Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Summer 2023 To-Read List

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

• 2nd May: The First 10 Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf
• 9th May: Books I recommend most to others
• 16th May: Things Getting in the Way of Reading
• 23rd May: Things That Make Me Instantly Want to Read a Book (Auto-Buy Authors)
• 30th May: Things That Make Me Instantly NOT Want to Read a Book
• 6th June: Books or Covers that Feel/Look Like Summer
• 13th June: Bookish Wishes

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Well, I called it last week with my prediction for the Women’s Prize winner 2023 – not that there was any real doubt in my mind – and a huge congratulations to Barbara Kingsolver for winning with Demon Copperhead, and all the other nominated authors on both the short- and longlists.

This week’s Top Ten theme is a look forward to the books on our TBRs for the summer – those books that will fill up the long six weeks of the summer vacation, books that will be taken to the beach with us, to the parks, to gardens. For me, books that will come with me and my family to Rome on our first ‘proper’ foreign holiday … ever. Unless you count EuroDisney which I don’t: EuroDisney was great but so unreal that it really didn’t feel like visiting France in any way!

With next week’s theme looking at books to be released in the second half of the year – and I love the chance to research upcoming books – I’m going to limit my list this week to the ten books that I currently own but have not yet read.

Currently Reading

Fire Rush, Jacqueline Crooks

Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club in the industrial town on the outskirts of London. A young woman unsure of her future, the sound is her guide – a chance to discover who she really is in the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights. In the dance-hall darkness, dub is the music of her soul, her friendships, her ancestry.

But everything changes when she meets Moose, the man she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape.

When their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation where past and present collide with explosive consequences.

A truly mesmerising Caribbean voice, capturing real heartbreak and emotion in the charged atmosphere of 1970s London and the Caribbean.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty

Amina al-Sirafi has survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse, she jumps at the chance for one final adventure with her old crew that will make her a legend and offers a fortune that will secure her and her family’s future forever.

Yet the deeper Amina dives the higher the stakes. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savour just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.

My first foray into Chakraborty’s writing and it is great fun so far with demon fighting, jail breaking, pirating…

The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

‘I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.

My name is Kvothe.
You may have heard of me’

So begins the tale of Kvothe – currently known as Kote, the unassuming innkeepter – from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, through his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe the notorious magician, the accomplished thief, the masterful musician, the dragon-slayer, the legend-hunter, the lover, the thief and the infamous assassin.

A re-read – or a re-listen to – for me, which is very unusual in and of itself. But it is a cracking yarn!

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I do seem to be in something of a fantasy mood at the moment, looking at the Chakraborty and Rothfuss books that I am currently reading, as well as a number of the books queued up that I am yet to start:

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Shy, Max Porter

This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy.

You mustn’t do that to yourself Shy. You mustn’t hurt yourself like that.

He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him.

Got your special meds, nutcase?

He is escaping Last Chance, a home for ‘very disturbed young men’, and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past and the heavy question of his future.

I have adored everything that Max Porter has ever written – the combination of literariness, linguisitic playfulness and deeply real and moving emotion is exceptional. So looking forward to this.

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I Must Betray You, Ruta Sepetys

Trapped by an evil dictatorship, will Cristian be forced to betray his family or will he risk everything he loves to resist? A bestselling YA thriller based on real events, from a prizewinning author.

Cristian has lived his entire life in the grip of a repressive dictatorship. The country is governed by fear.

When the secret police blackmail him, Cristian has an impossible choice. Save the life of his sick grandfather by informing on his family, or risk his life – and all of theirs – by resisting?

At 17, Cristian dreams of being free but doesn’t know where to turn. In this climate of constant suspicion, can he trust his best friend, his girlfriend or even his family?

Closely based on the real events of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, this is a powerful, heart-breaking thriller from the author of Salt to the Sea, winner of the Carnegie Medal.

For me, Sepetys has never quite managed to acheive the heights she had with Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea… but maybe this is the one.

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Mr Loverman, Bernardino Evaristo

Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he’s lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather – but he is also secretly homosexual, lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris.

His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away?

Mr Loverman is a ground-breaking exploration of Britain’s older Caribbean community, which explodes cultural myths and fallacies and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves.

Bought on the strength of the name Evaristo and Girl Woman Other, this sounds like a wonderfully optimistic and charming novel – looling forward to it immensely.

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Tress of the Emerald Sea, Brandon Sanderson

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie.

