Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’ve Read But Not Reviewed

Published on by Margaret

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog. This week’s topic is a freebie and I decided to write about – Books I’ve Read But Not Reviewed.

These are all books I read before I began blogging in 2007. I’ve linked them to their pages on the Fantastic Fiction website.

  1. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood – Did Grace kill her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper/lover Nancy Montgomery? I couldn’t decide all the way through the book. I’ve enjoyed all of her books that I’ve read so far – this is one of my favourites.
  2. Arthur and George by Julian Barnes – this is based on the true story of Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, a solicitor from Birmingham. I’ve since read a few more of his books.
  3. The Conjuror’s Bird by Martin Davies about an extinct bird from Capt Cook’s second voyage, described on Davies’ website as a ‘novel of two narratives – one of the present day and one of the late 18th Century. As the two stories intertwine, the novel unfolds layer after layer of mystery and suspense.’
  4. The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill – the first book in the Simon Serrailler series. I’ve read seven books in the series – and then decided I’d have enough of them and haven’t read the later books.
  5. The Apothecary’s House by Adrian Mathews – set in Amsterdam about the history of the piece of looted Nazi art, a painting with a disturbing wartime provenance. Archivist, Ruth Braams at the Rijks Museum, enters a series of increasingly lethal adventures as she investigates its secret symbolism.
  6. Dissolution by C J Sansom – the first in his Tudor murder mystery series featuring Matthew Shardlake. This is set in 1537 – Shardlake investigates the death of a Commissioner during the dissolution of the monasteries. I’ve read all of his subsequent Shardlake books.
  7. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields – the story of Daisy Goodwill, from her birth on a kitchen floor in Manitoba, Canada, to her death in a Florida nursing home nearly ninety years later.
  8. A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve – at an inn in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, seven former schoolmates gather for a wedding. It’s an astonishing weekend of revelation and recrimination, forgiveness and redemption. At one time I loved Anita Shreve’s but went off the more recent ones.
  9. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron – The discovery of a forgotten book leads to a hunt for an elusive author who may or may not still be alive.
  10. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear – this is the first in the Maisie Dobbs series. In 1929 Maisie set herself up as a private investigator, having started as a maid to the London aristocracy, studied her way to Cambridge and served as a nurse in the Great War. I’ve read a few more of the series since I read this one.

22 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’ve Read But Not Reviewed”

  3. I read Shadow of the Wind but it didn’t do very much for me. I read loads of Anita Shreve but not this one and like you, Margaret, I drifted away from her after a while. I loved The Stone Diaries though. I’d happily read it again now.

    Like

  4. You really haven’t missed anything by dropping out of the Serrailler series. None of them have lived up to the first one and the recent ones have been really poor.

    Like

  7. Oooh, I think the list of books I have read and not reviewed is too long to list anywhere. But giving a small opinion here is a great idea. 🙂 I have to say though, that I have read none of the ones you have on your list.

    Like

  10. You’ve got such good ones here, Margaret! I like Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake novels, so it was good to see that on on your list. And the Jacqueline Winspear series is quite good, too. And I’m not surprised you loved Alias Grace. Margaret Atwood is a really talented writer…

    Like

  13. It was interesting to read your blurb on The Stone Diaries because I know I read it but cannot remember it at all and the review didn’t even spark a memory. I got Dissolution in a book exchange once and never read, and now I want to – sounds great!

    Like

  14. Nice topic, Margaret! I read Alias Grace a long time ago and remember liking it a lot. I also have enjoyed Susan Hill’s series, but I think I’m more caught up than you. I only have the latest still unread.

    Like

  16. This is a very good topic. I am going to remember this for a future Top Ten Tuesday freebie. I also read Dissolution by C J Sansom, but did not review. I have the next three to read. I will be reading The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields sometime this year. I was the same with Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler series. I stopped after book 7.

    Like

  19. Great idea for the freebie week. I’ve been thinking of starting to review books I read before I started blogging or reviewing books in general, so maybe I should do this for the next freebie week! (That is, if you let me steal your idea.)

    Like

Comments are closed.