Top Ten Tuesdays (created by The Broke and The Bookish) can be found at That Artsy Reader Girl (since January 16th) feature lists related to all things bookish–characters, authors, titles, and favorites. They’re an excellent way to find new interesting books on a variety of topics, and to find bloggers that love the books you do.
Check out their blog for their top ten and lists by other bloggers!
March 13: Books That Surprised Me (in a good or bad way)
I’ve split this, and these are recent reads. Alphabetical as always.
The Good
1. Blackfoot; W.R. Gingell. I’d liked other books by this author, but really couldn’t get into this one. Months passed before I gave it another try, but I did enjoy it in the end.
2. Onwards towards our Noble Deaths; Shizeru Mizuki. War stories aren’t my favorite, but despite being tough, this one spoke to me.
3. Death by Silver; Melissa Scott. This one was a surprise because it was part of a bundle, and I had no expectations. It turned out to be a well developed mystery.
4. A Gentleman in Moscow; Amor Towles. I expected this to end tragically, and was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t.
5. Hillbilly Elegy; J.D. Vance. I saw some negative reviews for this, so didn’t have high hopes, but it works pretty well as strictly a memoir.
~~~~The Bad
6. Zen in the Art of Writing; Ray Bradbury. Not so much bad, as not as good as I was expecting.
7. Xenocide; Orson Scott Card. Just drawn out and dull.
8. Winter’s Tales; Isak Dinesen. A collection of short stories I had hopes for, that didn’t quite live up to them.
9. Dark Cities; Christopher Golden. The whopper of a first story put this book in the AHHH! category. Seriously, the first story is messed up.
10. The Best American Comics 2013; Jeff Smith. They might be the best, but I found them dull, depressing, or off-putting.
I haven’t read any of these. I have been meaning to read Isek Dinesen though.
Here’s my list. I interpreted the topic a bit differently: https://franlaniado.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/top-10-tuesday-books-that-surprised-me/
Short stories are hit or miss, so you might like that book better than I did!
That’s true. Actually there are a lot of short story collections where I’ll like a few of the stories but not the others. I never know how to rate/recommend those!
I see people do break downs where they rate each story, which is more work than I like, but very effective.
I definitely find it more helpful to read a review done that way. But I think I’d only write one if I had opposing strong feelings about different stories in the same collection.
I have been wondering about A Gentleman in Moscow! That’s good to know!
It has some slow parts, and some sad bits–but it’s overall full of love and hope. I’d recommend it, if the description sounds like your cup of tea!
I felt similar about Ray Bradbury’s book, some helpful stuff but I’ve enjoyed other writing help books more.
Yes, I think I’d have enjoyed it more if I read it before similar books.
I haven’t read any of these books myself but I liked how you split your list into two halves. There can be just as many books that surprise us in a bad way as books that surprise us in a good way.
Hopefully you’ll read more books this year that will surprise you in a good way though. 🙂
As I do a fair degree of research before reading a book, most books happily live up to my expectations. 🙂