Top Ten Tuesday #429

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these, I had a lovely time meeting with my friend last week and I also had a really great time at the Feminist Book Society event, it was so much fun and I met some really lovely women there, so I definitely think I’ll be going to another one of their events in the future.

In not so good news from last week, I didn’t get a code for the Taylor Swift Eras Tour sale last week, so I’m one of the sad people fruitlessly waiting for a chance to get off the waitlist for excruciatingly expensive tickets that I will never be able to afford. It’s all just super frustrating, I understand not wanting the ticket websites to crash from all the demand but it feels like this way, hardly anyone has the opportunity to buy tickets (and the fact that half the available tickets are ridiculously expensive VIP tickets no one can afford doesn’t help) and honestly, I’d rather have at least had the chance to buy tickets and not been able to because they had all sold out really quickly than not have been able to access the sale at all. The whole system seems to have been a bit of a shambles anyway because there are so many scalpers and scammers all over Twitter reselling tickets so I don’t exactly get who this system has been designed to work for because it certainly doesn’t seem to have been the fans. Hopefully if they find none of the expensive VIP packages are going because no one can afford them, then they’ll bring ticket prices for remaining seats left down closer to the events but I highly doubt it! Sorry for the extremely long, frustrated rant, it’s just been a disappointing few days.

In happier news however, I have two theatre shows booked for this week which I’m super excited for, weirdly both themed around bikes which was not planned, it just happened to work out that way! I’m going to see Glory Ride at Charing Cross Theatre on Thursday afternoon which should be really fun, I saw them perform at West End Live and they were great, so I’m excited to see the show and I got really great deal through Off West End Theatre Week, £15 for a front row ticket, how cool is that?! I’m also going to see Ride (different show, I promise) at the Southwark Playhouse on Friday evening and I’m super excited for that because I’ve been hearing some really great things from theatre bloggers and YouTubers.

Anyway, enough of my super long rambling, it’s Tuesday, so time for another Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl. This week (ironically given my intro has been so long!) we’re talking One Word Book Titles as suggested by Angela @ Reading Frenzy Book Blog, thanks Angela!. Now this is a topic I’ve done before, and I didn’t think I’d have enough to make a second post as the books I read tend to have longer titles, but it turns out I do, so here we go, One Word Book Titles Part Two:

1. Speak-Laurie Halse Anderson

I wasn’t a huge fan of this book, obviously it was ground-breaking for its time (it was first released 24 years ago) and it’s great that Laurie Halse Anderson was highlighting the realities of sexual assault in high school through this book, but I found it kind of hard to connect to Melinda and wasn’t a huge fan of the stream-of-consciousness style the book was written in. It’s not a bad book, but I’ve read other books about the same topic that have emotionally impacted me more. The title is perfect for the book though as the story is all about Melinda’s journey to speaking up about what happened to her.

2. Pure-Julianna Baggott

This is one of my favourite underrated dystopia series, it’s one of the ones that came out after The Hunger Games got super big and I think somewhat got lost in the shuffle, which is a shame. This is the first book of a trilogy, and basically it’s set in a post-apocalyptic world where following a global nuclear disaster, many people were left with horrific “fusings”, they were physically attached to whatever objects they were holding at the time of the explosion. However others were protected in a sealed dome and remain “pure”, free of these physical deformities. Naturally the story revolves around bringing down the Dome and trying to find a cure for the fusings. I don’t know if I’ve made it sound as good as it actually is, but I swear, it’s a really interesting trilogy and quite different from a lot of dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction that I’ve read before.

3. Checkmate-Malorie Blackman

This is the third book in the Noughts and Crosses series and one of my favourite books of the series (I think Noughts and Crosses just edges it because nothing will ever have the same emotional impact of the ending of that book, but this one also packs a punch). This one largely follows Callie Rose, Callum and Sephy’s daughter and how she struggles growing up as a mixed race child and with learning the truth about her father. This was a really intense read and I loved seeing the complexity of the various mother-daughter relationships in it, from Sephy and Jasmine to Callie Rose and Sephy to Sephy and Meggie. It’s also really cool to be able to follow Sephy throughout the books and see how she changes from a teenager to an adult.

4. Graceling-Kristin Cashore

I really didn’t like this one, but it does fit the prompt, so I’ve included it. “Graceling” is the name given in the book for people born with an extreme skill, in the case of the main character in this book, Katsa is very skilled at killing. The idea was cool, but the execution just didn’t live up to it for me: Katsa is very much in that “strong female character can’t like anything feminine and must have no emotions in order to be physically strong vein” and I just couldn’t get on board with that message. The world was also super underdeveloped and the book as a whole was very slow. I know lots of people love this one, but sadly I wasn’t one of them.

