This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie due to the US Thanksgiving Holiday. I’m going to take a cue from November 5th, 2018 and look at the books in my backlist that I haven’t read yet.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book blogging prompt hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Gal. Last week we wrote about how our reading habits have changed.
Baby got Backlist
This is, honestly, one of those times I’m glad that Kobo has a desktop interface. It lets me take a look at everything I’ve purchased….and promptly lost the time to read.
My backlist of purchased books is full of a lot of science fiction and fantasy. It’s not that I don’t want to actually read the books. It’s more a matter of purchasing them on sale. When you get word that three or four Hugo nominees are going up for under $10 and you have a gift card, you snag them. To be fair, I would probably read them at my leisure through the public library system if availability wasn’t an issue.
The Library of the Unwritten by AJ Hackwith
I want to read this, but haven’t found the time to squeeze it in yet. I met AJ at a writer’s convention this past summer and was pleased to hear her book was coming out sooner rather than later. Then I started having to keep an organized TBR list. Ouch.
Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone, Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine and Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
I started reading, then either had to put the book down (sleep, distraction, whatever) or just couldn’t get into the groove of reading. I’m trying to take a zen approach rather than get annoyed. I’d rather think that a time will come when I choose the book and slip into the story easily than be peeved that the story isn’t working for me. I’ve heard far too much gushing over at least one of these books to let it defeat me.
The Fifth to Die by JD Barker
I started reading The Fourth Monkey, because I kept hearing Barker being compared to “the new Stephen King”. I picked up both books as a bundle, if I’m not mistaken. The series just doesn’t seem to be for me, which I find disappointing and weird. I usually like scavenger hunt thriller/mysteries, and this one started out in the same vein as Jeffrey Deaver’s The Bone Collector. Something in the book is turning me off, possibly the scenes written as journal entries by the killer. Either way, I’m not sure I’m ever going to finish Fourth Monkey, let alone get around to Fifth to Die.
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal, This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Motar and Max Gladstone, All Systems Red by Martha Wells
I keep hearing such good things about these books, but I just haven’t found the time to read them. At some point I’m going to have to carve out some solid reading time and get caught up on the deadline books. There are just too many really good choices in my backlist to ignore them.
The Toll by Cherie Priest
I am so very happy that more women are writing horror these days. I read Cherie Priest’s Family Plot a couple of years back, and really enjoyed it. Oddly enough, even though I picked up The Toll on digital, I keep an eye out for it at Chapters on the few occasions we drop by. They only ever seem to have that one lone paperback copy of Family Plot, and it never fails to annoy me. I’m hoping that soon enough we’ll start to see more of Priest’s work fill the shelves. Maybe along with Caitlin Starling, who’s been gleefully tweeting about her own upcoming horror novel.
Drat it, now I want to chuck my TBR and go for the backlist books!
What are you reading today? Let me know in the comments 🙂
I hope you enjoy these when you get a chance to read them! Here is my Top Ten Tuesday.
I’m sure I will! Particularly looking forward to that top row in the gallery 🙂
I hope you find time to read all of these books soon!
My TTT.
Soon enough…unless something changes, I only have one more requested book on my TBR before I can go back to my own purchased books 🙂
I feel your pain. I have been trying to balance my TBR with backlist books this year. I made it a priority. It’s worked out well. I also dumped books off my Kindle that I knew I would never read. It was so freeing. Good luck getting to these books!
If requesting A/RCs has taught me anything this year, it’s that I need to prioritize. Looking forward to a couple of comfort reads once I’ve got my slate clear 🙂
Good work dumping some of the books off the Kindle! I’m a Kobo girl myself…epubs take up so little room I’m afraid to think what’s floating around on my drive… o.O
I also find that when I buy a book instead of check it out from the library, I’m more likely to procrastinate reading it because I know I own it so I can read it anytime. I’m more likely to prioritize library books.
Happy TTT!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
Sorry about the late response, Susan. That’s a good point about the library books setting a higher priority. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to return books late, which made for some rather large fines. I’m thankful they’re adding a lot of ebooks, but there’s often a pretty long wait. As a result, I hit up the sales when I can.
That said, I’m still a firm supporter of libraries. I just have to work on my organization 😉
It’s great to have a nice backlist of books! I have a bunch of unread books on my physical shelf, which is great, but I also picked up some books in the past mostly because of sales and now they’re kind of just sitting there haha. I hope you get around to all of these books and will end up loving them! 🙂
There are a TON of unread books on our physical shelves. Unread by me, that is. It’s one of the perks of having a spouse with slightly different interests. Or I have interest in the book just…not now.
Hope you manage to get some time to read some of the books in your own private limbo 🙂
I hope you love all these! I currently have 45 backlist books sitting around that I haven’t read yet. They make me feel guilty.
I somehow think I’m just never going to finish the JD Barker books. All the others, though, fingers crossed!
Hope you get a chance to confront all the puppy-dog eyes your own books are casting your way 😀
I am not going to lie, I cackled out loud (and definitely startled my dogs) to ‘Baby Got Backlist’. AH, so many books so little time!! I hope that you enjoy these titles when you get to them. I haven’t read many of them, although like you some of them are on my backlist. I will say that Space Opera was something. What a ride!
I like big books and I cannot lie 😉
I managed the first couple of pages of Space Opera before I had to put it down. I remember it had a wonderful, strong voice. Really need to try that one again.
Hopefully we’ll get around to the mutual books on our list sooner rather than later 🙂
I got to read an ARC of This is How You Lose the Time War this summer. It’s not really that backlist yet! I hope you get to read these soon.
I’m pretty sure most of the books I listed aren’t *technically* backlisted yet. Library of the Unwritten, for instance, just came out in the past couple of months.
Personally, I’m looking at my list with a view to how long it’s been on my radar. In the case of Time War, I couldn’t tell you how long I’ve known about it (or how long I’ve been waiting to read it). But it’s been sitting in my Kobo purchases for a while now, and new books are being published every day.
So…yes. Technically not backlist. But hopefully will have some free reading time soon 🙂
The Toll looks like it’s going to be great!
I’m really looking forward to it 😀
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