Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke & The Bookish.
Top Ten Tuesday is on official hiatus until March 7 because sometimes life just happens, but we were also encouraged to use them as freebie weeks if we so desired. I really enjoy them, and only just recently began writing them, so I decided to use these weeks as a chance to hit some of the past topics.
One of the very first topics The Broke & The Bookish ever did back in 2010 was the Top Ten Books I Can't Believe I Never Read. This one really struck me because I've always been a reader and also always been upset by how many books I haven't read--and how many I know I'll never be able to get to.
So here are the top 10 books I can't believe I've never read. Some are classics and some are more modern reads, but either way this list is one that will showcase some of the highlights of my bookish ignorance!
I certainly hope to knock some of these off my TBR at some point in my life, but whether that happens because I finally decide I just don't need to or because I finally get to it remains to be seen!
I don't know how my education skipped this series, but I do have the entirety of it on my bookshelves thanks to my sweet, wonderful writerly friend Kaitlyn.
I've thought about this book, and about The Little Friend, so much that I was certain I'd read it! I told people I'd read it! But now I'm about 95% sure I've never, in fact, read it. How embarrassing!
There are several other Jane Austen books that should be on this list, too, but I thought I'd start here.
My friend Emily read this for her book club and then loaned it to me because I was so jealous I didn't get to read it with her book club! And now it's been sitting on my shelf for about a year...I don't know how she's still friends with me.
I've picked up Mrs. Dalloway and started it at least five times. I first bought it in undergrad for a class I was very excited to take that got cancelled like two weeks before the semester started. (The professor had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And, as if he felt my disappointment deep in his own bones, he wrote me to apologize for living his best life.) So. Who knows if I'll ever read this book, since I still can't think of it without thinking about that class.
And really ALL OF JUDY BLUME'S ADULT NOVELS. I read every single one of her young adult books growing up (even/especially the slightly racy ones), but I've never read her adult novels. AND I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT.
Just, really, how have I not read this book already? I feel like literally everyone else has, and I'm just the loser on the outside looking in.
After I turned in my first short story of graduate school, my professor recommended that I read this entire collection of Dubus short stories. This was one of the very first books I put on my TBR. I remember running back to my gloomy apartment and reading the synopsis on Goodreads and thinking I just might die:
In these fourteen stories, Dubus depicts ordinary men and women confronting injury and loneliness, the lack of love and the terror of actually having it. Out of his characters' struggles and small failures--and their unexpected moments of redemption--Dubus creates fiction that bears comparison to the short story's greatest creators.
Margaret Atwood is one of my absolute favorite authors. I love everything about how she writes, including how she writes about the world. Alias Grace is one of hers I've yet to read.
For someone who's been sucked into the world of dystopia time after time, I really don't know how I've never read this one.
What do you think about this list? Do we have any overlap? Should we start a book club to help us conquer the embarrassment?!
Thanks again to The Broke & The Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.