Top Ten Tuesday: Forgotten Backlist Titles

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

• 6th June: Books or Covers that Feel/Look Like Summer
• 13th June: Bookish Wishes
• 20th June: Books on My Summer 2023 To-Read List
• 27th June: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2023
• 4th July: Book Covers in the Colours of My Country’s Flag
• 11th July: Freebie: Books Set in Rome
• 18th July: Books With One-Word Titles
• 25th July: Ten Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish

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We have now entered August if you can believe that – heralded here in the UK with incredibly wet and miserable weather, with a summer cold that knocked out the whole family for a week on-and-off and a booking the Barbie movie… There are still so many books that I have fallen behind on my reviews and which I hope to catch up on before I head off to Rome for a week. At least the sun is out there – and the temperatures are a little more manageable than a couple of weeks ago!

This week’s theme is an interesting one: Jana invites us to Spread love for books that people don’t talk about much anymore! I am not exactly sure what that means, but I will offer up books that I have loved in the past but which I have not really thought about and reconsidered and which have not received as much social media hype as they deserve… perhaps underrated books.

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The Book of Lost Things, John Connolley

‘Once upon a time, there was a boy who lost his mother . . .’

As twelve-year-old David takes refuge from his grief in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds the real world and the fantasy world begin to blend.

That is when bad things start to happen. That is when the Crooked Man comes. And David is violently propelled into a land populated by heroes, wolves and monsters, his quest to find the legendary Book of Lost Things.

I have such fond memories of this – dark fairytale atmosphere as books and stories manage our young protagonist’s grief. This was gorgeous and no one seems to talk about it… but a sequel is being published in September!

Rotherweird, Andrew Caldecott

1558: Twelve children, gifted far beyond their years, are banished by their Tudor queen to the town of Rotherweird. Some say they are the golden generation; some say the devil’s spawn. But everyone knows they are something to be revered – and feared.

Four and a half centuries on, cast adrift from the rest of England by Elizabeth I and still bound by its ancient laws, Rotherweird’s independence is subject to one disturbing condition: nobody, but nobody, studies the town or its history.

Then an Outsider arrives, a man of unparallelled wealth and power, enough to buy the whole of Rotherweird – deeply buried secrets and all . . .

So wonderfully quirky and odd, this is a great series – alternate worlds, portals, and the town itself is almost a character in its own right with its streets, rooftops, traditions and river all give the town it’s bizarre charm – and threat.

The Rehearsal, Eleanor Catton

A high-school sex scandal jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their own potency and power. The publicity seems to turn every act into a performance and every platform into a stage.

But when the local drama school decides to turn the scandal into a show, the real world and the world of the theatre are forced to meet, and soon the boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve … 

The Rehearsal is an exhilarating and provocative novel about the unsimple mess of human desire, at once a tender evocation of its young protagonists and a shrewd expose of emotional compromise.

Eleanor Catton may not be overlooked, but I have never seent his her debut novel talked about… and for me it is probably her most accessible, heady, intense novel!

Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger

When Elspeth Noblin dies she leaves her beautiful flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina Poole, on the condition that their mother is never allowed to cross the threshold. But until the solicitor’s letter falls through the door of their suburban American home, either Julia nor Valentina knew their aunt existed. The twins hope that in London their own, separate, lives can finally begin but they have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt’s mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them and works in the cemetery itself.

As the twins unravel the secrets of their aunt, who doesn’t seem quite ready to leave her flat, even after death, Niffenegger weaves together a delicious and deadly ghost story about love, loss and identity.

Niffenegger won a lot of attention for The Time Traveller’s Wife, but this one – her follow up – was equally well written and structured, and I found the ghostly elements more persuasive than the time travelling…

Pet, Akwaeke Emezi

How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson all her life.

But when she meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colours and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told.

Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth.

Love Emezi so much as a writer but this, her Young Adult offering which showcases her incredible use of language and characterisation

Stoner, John Williams

William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father’s farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death, his colleagues remember him rarely.

Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value – of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history – and in doing so reclaims the significance of an individual life.

Railsea, China Mieville

Savage giant moles, rail pirates, and explorers abound in China Miéville’s thrilling young adult novel, Railsea.

On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt. The giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death and the other’s glory – are extraordinary. But no matter how spectacular it is, travelling the endless rails of the railsea, Sham senses that there’s more to life. Even if his captain can think only of her obsessive hunt for one savage mole.

When they find a wrecked train, it’s a welcome distraction. But the impossible salvage Sham finds there leads to trouble. Soon he’s hunted on all sides: by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham’s life that’s about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.

As with many on this list, the author is a regular name on bookish lists but I never see Railsea anywhere which is a shame: I mean, you had me at “rail pirates”, Mieville, but adding in “savage giant moles” as well? This is an incredible, fun adventure and also thoughtful and profound in many ways.

And the Ocean Was Our Sky, Patrick Ness

The whales of Bathsheba’s pod live for the hunt. Led by the formidable Captain Alexandra, they fight a never-ending war against men. Then the whales attack a man ship, and instead of easy prey they find the trail of a myth, a monster, perhaps the devil himself…

With their relentless Captain leading the chase, they embark on the final hunt, one that will forever change the worlds of whales and men.

Patrick Ness is one of the biggest names in Young Adult fiction, but this novel is very different to his other offerings: a retelling of Moby Dick – which Railsea is too – from the whales’ perspective… but also so much more.

History of the Rain, Niall Williams

Bedbound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, Plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery of ancestors, Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil – via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in her room, beneath the rain.

The stories – of her golden twin brother Aeney, their closeness even as he slips away; of their dogged pursuit of the Swains’ Impossible Standard and forever falling just short; of the wild, rain-sodden history of fourteen acres of the worst farming land in Ireland – pour forth in Ruthie’s still, small, strong, hopeful voice. 

This was just a beautiful, tender book – genuinely funny and tragic at the same time – but never got the recognition it deserved depiste appearing on the Booker list.

The Golem and the Djinni, Helene Wecker

One cold night, two newcomers emerge onto the streets of 1899 New York, and it is never the same again.

But these two are more than strangers to this land, they are strangers to this world. From the depths of folkloric history come Chava the golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi and Ahmad, a djinni, born in the ancient Syrian desert and trapped in an old copper flask released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.

Two companions who were never meant to be released, and never meant to meet. And when they do, their opposing natures will be sealed by a special bond, but one that is threatened by watching eyes, roaming owners and a misunderstanding world.

A glittering gem of a novel, as spell-binding as it is compelling, The Golem and The Djinni asks us what we’re made of and how we can break free.

This was a tender and thoughtful evocation of the immigrant experience – seen through the experiences of two supernatural creatures from different cultures meeting in nineteenth century New York. Great writing, great characters.

And, again, I belivee there is a sequel coming out…

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Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes

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)
August 15: Characters from Different Books Who Should Team Up (or date, be friends with, etc.) (Submitted by Cathy @ WhatCathyReadNext)
August 22: Genre Freebie (Pick a genre and build a list around it.)
August 29: Water (This can be covers with water on them, books with bodies of water in them, titles with bodies of water in them, etc.)
September 5: Books That Defied My Expectations (books you thought you would didn’t like that you loved, books you thought you’d love but didn’t, books that were not the genres they seemed to be, or in any other way subverted your expectations!) (Submitted by Sia @ everybookadoorway.com)
September 12: Favorite Character Relationships (These can be platonic or not. Romantic relationships, parent/child, siblings, family bonds, friendships, found families, pet/human, etc.)
September 19: Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List
September 26: Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book