Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that currently resides at The Artsy Reader Girl and features bloggers sharing lists on various book topics. For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, participants are required to list the favourite books with numbers in the titles. This was an interesting endeavour, and it was one that I have done in a previous Top Ten Tuesday, except then the challenge was to try and come up with a list of 10 books, each of which had a number between one to ten in the title. However, for this list I will instead open my list to any book that has a number in the title, which should widen the various novels I could potentially include. It has also been nearly two years since I produced that previous list, and I will easily have a few more awesome books to add to this list.
I had a bit of fun coming up with this list. It was easy to run through all the novels I have checked out over the years and finding the ones with numbers in their titles. I did have to do a little culling to narrow it to down to my top ten choices, but I was eventually able to do it with a generous honourable mentions section. Also, to make this fit better I choice to exclude those books with ordinal numbers in their titles (for example, third, sixth and ninth), and instead just focus on those novels with basic numbers in the title. While this did mean I lost a few great books, such as The Third Day, the Frost by James Marsden or Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, I think it made for a tidier list. I ended up coming up with a pretty interesting list in the end and I got a rather interesting spread of titles. So, let us see what I was able to come up with.
Honourable mentions:
Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli
The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien
Firefly: The Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove
The Lost Ten by Harry Sidebottom
Top Ten List:
Patient Zero and Code Zero by Jonathan Maberry
For this first entry I had a hard time deciding which one of Jonathan Maberry’s excellent novels that contain Zero in the title I should include, so in the end I chose to put both Patient Zero and Code Zero in. Both are these books are key entries in the Joe Ledger series, and while I think Code Zero had the better story, Patient Zero was the introductory novel and set up most of the universe. Both books are really worth checking out and their respective titles refer to something really bad in the context of the story.
One Minute Out by Mark Greaney
One Minute Out was an excellent novel (one of the best books and audiobooks I read in 2020), and it is probably my favourite novel from Greaney that I have so far read (although, that could change as I am currently in the middle of listening to his debut, Gray Man).
Predator One by Jonathan Maberry
The second novel from Maberry on this list (he sure likes putting numbers in his title), this is another particularly good entry in the Joe Ledger series. The title is a reference to Air Force One, which gets electronically taken over during the book (with the President on board) so it can be used as a destructive drone.
The Two-Faced Queen by Nick Martell
The stunning sequel to last years top debut, The Kingdom of Liars, The Two-Faced Queen was an exceptional read that was one of my favourite books (and audiobooks) for the first half of 2021.
The Three Paradises by Robert Fabbri
The fun and wildly entertaining sequel to last years awesome historical fiction read, To the Strongest, The Three Paradises continues to highlight the incredible chaos that followed in the wake of Alexander the Great’s death, such as the legendary conference held at the location known as Three Paradises.
All New Wolverine: The Four Sisters by Tom Taylor and David Lopez
The first volume of an extremely fun comic series, The Four Sisters did a wonderful job introducing the world to a new Wolverine, when the original’s female clone, X-23, takes on the mantle.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
A particularly good science fiction murder mystery, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (sometimes titled The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle), was an awesome read that makes use of a very clever concept.
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K. J. Parker
One of the funniest and most entertaining reads of 2019, this outstanding novel follows a brilliant fantasy siege storyline where a conman engineer makes use of the secret, 16th way to defend a city, bluff and BS.
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry
One of the more recent books on my list, this fantastic read from Max Berry follows an attempt to stop a parallel universe jumping stalker from killing his victim multiple times.
Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham
The final entry on this list is the book with the biggest number in the title, the Veronica Mars tie-in novel, The Thousand Dollar Tan Line. This is an awesome read, especially for fans of the show, and I loved its clever story. Best checked out in its audiobook format, which is narrated by Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell.
That’s the end of this latest list. I think it turned out pretty well, and I liked the cool selection of novels it featured. All the above novels come highly recommended, and there are some outstanding reads there. Let me know which of the above books you like the most, as well as what your favourite novels with numbers in the title are in the comments below.
The Unseen Library 