Top 5 Tuesday: TBR Veterans

Top 5 Tuesday is a fun, weekly meme that asks you to pick 5 books that fit that week’s theme. It was created by Bionic Bookworm and is currently being hosted by Meeghan Reads. You should check out their wonderful blog for more details and the list of prompts!

This was a pretty tricky one for me as my approach to books I want to read is

a) Start reading them immediately
b) Put them down when they lose my interest

It’s only in recent years I’ve started using a TBR list i.e. I’ve found too many books I want to read for this to work despite being happy to open three or four reads a day. Yes, most of them end up not finished. I’m rather picky about this whole reading thing you know. Throw in a year of attacking my backlist and there’s not a whole lot.

But I think I can find five pretty good ones. So let’s go!

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin

I know Le Guin’s fantasy work well, but I’ve never read her sci-fi. I’ve known of it, I’ve vaguely intended to read it, but I rarely pick a sci-fi over a fantasy book so it hasn’t happened. But with me trying to get more into sci-fi, it seems only appropriate to finally get to it. I mean, thought provoking novels with towering reputations from an author I hugely admire? Yeah, that’s something that’s got to be on my TBR.

The Just City by Jo Walton

This one has been on my TBR ever since I started getting back into the fantasy scene big style. The idea is just insanely interesting: Athena populates a city with a bunch of kids and teachers in a massive philosophical experiment to try and see if Plato’s experiment. How can you not want to read this? Admittedly, it’s also something I can see myself bouncing off, so I’m keeping it for just the right day. But I hope it’ll be everything I think it can be.

The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin

I like to keep in touch with the big beasts and right now, critically, I think Jemisin is about as big as they come. It’s pretty easy to pick out the magnum opus too to date: The Fifth Season. So why haven’t I read it? Well, as noted, I’m a picky bugger. On the list of things I’m particularly picky about, present tense comes very high. I am towards it as Lord Vetinari is to mime artists, for those who get the reference. For those who don’t – scorpion pits. So The Fifth Season hangs around, too important to remove and too likely to grate to be read. Tricky one. I’ll find an answer some day.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

I read the comic of this maybe five, six years ago, and thought it was fantastic. I’d very much like to read the book version to play compare and contrast but, on account of knowing the story, I’ve not been super driven to do so. So this one’s been hanging around, waiting for me to find it in a library or second hand shop. One of these days eh.

A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay

I have loved Guy Gavriel Kay’s books for the better part of twenty years, give or take. Along a certain spectrum, he is my platonic ideal of an author. But I have not read them all, for various reasons of inertia. I’ve tried out A Song for Arbonne briefly without loving it. But I need to try it properly, and have known this for a long time. Its Southern France-esque setting and themes of culture vs war appeal too much. So this is my ultimate TBR veteran, and I think the moment I hit publish, I’m going to rectify this.

I did tell you I tend to be rather impulse driven about starting books, right…

Anyway, that’s my Tuesday Top Five, let me know what you think.