Tag Archives: Top Ten Tuesday

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

The original theme for this week was “My Unpopular Bookish Opinions,” but I’ve decided to veer in a different direction instead.

Here are some books that have four or five star ratings on Goodreads but who are not well known. As I haven’t read any of them yet, I can’t give an official recommendation.  They simply look interesting to me. 

If you’ve read any of them or if you have another title to share that’s highly regarded but not well known, I’d love to hear your thoughts. There’s nothing like finding a gem of a book that most people haven’t heard about yet.

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

March and April are a muddy, rainy time here in Southern Ontario. The dry, sunny scenes filled with colourful flowers that you see in the media or in stock photos do happen here, but not until May and June after the ground has firmed up and the plants have actually had a chance to, you know, grow.

If you arrive any earlier in the year than that, pack rain boots and do not plan any outdoor picnics. What I like about this time of year, other than the slowly warming days and longer hours of sunshine, are the rainbows.

When you get a lot of thunderstorms and rainstorms, this generally also means you’ll see your fair share of rainbows as well.

So rainbows are my interpretation of the springy cover theme this week. Here are ten picture books that feature rainbows on their covers. As I tend to prefer real rainbows to drawings of them, I’m including a real rainbow in this post and links to the rainbow book covers below.

1. A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman

2. The Rainbow Goblins by Ul De Rico

3. Sky Fire by Frank Asch

4. Ava and the Rainbow by Ged Adamson

5. The End of the Rainbow by Liza Donnelly

6. Elmer and the Rainbow by David McKee

7. Storytime: The Greedy Rainbow by Susan Chandler

8. The Rainbow Weaver by Lyndsay Russell

9. The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow by Sean Callahan

10. Rainbow Rider by Jane Yolen

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

One of the reasons why I enjoy science fiction so much is how often authors in this genre set their tales in alternate universes, alternate timelines, or in versions of the past or future that are likewise different from our own in important ways.

Here are ten books with these sorts of settings.

1. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

2. My Real Children by Jo Walton

3. To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2) by Connie Willis

4. Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

5 .11/22/63 by Stephen King

6. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

7. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

8. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

9. The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

10. The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

As I mostly review and discuss speculative fiction books on my blog, that’s the genre I will be narrowing down this week’s prompt to.

There are a lot of reasons why I might not write a review for a book such as:

1) While there have been a handful of exceptions over the years, I generally refrain from writing one-star or two-star reviews out of respect for the hard work authors do. Some stories are simply never going to mesh with my tastes, but other readers may love those styles or genres! So unless there’s a serious issue with plagiarism or advocating bigotry or something in a tale that I feel the need to warn other readers about, I quietly move on to other options that fit my tastes better.

2) I prefer to  publish thoughtful, deep reviews and don’t have enough hours in the day to write that way for everything I read.

3) Some books are excellent but hard to review without sharing major spoilers due to how the plot is framed and when certain details are released.

4) Other books are decent but don’t give me strong emotions in either direction that would compel me to write a review. Meh doesn’t make for a very helpful or exciting review.

5) They’re older. I try – and the keyword there is try – to prioritize newer books for review as their authors are more likely to be alive and trying to establish audiences for themselves.

Here are some of the many older speculative fiction books I’ve read and enjoyed but will probably never review:

1.1984 by George Orwell

2. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

3. The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1) by Mary Doria Russell

4.Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

5. Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1) by Margaret Atwood

6. Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1) by Octavia E. Butler

7. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

8. Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

9.The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper

10.Prey by Michael Crichton