Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
The question for this week, submitted by Dedra @ A Book Wanderer, is a bloody brilliant one: Books From My Past Seasonal TBR Posts I STILL Haven’t Read. However, after looking through past TBR posts, I haven’t actually done that many! I am trying to get more Seasonal TBR posts up, especially now I have quite a collection of NetGalley books, but I figured for this week I’d amend the topic ever so slightly.
Top Ten of the Oldest Books on my TBR
For this I’ll be using my NetGalley books, and I’ll have 5 of the oldest published books, and 5 of the ones I’ve had on there the longest.
Oldest Books
Guards! Guards! – Terry Pratchett
Release Date: 02/06/05
This is where the dragons went. They lie … not dead, not asleep, but … dormant. And although the space they occupy isn’t like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly. And presumably, somewhere, there’s a key…
In Mind of the Vampire – John Vance
Release Date: 22/09/16
When Dr. Julian Hemmings agrees to apply the controversial techniques of his mentor Sigmund Freud to the deeply troubled Lucy Westenra, he begins a descent into a world of gothic horror that prompts his own self-analysis and a confrontation with long-suppressed passions that have affected his life since adolescence.
Set in London during the fall of 1897, In Mind of the Vampire draws context from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and features two of the main characters—Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray. But this novel is not a mere retelling of Stoker’s tale. Carefully researched and with the full flavor of late Victorian London, In Mind of the Vampire is a haunting tale of mystery, beauty, horror, and agonizing self-realization. Here one is transported to a beguiling and enthralling world where intellectual sophistication clashes with primal instincts and needs—leading to consequences that testify to the enduring and unalterable power of the imagination.
Clarkston’s Curse – Ann Margaret Jones
Release Date: 19/09/17
Based on actual events, Clarkston’s Curse is the compelling true story of a child growing up in a small town plagued by tragedy.
Fleeing the violence and uncertainty of Detroit and big city living, Ann Margaret’s family moved to Clarkston, Michigan, population 1,024. But this sleepy town has a dark side. Between 1969 and 1982, more than forty unexplained accidents and incomprehensible murders struck residents of this rural community.
A true story of mystery, murder, family, and friendship, Clarkston’s Curse is a first-hand account of what it was like to grow up in the 1960s and 70s in a small town where tragedy struck with unsettling frequency. More than forty families are forever changed, and thirty people – young and old – didn’t survive to tell their tale. Ann did.
Release Date: 01/10/18
Nadira achieved legendary status when she gave her life to protect humans from the demons. To her, it was yesterday. To the rest of the world, it was twenty years ago.
People have made peace with the demons, worshipping them like celebrities. No one wants to believe that the beautiful creatures who brought magic to humans could be causing the disappearance of so many. When Nadira’s father goes missing, she refuses to play nice. Gloves off. She has to do what she does best. Fight.
Experience why not even death can stop her.
Nadira Holden, Demon Hunter is a fresh urban fantasy series from Azaaa Davis that combines monster-slaying action, family drama, and simmering romance.
One Flew Through the Dragon Heart – C.S. Johnson
Release Date: 21/12/18
Brixton Flew works as a professor of wielder instruction at Rembrandt Academy, hoping to erase the regrets of his youth along with the resulting debt. But when he comes face to face with his biggest regret—the woman who broke his heart, Adelaide Favan—Brixton soon realizes his troubles have only begun.
Unable to control her magic, Adelaide knew leaving Brixton was the only way to protect him when they were younger. Now she discovers he is the key to recovering the Dragon Eyes, a legendary treasure connected to her magic and her family’s disgraced legacy—and she knows the risk is great, to both his life and her heart.
With others seeking the power of the Dragon Eyes, Brixton and Adelaide must outwit their foes and face down their families to save London from an ancient legend that sleeps beneath the magic portal in their city.
But the renewed passion growing between them may prove to be the greater peril …
Books I’ve Had the Longest
Date Received: 01/06/20
Memphis Mayhem weaves the tale of the racial collision that led to a cultural, sociological, and musical revolution. Beginning with the 1870s yellow fever epidemics that created racial imbalance as wealthy whites fled his hometown, David Less moves beyond W.C. Handy’s codification of the blues in 1909 to the mid-century advent of interracial music, the birth of punk, and finally to the growth of a music tourism industry.
The city’s musical ecosystem included studios, high school band instructors, clubs, record companies, family bands, pressing plants, and retail record outlets, and it produced a startling array of talent, including Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Al Green, Otis Redding, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carla Thomas, Booker Little, Alex Chilton, Ann Peebles, Jim Dickinson, Furry Lewis, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Justin Timberlake.
Rosemary’s Baby – Michael Newton
Date Received: 02/06/20
Rosemary’s Baby is one of the greatest movies of the late 1960s and one of the best of all horror movies, an outstanding modern Gothic tale. An art-house fable and an elegant popular entertainment, it finds its home on the cusp between a cinema of sentiment and one of sensation. Michael Newton’s study of the film traces its development at a time when Hollywood stood poised between the old world and the new, its dominance threatened by the rise of TV and cultural change, and the roles played variously by super producer Robert Evans, the film’s producer William Castle, director Polanski and its stars including Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes.
Newton’s close textual analysis explores the film’s meanings and resonances, and, looking beyond the film itself, he examines its reception and cultural impact, and its afterlife, in which Rosemary’s Baby has become linked with the terrible murder of Polanski’s wife and unborn child by members of the Manson cult, and with controversies surrounding the director.
The Wayward Girls – Amanda Mason
Date Received: 03/06/20
THEN
1976. Loo and her sister Bee live in a run-down cottage in the middle of nowhere, with their artistic parents and wild siblings. Their mother, Cathy, had hoped to escape to a simpler life; instead the family find themselves isolated and shunned by their neighbours. At the height of the stifling summer, unexplained noises and occurences in the house begin to disturb the family, until they intrude on every waking moment . . .
NOW
Loo, now Lucy, is called back to her childhood home. A group of strangers are looking to discover the truth about the house and the people who lived there. But is Lucy ready to confront what really happened all those years ago?
The Living Dead – George A. Romero, Daniel Kraus
Date Received: 09/06/20
It begins with one body. A pair of medical examiners find themselves facing a dead man who won’t stay dead.
It spreads quickly. In a Midwestern trailer park, an African American teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly-risen friends and family.
On a US aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones while a fanatic preaches the gospel of a new religion of death.
At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting, not knowing if anyone is watching, while his undead colleagues try to devour him.
In DC, an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come.
Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead.
We think we know how this story ends.
We. Are. Wrong.
The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker – Lauren James
Date Received: 16/06/20
“Congratulations, new kid. Welcome to the afterlife.”
What if death is only the beginning?
When Harriet Stoker dies after falling from a balcony in a long-abandoned building, she discovers a group of ghosts, each with a special power.
Felix, Kasper, Rima and Leah welcome Harriet into their world, eager to make friends with the new arrival after decades alone. Yet Harriet is more interested in unleashing her own power, even if it means destroying everyone around her. But when all of eternity is at stake, the afterlife can be a dangerous place to make an enemy.
The fun thing about this for me was reading the summaries and being reminded of why I requested these books in the first place. They’ve definitely been bumped up the TBR, especially as I am trying to clear my backlog. Have you read any of these? Which would you be inclined to read first?
Unwrapping Words 
I’ve got some old ones too! I’m setting a goal to get them read by the end of the year.
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Good luck!
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