This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “Top Ten Books I’m Not Sure I Want To Read”, which is an interesting one. Here goes…

1. The Firebrand, Marion Zimmer Bradley. I’m fairly sure I don’t want to read this anymore, with all the stuff that’s come out about Bradley’s child abuse, enabling of paedophilia, etc. And I know I loathed The Mists of Avalon. But it’s Cassandra of Troy, and that gives me this tiny spark of hope, because I haven’t read enough about her… but yeah, probably a bad idea.
2. So You Want to Be a Wizard, Diane Duane. For no big reason, it’s just — they’ve been on my to read list for so long, and have never yet caught my attention and said “read me, now”.
3. The Angel’s Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I know I’ve read books of his before, but the ones in this series haven’t really stuck in my mind, and I’m not sure I have the interest anymore.
4. The Body at the Tower, Y.S. Lee. I read the first book ages ago and thought it was okay, but… the fact that I never went on to the second or third books, and I mean not even within two or three years, doesn’t really encourage me to go back and try them.
5. Snobbery with Violence, M.C. Beaton. Did noooot get on with her Agatha Raisin books.
6. Avempartha, Michael J. Sullivan. I liked the first book well enough, but it’s another where I just didn’t pick up the next.
7. Empress, Karen Miller. I loved what she did with characters in the Innocent Mage duology, but some of the plot was just… argh, cartoon villains and such slow development of events. And other people have said they didn’t think she did a good job with the characters here.
8. The Many-Coloured Land, Julian May. I tried these when I was younger and never got into them… Sorry Mum.
9. The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker. Mostly just because it’s so dauntingly long.
10. Lord Foul’s Bane, Stephen Donaldson. Sorry again, Mum! This is just one that’s never appealed to me that much, especially because of the way the character behaves very early on. (The description of his leprosy, etc, didn’t bother me at all; while others think that’s a slow beginning, I liked the way it set him up. But his behaviour? Ughh.)

So, what about everyone else? And if you tell me The Lord of the Rings, we need to have words. (You are allowed not to like it, I swear.)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is the kind of thing I’m usually bad at, but I’ll have a go. “Top ten characters I’d want with me on a desert island”, gogogo. Including comics characters in this list because I review comics here too!

1. Aragorn, from The Lord of the Rings: Because he has all the camping skill and life experience. He’d totally be able to find us shelter and figure stuff out. If he can manage hobbits, he could take care of me. For one thing, I don’t eat as much.
2. Tony Stark, from Iron Man: Because he’d think of a way off the desert island, using random scrap if necessary.
3. Katniss Everdeen, from The Hunger Games: Again, she knows her survival stuff. And she can hunt, if the island is big enough.
4. Will Stanton, from The Dark is Rising: Because then I’d never be lacking a conversation partner, at least.
5. Cath Avery, from Fangirl: Because, well, fangirling. And we could bond over social anxiety.
6. FitzChivalry Farseer, from Assassin’s Apprentice: He’d be able to make sure we didn’t poison ourselves, he could communicate with animals for us, and my mum would be totally jealous.
7. Nighteyes, from Assassin’s Apprentice: Who knows when a wolf might come in handy — and besides, you wouldn’t want to separate Nighteyes and Fitz; they’re a package deal.
8. Sabriel, from Sabriel: Again, she’s competent, capable of looking after herself, she might be able to whistle up a Paperwing to fly some of us out of there or go into Death to send a message for help or something, and in the first book at least she’s close-ish to my age — younger, but mature. So we’d have stuff in common, I think.
9. Billy Kaplan, from Young Avengers: He can alter reality with his mind. ’nuff said.
10. Gwaihir the Windlord, from The Lord of the Rings: I’m sure if we were nice to him he’d fly everyone off the island, or at least go for help. Maybe he should’ve been my #1.

Well, that’s… probably a fairly unusual list, though I bet other people have said Katniss!

I was bad at participating in this one last week — I did my own post, but I don’t think I commented on any others. I meant to, but stuff kept happening. I feel like a bad book blogger! And on that note, this week’s Top Ten Tuesday is “top ten blogging confessions”.

