home message Submit archive theme

Top Ten Tuesdays


Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.


Top Ten Books on my Winter TBR List

1.  The Nightingale, Kara Dalkey

PaperBackSwap’s final gift to me.  I’ve been a member for two years now, and I’m finally at the point where I just don’t have any more books I want to give up.  Kara Dalkey’s addition to Terri Windling’s Fairy Tale Series is one I’ve been wanting to read for years.

2.  Mortal Love, Elizabeth Hand

One I’ve been meaning to read for a while.  I’ve heard wonderful things about it.

3.  Among the Bohemians and 4.  Singled Out, Virginia Nicholson

I’m not much of a nonfiction reader, but one of my favorite periods is the early 20th century, and I need to do research for a short story I’m writing.


5.  The Children’s Book, A.S. Byatt

I didn’t like Possession, the only A.S. Byatt novel I’ve ever read, but I’m willing to give her another shot.

6.  The Little White Bird and 7.  Peter and Wendy, J.M. Barrie

I haven’t read Peter and Wendy in so long that I can’t remember most of it without thinking of the Disney film.  And I have never read The Little White Bird.  But I’m still on an Edwardian kick that needs fulfillment in some form.

8.  Deathless, Cathryn Valente

Russion folklore and Baga Yaga cameos!  That is what I’ve heard about this book and I would like to make its acquaintance.

9.  The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim

It is on my Netflix queue, and I am eager to read the book so that I might watch the movie.  It looks period-y and gorgeous.

10.  Nightingale Wood, Stella Gibbons

Hated Cold Comfort Farm, but I love the title of this book.




Wow, I am so glad to be done with this book.  I have been struggling valiantly to get through it since I picked it up two weeks ago. It has been on my to-read bookshelf for at least a year, and I kept thinking that I ought to pick it up and read, because I’ve heard such good things about A.S. Byatt, and because it contains several things that I love to read about:



Fairy tales.


Victorian poets.


Academia.


Beautiful descriptions of scenery and landscape.


and Possession has all of these things and more, so I fully expected to absolutely love it.  But I didn’t.  I skipped half every single poem “by” Randolph Henry Ash or Christabel LaMotte, which I probably shouldn’t have done, since they may have been very good.  A good deal of the problems I had with this book was trying to, and failing at, liking the protagonists.  Maud (and Christabel, too) is cold, unsympathetic, and brittle, and at no point throughout the 554 pages did I come to like her at all, and most of the other characters were just one-dimensional.   


I thought Possession was going to be like Tam Lin.  I thought it might be like I Capture the Castle, another sterling book that I would love instantly.  I really wanted to like Possession, I really did, and I’m even going to keep my copy so that I can try it again in a few years.  But now at least I can move on to something else.