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.
Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics
- 3rd January: Favourite Books of 2022
- 10th January: Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2023
- 17th January: Bookish Goals for 2023
- 24th January: New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2022
- 31st January: Freebie: Fictional Readers
- 7th February: Top Ten Tuesday: 2023 Debut Books I’m Excited About
- 14th February: Love / Valentine’s Freebie
- 21st February: Favourite (Young Adult) Heroines
This is a nice whimsical topic: the bookish people I’d love to meet… but there are so many of them! Authors we could have to a dinner party, or meet at a book festival; characters who might be able to step from the page like Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, bloggers and reviewers…
Let’s think…
Classic Authors
Shakespeare
I mean, who wouldn’t want to meet him – he is so shrouded in mystery and for a writer who is utterly iconic, it is bizarre that he is so anonymous. There is so much speculation derived from his plays and poetry – Was he bisexual? Did he not love his wife? Was he Catholic? Did he train as a lawyer? Who was Mr W. H.? Who was the Dark Lady?
Above everything, however, the plays resound with playfulness and humour, humanity and wit.
Charles Dickens
It breaks my heart that Dickens has the reputation of being “serious” and a “social reformer” and representing the “fate of the poor” because, whilst all that is undoubtedly true, it misses the sheer joy and exuberance of his writing. I mean, just look at the names he coined for his characters, many of which he had plundered from real life – Ebenezer Scrooge, Serjeant Buzfuz, Anne Chickenstalker, Mr Wopsle, Mr Pumblechook, Abel Magwitch…
The Bronte Sisters
Such an incredible family that burst out of the Yorkshire moors and generated powerful iconic characters…. and a family line that then disappeared. The family tragedies that the sisters endured, and the imagination that sustained them were exceptional.
Contemporary Writers
Akwaeke Emezi
Emezi has an extraordinary imagination and a fantastic grasp of language and character – the author of Freshwater, Pet and the heart breaking The Death of VIvek Oji as well as the wonderfully entitled You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty.
Tana French
Author of the fantastic Dublin Murder Squad, as well as the standalone novels The Wych Elm and The Searcher, Tana French is a master of dialogue in her interviews. Surely anyone so good at writing dialogue would be a great person to speak to…
Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson is one of the few writers who can genuinely make me laugh out loud – all in the context of books that otherwise seem relatively serious and which can a moment later bring you close to tears!
Patrick Ness
Patrick Ness is an extraordinary writer and seems in his novels and interviews that I have read to be wonderfully humane and caring and warm. Would love to meet him just as the author of A Monster Calls and The Chaos Walking trilogy and Burn.
Kiran Millwood Hargrave
I have read most of Hargrave’s novels, both Young Adult life The Girl of Ink and Stars and Julia and the Shark, or her adult novels like The Mercies, she is a prolific and wonderful writer who comes across on social media and in her novels as wonderfully warm and real.
Neil Gaiman
Gaiman’s novels are as abundant as they are wonderful and allow my nine year old daughter to read Fortunately the Milk alongside me reading American Gods, or to grow from The Wolves in the Walls and The Sleeper and the Spindle whilst I read Good Omens and we can read Stardust, Coraline and The Graveyard Book together.
Witty, humane and charming are the adjectives that flow into my mind when considering Gaiman as a writer.
Francis Hardinge
Frances Hardinge’s twitter account describes her as a “writer of downright odd children’s books” – ’nuff said really!
Girls inhabited by ghosts of bears, trees that feed on lies, cursers who can turn you into a cloud, puppets with a voracious appetite and a kind heart… eclectic, eccentric and extraordinary tales!
The Top Ten Tuesday blogging family
I would have liked to have listed each and every one of you individually, but that would be unrealistic – maybe selecting a few of you, but that would be deeply unfair – this community is full of a range of readers and some share my reading habits closer to my own than others… but we all drop by into each others’ blogs, we like and comment and share and engage with each other and we learn and grow as readers – certainly my TBR grows each week! A wonderful and supportive community of readers brought together by our love of reading/
Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes
March 14: Books on My Spring 2023 To-Read List
March 21: TTT Rewind (Pick a previous topic that you missed or would like to re-do/update.)
March 28: Books for People Who Liked Author X
April 4: Indie/Self-Published Books (submitted by Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits)
April 11: Titles with Animals In Them and/or Covers with Animals On Them (submitted by Rachel @ Sunny Side)
April 18: Non-book Freebie (choose your own topic that’s not related to books! This could be hobbies, TV shows/movies, bands/singers, food items/recipes, top ten things about you, your top ten favorite things, places you’ve visited, favorite fashion designers, etc. Take this time to let your readers get to know you a little!)
April 25: Favorite Audiobook Narrators (or, if you don’t listen to audiobooks, name people—celebrities or otherwise—who might make you reconsider.)
The Book Lovers' Sanctuary 
I love you included classic authors! I’d love to meet Shakespeare
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I’ve met Patrick Hess. He grew up around here and was friends with a gal I taught with. I’ve like to meet Mark Twain.
My TTT list
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I’m jealous! I have to confess I’ve not read much by Twain…
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Tana French’s novels are amazing, aren’t they?!
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This is a great mix of authors to have all together at once. The conversation with be fascinating.
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It’s lovely that Gaiman has such a wide range of books that you and your daughter can read them together, I’ve only read Coraline and Good Omens but I would like to read more!
My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2023/03/07/top-ten-tuesday-410/
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It would be interesting to meet Shakespeare!
Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
https://readbakecreate.com/bookish-tea-party-guest-list/
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