TBR Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was SO EXCITED To Get, But Still Havenโ€™t Read

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. This week’s prompt is Books I Was SO EXCITED to Get, but Still Havenโ€™t Read (bonus points if you tell us how long itโ€™s been since you got them!)

Hello Readers! I hope you’re all safe and well and reading great books! Here’s my proverbial weather update: We seemed to have skipped right through spring and started summer here in Texas thanks to the high humidity. And here I was so excited for outdoor reading… ๐Ÿ˜…

To make today’s prompt a little easier, I’m only looking at physical books I purchased, eager to read, but that have remained unread on my shelves. If I included my digital shelves, this list might be never-ending. I’ll count down from the most recent to oldest, and I expect those bonus points because I’m including when I added them to my shelves. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Let’s see what I still need to read!

10

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Synopsis:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and โ€œwriter of astonishing depthโ€ (The Washington Times) comes a poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.

Viewing an apartment normally doesnโ€™t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.

First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else until tragedy changed her life. Now, sheโ€™s obsessed with visiting open houses to see how ordinary people liveโ€”and, perhaps, to set an old wrong to right. Then thereโ€™s Roger and Anna-Lena, an Ikea-addicted retired couple who are on a never-ending hunt for fixer-uppers to hide the fact that they donโ€™t know how to fix their own failing marriage. Julia and Ro are a young lesbian couple and soon-to-be parents who are nervous about their chances for a successful life together since they canโ€™t agree on anything. And thereโ€™s Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by a masked bank robber waving a gun in her face. And despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasnโ€™t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isnโ€™t outside parking the car.

As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.

Rich with Fredrik Backmanโ€™s โ€œpitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human natureโ€ (Shelf Awareness), Anxious Peopleโ€™s whimsical plot serves up unforgettable insights into the human condition and a gentle reminder to be compassionate to all the anxious people we encounter every day.

Goodreads
Purchased February of 2022

I’ve only had this one a few months, but it’s appeared on several of my TBRs, including this month’s. Hey, May isn’t over yet! ๐Ÿ˜‰

9

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

Synopsis:

A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind–and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa’s orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil–and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances’s intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth.”

Goodreads
Purchased in December of 2021

I picked up a copy of this one while out of town. I’m trying to decide if I want to read this one before I watch the adaptation or after. I remember wishing I’d read Normal People after I’d seen the show, which is not the usual for me.

8

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Synopsis:

As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother. 

The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Leviโ€™s hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, certain details donโ€™t add up and she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into the heart of a criminal investigation. 

Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, but secretly pursues her own investigation, tracking down the criminals with her knowledge of chemistry and traditional medicine. But the deceptionsโ€”and deathsโ€”keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. 

Now, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go to protect her community, even if it tears apart the only world sheโ€™s ever known.

Debut author Angeline Boulley crafts a groundbreaking YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community, for readers of Angie Thomas and Tommy Orange. 

Goodreads
Purchased in November of 2021

I’d read an excerpt of this one before I purchased it and I enjoyed what I’d read so much. This is another one that keeps appearing on my TBRs, including this month’s. ๐Ÿ˜ฌ๐Ÿ˜ƒ

7

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Synopsis:

Agatha Christie’s most daring travel mystery.

The tranquility of a lovely cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything โ€“ until she lost her life.

Who’s also on board? Christie’s great detective Hercule Poirot. He recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: โ€˜Iโ€™d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.โ€™ Despite the exotic setting, nothing is ever quite what it seemsโ€ฆ

Goodreads
Purchased in September of 2021

I purchased this one with plans to read it before I watched the newest adaptation, but I still haven’t read or watched it. I currently have it penciled in on my Popsugar Reading Challenge for the year, so hopefully I’ll get to it soon.

6

Happiness for Beginners by Kathrine Center

Synopsis:

A year after getting divorced, Helen Carpenter, thirty-two, lets her annoying, ten years younger brother talk her into signing up for a wilderness survival course. It’s supposed to be a chance for her to pull herself together again, but when she discovers that her brother’s even-more-annoying best friend is also coming on the trip, she can’t imagine how it will be anything other than a disaster. Thus begins the strangest adventure of Helen’s well-behaved life: three weeks in the remotest wilderness of a mountain range in Wyoming where she will survive mosquito infestations, a surprise summer blizzard, and a group of sorority girls.

Yet, despite everything, the vast wilderness has a way of making Helen’s own little life seem bigger, too. And, somehow the people who annoy her the most start teaching her the very things she needs to learn. Like how to stand up for herself. And how being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes you just have to get really, really lost before you can even have a hope of being found.

Goodreads
Purchased in September of 2021

I picked up Happiness for Beginners at the same time as Death on the Nile. I really, really want to read this one. I have no idea why it hasn’t happened yet.

5

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

Synopsis:

Face your demons… or feed them.

The dashing young king, Nikolai Lantsov, has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country’s bloody civil war–and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, Nikolai must find a way to refill Ravka’s coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.

Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha general, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren’t meant to stay buried–and some wounds aren’t meant to heal.

Goodreads
Purchased in February of 2021

I LOVED the Six of Crows duology when I finally read it in 2020. I was so excited to get to this follow-up series, but it hasn’t happened yet. ๐Ÿคฆโ€โ™€๏ธ

4

The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

Synopsis:

The first rule of book club: You don’t talk about book club.

Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. Heโ€™s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, itโ€™s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes heโ€™s let his pride and fear get the better of him. 

Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.

Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamay Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.

Goodreads
Purchased in February of 2020

My last in-store book purchase before the pandemic hit, and I can’t believe I still haven’t read this one!