1. I’m starting to have trouble getting round to reading longer books/series because I feel like I should be reviewing more often. This was totally encouraged by GR’s reading challenge and stuff like that. I’m trying to be more sensible about it, but it’s strange; I used to rip right through even really long books, but now that I worry about not being able to do so, somehow I have a problem.
2. Sometimes I equivocate far too much writing a review because people whose opinions I respect liked the book, and I just didn’t. Or an editor/publisher I normally think is great, or want to support, put out the book. Or I know the author a bit on twitter and I’m afraid they’ll find it. (N.B. In that case, I usually go with rating it with my gut feeling, but the review will probably talk about why it wasn’t my thing instead of me saying anything bad about the book itself.)
3. I find it hard to be social with other book bloggers. I have a pretty broad range of interests, so that makes some meme posts and so on really weird — I might know some of the books they’re reading, but often they won’t know any of mine, or they don’t even venture into whatever genre I’m currently most into. Then I feel awkward and not sure if I’m really having fun interacting, or just doing it to get page views. (Given the number of books I’m finding through blogs, though, I’m pretty sure it’s the former.)
4. My mother reads my blog. You see “alc3261” commenting? Yeah. Hi, Mum.
5. I am way, way behind on reading/blogging about ARCs. I really need to have a ban on asking for any more, but as soon as I make that resolution, something awesome shows up.
6. I don’t like anyone else trying to dictate the content of my blog. So if someone’s publicist sets up an interview with them or something on my blog, I get pretty twitchy when they start saying that I have to link to certain things, say certain things, not say others. Sometimes I’ll work around that (it’s natural to remind me to link to a pre-order page or something!); other times, it might end up making me not want to work with the company again.
7. I keep starting new books before I’ve finished the old ones. And buying new books, too. Ahem. I’ve been trying to work on this, but honestly having the full list of books I technically have in progress might be putting me off. Time to weed it out?
8. I have no idea what people will find interesting, most of the time. Like, memes, well, people are doing those, so maybe they’ll provide some relevant content. But when I write about the stuff that really matters to me (mental health, access to reading after sight loss, or my interview with Carrie Patel, just for example), I get fretful about whether it gets hits/comments, etc.
9. I rarely have more than one post scheduled. I could get really organised and sort out some of my meme posts weeks in advance, but I’ve always been more one to play it by ear. Although I’m doing better at remembering to do this stuff than I ever did at remembering my homework.
10. I go through phases. I tend to have a fairly cyclical approach to my hobbies. The main five, I guess, are reading, writing, gaming, running, and crochet. I’ve been on more of a reading phase for quite a while now, but writing and gaming are in the ascendent right now. This may mean fewer posts… It probably won’t, though, because reading is always my dominant hobby.

Don’t forget to link me to your TTT posts, people — or anything you’ve written in the last week that you think is interesting and would like some eyes/comments on!

This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is “top ten books on my TBR list this summer”. I don’t pick them for any particular summeryness, so it’s not especially topical: this is just a bunch of the books I really hope to get through this summer. I’ve split it into two sets of five, too; five new books, five rereads.

New books

1. The Burning Dark, by Adam Christopher. I’ve been meaning to read this for a while, it keeps catching my eye, so hey, why not. And since it’s supposed to be creepy, maybe reading it in the bright sunshine will help avoid me getting too twitchy…
2. Yendi, by Steven Brust. Because I’ve started it already and really should get on with it!
3. Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell. I like her style, and this’ll give me something relatively breezy to read. I might end up reading it while I’m ‘on duty’ at the clinic, in the quiet moments: I think it might suit that sort of reading, for me.
4. Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean. I’ve had this on the in-progress pile for a little while now, to my shame. And I could do with the nostalgia for college right now.
5. The Islands of Chaldea, by Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Jones. I’ve been saving this for a rainy day, and there are plenty of those in Wales.

Rereads

1. The Fire’s Stone, by Tanya Huff. I’ve been meaning to reread this for a while, and Tanya Huff is always fun.
2. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. This has been on my list of favourite books for quiiiite a long time, but I haven’t read it recently.
3. Lifelode, by Jo Walton. I’m rereading a lot of Jo’s work at the moment, and Lifelode is pretty special. I’m looking forward to reading it again.
4. Santa Olivia, by Jacqueline Carey. Because hey, werewolves! Sorta. And I still haven’t read the second book.
5. The Drowning City, by Amanda Downum. I remember really liking this, and I first read it a few summers ago, so it seems like high time.