The theme for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday list is “Book Series That I Want to Catch Up On” but I had too many to list just ten, so I narrowed it down to listing book series that make me laugh and/or are feel-good stories. If I’m caught up on some of them (which I confess I am), then it’s because I’m hoping there will be more to come in the series. These are in order by author.
1. The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
A story that spans the Victorian era through World War I about a children’s author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the lives of her family and loved ones.
2024 The Once and Future King by T.H. White
T. H. White’s masterful retelling of the saga of King Arthur is a fantasy classic as legendary as Excalibur and Camelot, and a poignant story of adventure, romance, and magic that has enchanted readers for generations.
2023 NW by Zadie Smith
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • One of The New York Times Book Review‘s 10 Best Books of 2012 • One of TIME’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2012 • One of The Wall Street Journal’s Best 10 Fiction Books of 2012 • A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book
2022 The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
2021 Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian
August 2021 was when I had a pretty bad case of COVID-19, which I guess would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t been vaccinated (Thank you, Dr. Fauci!). So, looking back, August 2021 seems to have been mostly audiobooks, but this one made the Big Book Summer cut, at 496 pages (14 hours, 9 minutes on audio).
2020 The Book of Kings by James Thackara
“Though offhanded comparisons to War and Peace may be effusive, they are not completely unwarranted. Like Tolstoy’s novel, Thackara’s work plays out personal history against the vast backdrop of world history.” — The Seattle Times
It’s always sad when someone reads one of your favorite books that you’ve lent them your copy of and have been recommending to them forever and then they don’t love it, but that’s what I did to one of my sisters when I finally read The Book of Kings six years ago. 🙁 At 773 pages, it’s a sprawling family saga set against the backdrop of history — exactly the kind of Big Book I tend to love — but the history overwhelmed the characters for me. Educated readers more knowledgeable about history might love this book even though I did not!
2019 Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer
In August 2019, I apparently listened to a lot of audiobooks, which coincidentally included Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer, narrated by Roger Allam (Macmillan Audio, 2011). It’s the first in the Clifton Chronicles, which I went on to listen to all of on audio, over the following five or six years.
My favorite kind of historical family saga — heavier on family drama than history!
My brief review on my blog post in September: “Thumbs Up! For Penny VIncenzi readers and family saga and Forsyte Saga mini-series fans.”
2018 American Marriage by Tayari Jones
I had to go to my LibraryThing for this August title, because 2018 was a bad year for blogging, although I did report in October (first post since March) that I had been doing a lot of reading. I listened to An American Marriage on audio, and rated it as one my favorite books of the year.
2017 Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch
On Labor Day 2017, I posted that I was at least halfway through four books — City of Friends by Joanna Trollope, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (on audio), and The Widow of Wall Street by Randy Susan Meyers.
But I also recorded several other August reads on LibraryThing, including Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch. Another first in a series (Rivers of London) that I rated as a favorite book of the year that year and have gone on to listen to all of later books as soon they came out (and still do.)
2016 The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver
From New York Times bestselling author Lionel Shriver, a near-future speculative fiction novel that explores the aftershocks of an economically devastating U.S. sovereign debt default on four generations of a once-prosperous American family
This future is even nearer now than it was ten years ago when I read The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047, and the U.S. is hugely, enormously in debt right now. The Washington Post blurb for this book was: “Don’t read 1984. Read this instead.” Yikes! (The Mandibles is much longer than 1984, at 416 pages. Must have read it for Big Book Summer in 2016!
I’m sharing this with Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. You’ll find many other Top Ten book lists there!
The Pillars of the Earth was a good read.
This is a great list! I read Kin last month and immediately added An American Marriage to my tbr.
I loved An American Marriage. I’ve read a few others by her that were also really good.
Yes, all her books are really good!
I bought a copy of Kin and hope to start it soon!
I just finished the prequel, The Evening and the Morning, and have read the other Kingsbridge books. Am wondering whether to read Follett’s World War II books, too!
I read the Once and future king many moons ago! and of course the Pillars of the earth.
sherry
Fun list! I have only read your 2024 and 2022 titles.
Mine: https://wordsandpeace.com/2026/08/11/top-ten-books-i-was-reading-on-this-day-over-the-last-ten-years/