3

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Synopsis:

No oneโ€™s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what sheโ€™s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. 

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymondโ€™s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she’ll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendshipโ€”and even loveโ€”after all.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . . 

the only way to survive is to open your heart.

Goodreads
Purchased in June of 2019

I’ve only heard good things about this one and someday I WILL read it!

2

Circe by Madeline Miller

Synopsis:

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child – not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power – the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love. 

Goodreads
Purchased in April of 2018

I was able to purchase Circe at a very low price. I knew little about it except that I was seeing it everywhere. But I ended up waiting to read it until I could purchase and read her previous book The Song of Achilles, which ended up being one of my favorite reads last year, so I’m even more excited to read Circe soon!

1

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman

Synopsis:

Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby. 

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them. 

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written debut novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

Goodreads
Purchased in March of 2016

I was so very excited when I came across a copy of this book in a thrift store AND it was a signed copy! I have no idea why I haven’t read it yet.

Which one of these should I read next? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Wandering!

34 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was SO EXCITED To Get, But Still Havenโ€™t Read”

  1. We always have a lot of overlap. I spy Anxious People, Bromance Book Club, Happiness for Beginners — huge hits for me. I tried to read Elinor Oliphant twice. I think I had to stop both times because I saw too much of myself in her(?) My daughter read it and told me how it ended though (HA!)

    1. Yay! I love that we share so many faves. It makes me feel even more confident about getting to these books. And now I’m even MORE curious about Oliphant… I don’t think I’ve ever come across a book I’ve had to stop reading because it hit too close to home, but I can see how that might happen. I need to bump it up my tbr. ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. I bought a whole load of Agatha Christie books (including Death on the Nile), but haven’t got round to reading many of them. I have read a couple, but I need to do better!

    Weather here in the UK is crazy! We go from really hot one day to cloudy and rain the next day. It’s sunny today, but who knows what it will be tomorrow!

    Have a great week!

    Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog
    My post:
    https://budgettalesblog.wordpress.com/2022/05/17/top-ten-tuesday-books-i-was-so-excited-to-get-but-still-havent-read/

    1. I’ve only read two Christie books, but I enjoyed them! Hopefully we can both get to Nile soon! UK weather sounds very much like Texas weather. We never know what we’re getting either. It can be cold one day and hot the next. ๐Ÿ˜‰

      Happy reading!

        1. Well, Texas is GIANT so the weather is different all over, but I’m near Dallas. It is hot all the time in summer but in Winter it can be freezing one day and warm the next. Wrecks havoc on our allergies. ๐Ÿ˜‚

          1. I forget how big places are ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿคฃ crazy! I bet it does! It is generally cold in winter and then warm and occassionally wet in summer but recently it has been warmer in winter. I remember a couple of years ago going on a walk in December wearing a t-shirt and cardigan – unheard of!! It also doesn’t snow as much. My toddler has seen snow twice and he was born in 2018 – that was a hot year!

          2. Haha! Yes, people are always shocked to hear that it can take almost a full day to drive through Texas.๐Ÿ˜‚ We rarely get snow anymore either, except last year when we had a very unexpected snow and deep freeze that knocked out power in the area for days. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™€๏ธ Currently we just had a cold front blow through and it feels like spring again when we have had summer temps the last few weeks. ๐Ÿคฃ I guess we can say it’s never boring, right?!

          3. That is a shock. It is apparently a 16 hour drive from one end of the UK to the other (according to Google!). That is a nightmare when the power goes. It is rare here, but when it does… it is certainly never boring!

          4. It’s crazy how small the UK is really! It is interesting isn’t it? One of the things I love about blogging is chatting to people from all over the world!

  3. Great list, Dedra! Wow, I’m impressed you’ve got all the dates and everything ๐Ÿ˜ƒ I’ve also got Anxious People on my TBR although to be fair, I have all of Backman’s books on my list and I keep putting them off. I’ve enjoyed quite a few of these books though and I hope you do too, whenever you get to them! Happy reading (and I hope you’re feeling better)!

    1. I’m do enjoy keeping track of details. Ha! But mostly I tend to take pics of new books so it was easy to figure out how long they’ve been languishing on my tbr. ๐Ÿ˜‚ I hope you get to pick up a Backman book soon. He’s such a great writer! (Thank you, I’m feeling much better! <3)

  4. I have heard great things about Anxious People and will be reading it in a few weeks. I also have Agatha Christie’s book. I hope you enjoy these when you get a chance to read them.

  5. Yep- we skipped Spring and went right to summer here too. It’s SO HOT. You have a lot of great books on here. I loved Backman, Firekeeper’s Daughter and Bromance Book Club is fun!! I hope you have time to read them soon!

    1. It’s so rude of Spring to come and go so quickly. Haha! But we did put up our little dinky above ground pool, so at least I can read while floating. ๐Ÿ˜‚ Maybe I can get to a few of these, as well. Happy reading!

  6. I thought that Happiness for Beginners is one of Katherine Center’s best books. I also loved Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and Anxious People. I hope you get a chance to read all these books soon!

  7. Great list! I preordered King of Scars and still haven’t read it. lol Circe’s on my list too. I’m hoping to read both this year as part of the Beat the Backlist challenge. I hope you enjoy them all when you get to them!

    1. Glad I’m not alone with these two! I need to officially join the Beat the Backlist challenge sometime. The Popsugar challenge always tends to take over my tbr. ๐Ÿ™‚

  8. Great list Dedra. I have read 4 of these: Anxious People, Firekeeper’s Daughter, Death on the nile, and The Bromance Book Club. I have a couple of the others on my TBR.

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