Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Summer 2024 To-Read List

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

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Welcome to another Top Ten Tuesday – a week where I have finished two books and am a fair way into another two, or three if you include Fiore sopra l’inferno which I am reading in Italian… sometimes I am studying it for the language and carefully making notes and new vocabulary; other times I am just reading it as a novel. It is slow going though!

This week’s post is a regular seasonal glance at my to-read list… and I offer my usual caveat that I don’t really do to-read lists, being a complete mood reader. But these are currently the books that I am hoping to read over the next few weeks and then over the long summer vacation!

Fifteen Wild Decembers, Karen Powell

Isolated from society, Emily Brontë and her siblings spend their days inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape to which she has become so passionately bound, she is simply unable to function.

To the outside world, Emily Brontë appears taciturn and unexceptional, but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment. A violent phenomenon is about to burst forth that will fuse her imaginary world with the landscape of her beloved Yorkshire and change the literary world forever.

A ficitonalised Emily Bronte… that was not something that I knew I wanted… but as it turns out I am pretty excited by the thought of this one.

Strong Female Character, Fern Brady

A summary of my book:

1. I’m diagnosed with autism 20 years after telling a doctor I had it.

2. My terrible Catholic childhood: I hate my parents etc.

3. My friendship with an elderly man who runs the corner shop and is definitely not trying to groom me. I get groomed.

4. Homelessness.

5. Stripping.

6. More stripping but with more nervous breakdowns.

7. I hate everyone at uni and live with a psycho etc.

8. REDACTED as too spicy.

9. After everyone tells me I don’t look autistic, I try to cure my autism and get addicted to Xanax.

10. REDACTED as too embarrassing.

Fern Brady is funny. Her account of life as an autistic person, bearing in mind my daughter is also autistic, is enough to overcome my usual suspicion of celebrity memoirs and autobiographies…

Sunburn, Chloe Michelle Howarth

It’s the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she’s always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn’t appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.

Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.

But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. Neither will be easy, but only one will offer her happiness.

Irish writing seems to be very much in the ascendency at the moment… and this sapphic coming of age tale feels both very Irish and very compelling.

Parade, Rachel Cusk

Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down.

In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street.

A mother dies. A man falls to his death. Couples seek escape in distant lands.

The new novel from one of the most distinctive writers of the age, Parade sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot, to tell a true story-about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves.

Having read Cusk’s Second Place, I am not excited and a little intimidated by another novel by her. At least the summer will give me time to get to grips with it!

Saltblood, Francesca De Tores

In a rented room outside Plymouth in 1685, a daughter is born as her half-brother is dying. Her mother makes a decision: Mary will become Mark, and Ma will continue to collect his inheritance money.

Mary’s dual existence as Mark will lead to a role as a footman in a grand house, serving a French mistress; to the navy, learning who to trust and how to navigate by the stars; and to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, finding love among the bloodshed and the mud. But none of this will stop Mary yearning for the sea.

Drawn back to the water, Mary must reinvent herself yet again, for a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing. This time Mary will become something more dangerous than a woman.

She will become a pirate.

Mary Read was a real historical pirate queen… and this novel looks both thrilling and thoughtful…

The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo

FATE CAN BE CHANGED. CURSES CAN BE BROKEN.

In a shabby house in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil. But when her scheming mistress discovers her scullion is hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to win over the royal court. Determined to seize this chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of power-hungry nobility, desperate kings, holy men and seers, where the lines between magic, science and fraud blur.

With the pyres of the Inquisition burning, she must use every bit of her wit and resilience to win fame and hide the truth of her ancestry – even if that means enlisting the help of an embittered immortal familiar, whose own secrets could cost her everything.

This summer really does look like it will be a summer of historical reads… and a bit of real magic in the face of the Inquisition sound gripping! I have found Bardugo a little hit-and-miss but I have hopes.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden

World War One, and as shells fall in Flanders, a Canadian nurse searches for her brother believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise in this gripping and powerful historical novel from the bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.

