Top Ten Tuesday – Books on My Summer 2024 To-Read List

I recently made myself a TBR jar. I had seen a couple of them floating around on YouTube and honestly I was pretty curious about how one could be used. The whole idea is that you stick all the books on your TBR into the jar in the form of slips of paper and then when you don’t know what book to read next you pull a book from the jar. I thought it was a neat idea and even if I could probably easily find a way to randomize my book selections online, I kind of wanted an excuse to decorate a jar.

I’ve been using this jar for a couple of months now even if I can’t yet fit all of my books in it. This fact has created a new goal for me. I want to be able to fit my entire TBR into the jar by the end of the year. This is a possible goal and to work towards it I have pulled ten books from the jar that I will try to read over the summer. This is the topic for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday and though I’m not the best at making reading lists for specific periods, because I’m doing it this way I have a bit of faith in myself.

This is a post for Top Ten Tuesday which is currently being run by That Artsy Reader Girl. I have now been participating in this for a little over a month and it has been fun.

Now onto the list.

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

This is the first book I drew for this post. I just looked at the Storygraph page for The Magic Fish and it looks like a beautiful story. I’m sure I will enjoy reading it. I like stories like this. It’s about a boy named Tiến who has something he wants to share with his parents, but he doesn’t know how to say it in Vietnamese and their English isn’t very good yet. During the story, he reads his favourite books that he borrows from the library to them. I feel like the magic fish from the title will be a major part of one of these stories. I’ll just have to wait and see.

The Locked Door by Frieda McFadden

Now we’re going from a coming-of-age novel about family, communication, and stories, to a much darker thriller novel about murder. I don’t know how much I will like this novel. I’m sure when I got it on my Kindle something about it caught my eye. To be honest, thrillers are often hit or miss for me. I either think that they were pretty good and they do thrill me, or I think that they are the dumbest story I’ve ever read. I hope this one turns out to be okay, though this description is giving me a couple of minor doubts.

It’s about a woman named Nora whose father was a serial killer when she was in elementary school. Decades later when she’s working at the hospital and her father is safely locked away, no one knows about her father. Then one of her patients is murdered in the same way her father used to do it. Now she has to figure out who did it before this gets pinned on her because she’s not a killer. The police can’t pin anything on her, that is unless they look in her basement.

Sejanus: Regent of Rome by John S McHugh

Following that dark thriller is a historical nonfiction book about Sejanus. He was Praetorian Prefect for emperor Tiberius in Ancient Rome. This book is supposed to dive into who Sejanus was, what he did, and what made him such an infamous historical figure. To be honest, there’s a lot about history that I would like to know more about, and one of the periods I want to learn more about is Ancient Rome. It sits at a nice 288 pages which means that it shouldn’t take too long to read if I end up finding it boring. Of course, even if it is boring, I will likely still get something from it. What I want from nonfiction is to be able to learn something I didn’t already know.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022

Every year there is a new edition of the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and I’ve been trying to collect them on my Kindle. I’ve been trying to read more short stories lately because I’ve also been writing more short fiction. I don’t know what types of stories I will find in this book, but I’m excited to find out. I don’t have much to say about this book aside from that.

The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin

In this book, Lee Smolin writes about the problem with physics, and how it hasn’t changed all that much since the 1970s. He goes over string theory and what the future of physics could be like. This was published in 2006 so maybe part of that future has already happened. It will be interesting to look that up when I get to reading it.

By this point, you’ve probably noticed how random my TBR list is. There is a lot of variety in it. You haven’t seen the most random books I have on it yet, though you won’t see those books on this summer’s read list.

The Art of Creative Writing by Lajos Egri

This is a book about writing. It was published in 1965 and is a classic book about writing. I’m happy that I pulled at least one writing book from my jar. I have quite a few of them and I want to read more about how other people view writing. Honestly, reading books like this helps me put the ways I view my writing into perspective and it’s nice. I don’t take them as other people telling me how to write, I take them more as other people telling me how they write and I can see what could work for me. I have taken bits of advice from books like this and they have helped me out.

Story Genius by Lisa Cron

I have read Lisa Cron’s first writing book, Wired for Story, but it just didn’t work for me. However, I have seen other people say how good this book is and how it’s on par with Save the Cat, so I will give it a try. In this book, Lisa Cron explains how you can use cognitive storytelling strategies to create a bluepoint for your story. I can see why it’s compared to Save the Cat. It’s nice how a whole fifth of this list is writing books. Two is a lot more than I’ve read all year in terms of books about writing.

The First Binding by RR Virdi

I followed RR Virdi on Twitter ages ago and I’ve seen him Tweet about this book. That’s why when I saw it in the Kindle store I had to get it. Now I’m finally going to read it and I’m excited. This is a long epic fantasy novel about a man named Ari and how he is going to unleash the first evil. I don’t know what this means, however, the description of what Ari has done before shows me that this is likely going to be quite a story. Also, the fact that this book is over 800 pages long tells me the same thing.

A Few Words About Words by Joseph J Diorio

I said that this list had only two books about writing in it. The truth is that I lied and this list has three books about writing in it. This one looks like a more modern guide to English grammar. I have read other books about grammar in the past, but they were mostly written many, many years ago. Even with updates, they can read kind of dryly today. I’m interested to see what Diorio has to say about grammar.

Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher

Now to finish this most random summer to read list is a book written by one of my current favourite authors. It’s also a fantasy novel which is a good place to end things off with. Stephen is a broken paladin after his god dies. Now three years later he’s a broken paladin. He meets a fugitive named Grace in an alley and then witnesses a failed assassination attempt. Now the two must navigate this world together, avoiding dangers, and trying to outrun the cryptic killer who always seems to be one step behind. This looks like a fun book. Like many of the books on this list, I can’t wait to read it.