But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea.

Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?

Brandon Sanderson takes on The Princess Bride in the Cosmere? This is the first of a few retellings on this list… and I mean, what’s not to love in that summary?

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The Woman in the Purple Skirt, Natsuko Imamura

Almost every day, the Woman in the Purple Skirt buys a single cream bun and goes to the park, where she sits on a bench to eat it as the local children taunt her. She is observed at all times by the undetected narrator, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. From a distance the Woman in the Purple Skirt looks like a schoolgirl, but there are age spots on her face, and her hair is dry and stiff. Like the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, she is single, she lives in a small, run-down apartment, and she is short on money. The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan lures her to a job where she herself works, as a hotel housekeeper; soon the Woman in the Purple Skirt is having an affair with the boss. Unfortunately, no one knows or cares about the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. That’s the difference between her and the Woman in the Purple Skirt.

Studiously deadpan, highly original, and unsettling, The Woman in the Purple Skirt explores the dynamics of envy, the mechanisms of power in the workplace, and the vulnerability of unmarried women in a taut, voyeuristic narrative about the sometimes desperate desire to be seen.

This just sounds fascinating… spotted it in Waterstones…

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The Lock-Up, John Banville

1950s Dublin. in a lock-up garage in the city, the body of a young woman is discovered – an apparent suicide. But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play.

The victim’s sister, a newspaper reporter from London, returns to Dublin to join the two men in their quest to uncover the truth.

But, as they explore her links to a wealthy German family in County Wicklow, and to investigative work she may have been doing in Israel, they are confronted with an ever-deepening mystery.

With relations between the two men increasingly strained, and their investigation taking them back to the final days of the Second World War, can they join the pieces of a hidden puzzle?

I love Banville’s detective fiction series with Quirke and Strafford – he captures the sense of time and palce so exquisitely…

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Yellowface, R. F. Kuang

Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.

White lies
When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.

Dark humour
But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

Deadly consequences…
What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

I have been meaning to read Kuang for so long and neer quite got round to The Poppy War, and Babel could easily have appeared on this list too.

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Witch King, Martha Wells

“I didn’t know you were a… demon.”
“You idiot. I’m the demon.”
Kai’s having a long day in Martha Wells’ Witch King….

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.

Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries were a joy to read, although I’ve not read her longer fiction. As I said, I have leaned back into the fantasy genre recently….

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August Blue, Deborah Levy

At the height of her career, concert pianist Elsa M. Anderson – former child prodigy, now in her thirties – walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance.

Now she is in Athens, watching as another young woman, a stranger but uncannily familiar – almost her double – purchases a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, on the run from her talent and her history.

So begins a journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who bought the dancing horses.

A dazzling portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis, August Blue uncovers the ways in which we seek to lose an old story, find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.

I enjoy the more contemplative novel too, alongside the world building and epic plots of fantasy and found The Man Who Saw Everything fascinating…. hopefully this will match it. Somehow, the blurb sounds eerily similar to The Woman in the Purple Skirt.

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In The Lives Of Puppets, T. J. Klune

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees live three robots – fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.

The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled ‘HAP’, he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio – a past spent hunting humans.

When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.

Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: can he accept love with strings attached?

Another re-telling, another fantasy… and T. J. Klune is a master of low stakes, highly tender fantasy. Can he match The House in the Cerulean Sea or Under the Whispering Door?

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So, these are the bokos that are currnelty towards the top of my summer tbr lsit… but there is a swelling undertow of other unread novels clamouring to be picked up just behind them, as well as whatever books I may come across in your lists and recommendations this week!

Have a great TTT and enjoy your summer reading!

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Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes

June 27: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2023
July 4: Book Covers In the Colors of My Country’s Flag (It’s the 4th of July in the USA today, so tell us what country you live in and share book covers that match the colors of your country’s flag!)
July 11: Freebie
July 18: Books With One-Word Titles (submitted by Angela @ Reading Frenzy Book Blog)
July 25: Ten Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish (Feel free to tell us why if you want, but if you do please be nice to the authors and don’t tag them when you mention your post on social media!)
August 1: Forgotten Backlist Titles (Spread love for books that people don’t talk about much anymore!)
August 8: Books I’ve Read/Want to Read Because of Top Ten Tuesday (books you discovered through Top Ten Tuesday, or they kept appearing in top tens and you got intrigued) (submitted by Ellie at Curiosity Killed the Bookworm)