January 1918. Laura Iven has been discharged from her duties as a nurse and sent back to Halifax, Canada, leaving behind a brother still fighting in the trenches of the First World War. Now home, she receives word of Freddie’s death in action along with his uniform -but something doesn’t quite make sense. Determined to find out more, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about ghosts moving among those still living and a strange inn-keeper whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could this have happened to Freddie – but if so, where is he?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped under an overturned pillbox with an enemy soldier, a German, each of them badly wounded. Against all odds, the two men form a bond and succeed in clawing their way out. But once in No Man’s Land, where can either of them turn where they won’t be shot as enemy soldiers or deserters? As the killing continues, they meet a man – a fiddler – who seems to have the power to make the hellscape that surrounds them disappear. But at what price?

Arden’s Winternight trilogy was fantastic, in my opinion so I have been looking foward to this new book so much!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by Alzheimer’s, see their sister one last time, and meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

I have heard so much good about this series that I think it is time to take a look and see what the furore is about!

In the Lives of Puppets, T J Klune

In a small home, built into the branches of a tree, live a human named Victor and three robots. These are a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, a small vacuum desperate for love and attention, and a fatherly inventor-android named Giovanni Lawson. Together they’re a family, hidden and safe.

Then Vic salvages an unfamiliar android labelled ‘HAP’. He learns that Hap and Gio share a dark past, where they hunted humans. And Hap unwittingly gives away Gio’s location. Before they know it, robots from Gio’s former life arrive – to capture and return the android to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams.

The rest of the unconventional family must travel across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommissioning. Or worse, reprogramming. Along the way, Vic must decide if he can handle his feelings for Hap – even if they come with strings attached.

I’ve yet to find a T J Klune book that I have not enjoyed immensely so I’m looking forward to catching up with this one before Somewhere Beyond the Sea is released.

Grave Expectations, Alice Bell

Claire and Sophie aren’t your typical murder investigators . . .

When 30-something freelance medium Claire Hendricks is invited to an old university friend’s country pile to provide entertainment for a family party, her best friend Sophie tags along. In fact, Sophie rarely leaves Claire’s side, because she’s been haunting her ever since she was murdered at the age of seventeen.

On arrival at The Cloisters it quickly becomes clear that this family is hiding more than just the good china, as Claire learns someone has recently met an untimely end at the house.

Teaming up with the least unbearable members of the Wellington-Forge family – depressive ex-cop Basher and teenage radical Alex – Claire and Sophie determine to figure out not just whodunnit, but who they killed, why and when.

Together they must race against incompetence to find the murderer – before the murderer finds them…

I have no idea what this book is about beyond the blurb… but a crime solving medium-ghost team sounds just fun. And a literary punning title…. When I spotted this – and its sequel – in Waterstones, how could I not think it was worth a punt?

So those were the books I have lined up – currently – to read this summer. I am really looking forward to seeing your lists, and possibly finding others to supplant those on my own list before the day is out!

Upcoming Themes

June 25: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2024
July 2: Books with My Favorite Colour on the Cover
July 9: Throwback Freebie (Pick a TTT topic that has been previously done. Maybe you missed it, weren’t blogging then, or you’d like to update an old list you made. All previous topics are listed below.)
July 16: Ten Things I Loved About [Insert Book Title Here] (Pick any book and tell us ten things you loved about it!) (submitted by Cathy @ WhatCathyReadNext)
July 23: Debut Novels I Enjoyed (A debut novel is an author’s first published book. You could also choose to share genre or age group debuts if you’d prefer, such as an adult fiction author’s first YA book or a mystery writer’s first romance.) (submitted by Angela @ Reading Frenzy)
July 30: Books I Wish Had More/Less [Insert Your Concept Here] In Them (for example: more/less romance, more/less world building, less info dumping, more/fewer pages, more character development, fewer characters, fewer descriptions, more suspense, etc.)

Published by The Book Lover's Sanctuary

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5 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Summer 2024 To-Read List”

  5. Saltblood, The Familiar, and Strong Female Character are ones I want to read too! Wishing you a happy summer reading in all its moody glory!

    Liked by 1 person

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