too. Even if I have no intention of watching it! I don't know why that is... I don't even particularly like TV. So the problem is that despite the fact that I know several people who really enjoyed Little Fires Everywhere, I don't think I'll be picking that one up any time soon.
(I feel like there should be an honorary mention for Liane Moriarty in this bullet point, as well.)
7. Colleen Hoover
I don't know, depending on what kind of circles you run in, this is either an affront of the most dramatic proportions, or you're fully on my side. As opposed to quite a lot of the other entries on this list, whom I at least feel a general sort of sense of getting around to reading eventually, I am completely uninterested in reading Hoover. Part of that is due to an issue of genre - I can't stand Thrillers, so they are generally not found on my shelves - but also due to a general sense of writing style and audience; simply put, I don't particularly think these are books that are written for me, and that's totally okay.
8. Kristin Hannah
I'm a fan of Historical Fiction - as a kind of holdover from my Dear America-loving days back in middle school, I guess - so Kristin Hannah has been on my radar for quite a while now. But there also seems to be a pretty regular sense of discussion, even by those who love to read her books, as to which ones hit at their hardest, or not, and that her canon of work - though plentiful - might be fairly uneven. While I know that she's a popularly-selling author, her books also rank among the ones I see the most regularly on the bookshelves of some of my favorite thrift stores. That's how I picked up my copy of The Four Winds, which I have, but haven't read yet.
9. Emily St. John Mandel
I know so many people who love Station Eleven. Like, "got tattoos of references to it immediately when they could get back into tattoo parlors during Covid" kinds of ways of loving something. And I am happy for them, I really am, but as it stands right now, I'm not really capable of seeing any kind of future for myself in reading a book where the catalyst of the current structure of society was a big ol' pandemic. And yes, I know she's written more than just this one, but that book is the one that everyone loves the most!
10. Katee Robert
Speaking of loving, I'm obviously a fan of a well-written Romance novel (and to be frank, quite a lot of the ones who aren't well written. Have you seen the rest of this blog?). And I have the utmost admiration for writers who know their audience, and know their market, and utilize all this knowledge to build a career, and I know that Robert possesses that knowledge in spades. But some of her books feel a little too much like gimmicks for me to buy into fully... and after the frustrations I had after reading Lore: Olympus earlier this year, I think it's going to be a long, long, long time before I bother picking up a Hades and Persephone retelling again.
What's in YOUR Top Ten? Let me know, in the comments below!
