Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Books of 2023

Birnam Wood is on the move... Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice, on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker - or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books With One-Word Titles

Many thanks to Angela from Reading Frenzy Book Blog for this theme it is a list of books with one-word titles, which should bring together a range of books from different genres which is always fun! And the rules I set myself are that I will share the most recently added one-word titles in my library, excluding books whose title is the protagonist's name... although I am stretching that a little with the last book on the list!

The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023

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

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.