Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl
1. Prehistoric, Neanderthal, Hunter-Gatherer, and/or Anatomically-Modern Human
I’m always interested in books set at this point in the past.
2. Magical Realism
There’s nothing like a story that is 99% realistic but has a slightly magical twist to it.
3. HEA (happily ever after)
It’s not that common in the scary stuff I sometimes read, so I have to branch out to other genres to see characters who ride off into the sunset peacefully.
4. Friends to Lovers
This is how my spouse and I ended up together. When I do dip into more romantic reads on occasion, starting off with a strong friendship between the characters is definitely the first thing I’m looking for.
5. Twist Ending
If the right amount of foreshadowing is included ahead of time, I love it when there’s a twist ending that catches me off-guard but, in retrospect, makes perfect sense. It’s quite difficult to accomplish, so I never fault authors who can’t quite strike the balance between hinting at what’s to come and still keeping their audience guessing. It’s simply a fun bonus when it does occur.
6. Solarpunk, Hopepunk, and/or Utopian Themes
Show me visions of the future that are remarkably better than the world we currently live in!
7. Animal Companions
Assuming the pets don’t die or get seriously injured in the story, I love reading about characters who have close relationships with their furry (or scaly, aquatic, or what have you) friends.
8. Urban settings
I love living in an urban setting as well as reading all sorts of stories with this sort of setting.
9. Medical triumphs
That is to say, there’s nothing like reading a book about a condition or illness that we now either prevent with better nutrition, clean water, vaccines, municipal sanitation, etc. or have such effective treatments for that the average person may not realize how dangerous or painful it was for previous generations. It’s exhilarating to read about all of the progress we’ve made.
10. Mutual Aid
That is, stories about people working together to solve seemingly insurmountable problems. It’s easy for this topic to come across as an cheesy after school special, but when care is taken in fleshing out the characters and exploring the conflict(s) they face in depth, the hopefully happy ending that eventually comes can be immensely satisfying.
Happy (almost) New Year, readers!
It’s hard to tell which books will become classics. Not every bestseller is actually well written or will continue to affect readers in twenty or fifty years. Likewise, I have no doubt there are some true gems out there that may have had middling to poor sales but will eventually be rediscovered and taught in classrooms all across the world.
Sometimes I have to include books I haven’t actually read in my answers to Top Ten Tuesday posts because those weekly topics cover things I have little to no experience reading about.
Here are some books I hope to reread someday:
This will be a longer list, but most of the books on it are older. I have not had as much luck seeing more recent favourites on the small screen or the big screen, but I hope that will change now that the writer’s strike has been over for a while.
Since I don’t have kids, maybe these books are already widely loved by kids and teens today.
Here are some of the books I started reading in the last month or two but did not finish. I’m including my reasons for not finishing them in today’s post because of how subjective these things can be.