Tag: FIre Rush

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

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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.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023

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do try to follow a number of book prizes over the year - The Booker Prize, the Women's Prize, the YOTO Carnegie Medal, the Hugo Award ... I find it's a great way to stumble across new authors and it is through these awards that I have found so many of my now-favourite authors: Maggie O'Farrell, Meg Mason, Bernardino Evaristo, Elif Shafak, Becky Chambers, Arkady Martine. And this year I am in the unusual position that I have read - or at least begun - all of the shortlisted novels and some of the longlisted novels. I'm not sure how it happened: possibly I had coincidentally read some before either list was announced - certainly I read some via Netgalley; possibly a number of those I chose to read from the longlist were later included in the shortlist... perhaps I neglected my work in order to read more... But I am in a position to make comment on some of the issues and perhaps rank the novels.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Spring 2023 To-Read List

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As I have said on this blog before, I don't really do to be read lists. Whilst I may intend to tackle a certain set of books, I am more than happy to pick up this other one that caught my eye in Waterstones or the library, or that one that I began and put down six months ago, or this book that a friend recommneded, or that one which is all over social media, or - let's face it - sometimes this random one which I opened on my kindle by mistake! But this time of year coincides with the release of the Women's Prize for Fiction and I do try to read along with that longlist each year - to varying degrees of success - and so this week I offer you that longlist which I hope to have read some or most of before the 14th June when the winner is announced.