5. Mockingjay-Suzanne Collins

This was my least favourite of The Hunger Games trilogy, though I do love what Collins did with the title scheme for this trilogy, having each title be shorter than the previous: 3 words, 2 words, 1 word, it feels almost like a countdown to the end which is super cool. Mockingjay was also the perfect title for this book given that so much of it revolves around her role as the face of the rebellion, and the mockingjay became such a symbol of that because of Katniss’ pin from the first book so it definitely feels like the right title for the book where the rebellion finally happens. My issue with this one was largely that it wasn’t as intense as the first two and Katniss felt rather passive in the events of it: she’s generally told about what happens rather than taking an active part. I know that’s part of Collins’ point as she’s a pawn in the rebellion as much as she was a pawn for the Capitol, but it just doesn’t make for the most interesting read and I think I was expecting something a bit more dramatic for the series finale. It was still a decent read, but I don’t remember it captivating me in the same way the first two books did.

6. Breathe-Sarah Crossan

Another underrated dystopia that I think got somewhat buried beneath the Hunger Games hype. This one is actually probably even more relevant now that it was when it came out as it takes place in a world where all the oxygen has gone (due to deforestation) and everyone who survived the “Switch” (the event where oxygen levels plummeted and most of humanity died) is kept in a sealed dome full of manufactured air, but you have to pay for this and so naturally the rich have more air than the poor. It was a really interesting premise, though I do wish the Switch had been fully explained. It was a little slow in places but it did get exciting towards the end and I liked that it was a dystopia that did something a little different.

7. Incendiary-Zoraida Córdova

Honestly from the title, I was expecting this book to be super exciting, but it really wasn’t as exciting as the title would suggest. It started off well but lagged throughout. It had a cool magic system and I liked the author’s writing but the characters were flat and I couldn’t really get invested in any of them. This is the first of a duology but I never read the second book.

8. Legendary-Stephanie Garber

I had the first book Caraval on my list last time, so it seemed only fair to have the second book on this list (if this topic ever comes again and I do a Part 3, I could have Finale). Legendary is my favourite book of this trilogy, it follows Scarlett’s younger sister Tella through her own Caraval and her quest to discover the Caraval Master, Legend’s true name in order to fulfil a bargain she made with a criminal. I loved Tella, she was a more fun character to follow than Scarlett and this book had such an engaging unfolding mystery that hooked me throughout, and a hell of a cliffhanger ending.

9. Countless-Karen Gregory

This isn’t my usual kind of book as I very rarely read YA contemporaries back in 2017 (I don’t really read them at all now) and I have to say, whilst it’s nice to try something different every now and then, it didn’t really work for me. It was very slow and repetitive and I found myself getting kind of bored. Gregory did paint a very realistic picture of a teenager with an eating disorder but it was hard to be in Hedda’s head at points. Still, there’s no doubt that this is a story than many teenagers need and teenage eating disorders (and teenage pregnancy) are really important to talk about. I like the dual meaning of the title as well, countless (as in love for her child isn’t something Hedda can count, the way she does calories) but also “count less” (as in counting calories is something Hedda needs to stop doing).

10. Havenfall-Sara Holland

I had a Sara Holland book on my last list as well, she seems to really like the one word titles, in fact I think the sequel to this book is the only book of hers which has a title that is more than one word! Havenfall is the name of the inn in this book that acts as a bridge between the different ancient worlds and Earth (or Haven). Sadly I wasn’t as big a fan of this book as I was of Everless, the premise sounded good, but I found it so, so dull and the real plot didn’t happen till about three chapters before the end of the book, the rest was set-up. Apparently I gave it a 3 star rating, which I think was actually kind of generous, considering I don’t really remember enjoying it all that much. I said I might read the sequel in my review, but I haven’t and I don’t have any plans to.

So there we have it, ten more books with one word titles for you! Do you read a lot of books with short titles? Have you read any of these? What did you think of them? Did we share any books on our lists this week? Let me know in the comments!

I’ll be back next week with another Top Ten Tuesday, the actual topic is Ten Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish but I don’t tend to DNF books that often and the ones I’ve DNF’ed most recently, I do intend on going back to as I put them down due to a reading slump more than lack of enjoyment. So instead, I’m going to do an evergreen topic as I’ve bought quite a lot of books lately, and do Ten Books I Recently Added To My Shelves-the classic go-to topic when I can’t think of what to do!