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 topic, Top Ten Tuesday participants need to list the books they most regret not reading in 2020. I ended up having an outstanding reading year in 2020, managing to get through a solid collection of cool new releases and older novels, most of which proved to be amazing and entertaining reads. However, no matter how hard one tries, there are always a couple of books each year that I did not get a chance to read, either due to time constraints, lack of access or from being overwhelmed with other books that I really wanted to read. As a result, this is a list that is rather tinged with regret, as each book I plan to mention below is one that I really wish I had taken the time to read.
In order to complete this list, I pulled together some of the more interesting and compelling sounding novels that I did not get a chance to read in the last year. Each entry was released last year and while I knew that they were coming out, I did not get a chance to read any of them. In many cases I have these books sitting on my shelf at this moment, silently and constantly judging me, and I think I will have to try and read them to stop their bookish glares. I was eventually able to cull my list of regret down to 10 entries with an honourable mentions section. The final list is an interesting collection of books from across the genres and includes a couple of big 2020 releases I did not get a chance to look at.
Honourable Mentions:
Sons of Rome by Gordon Doherty and Simon Turney
Black Canary: Breaking Silence by Alexandra Monir
I only found out about this book a few days ago, and I had no idea that it was coming out in advance of the end of 2020. This is the fifth novel in the DC Icons young adult fiction series, a fantastic series that sets teenage versions of some of the biggest DC superheroes on some compelling standalone adventures (check out my reviews for Catwoman: Soulstealer and Superman: Dawnbreaker). Black Canary: Breaking Silence sounds particularly good as it features a teenage Black Canary in a dystopian future Gotham City ruled over by the tyrannical Court of Owls, where women have no rights. I am really keen to check this book out and I am planning to grab it in the next few weeks. While this is a really cool sounding novel, I decided to leave this book on my Honourable Mentions section because it was only released on 29 December 2020, and even if I had known it was coming out I would have been hard pressed to read it last year anyway. Because of that, I may try to consider Breaking Silence as a 2021 novel, but I am still a tad annoyed I did not get a chance to read it last year.
Fifty-Fifty by Steve Cavanagh
Top Ten List:
Either Side of Midnight by Benjamin Stevenson
The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso
The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs
This next entry is for the full cast The Sandman audio drama that was released in the second half of 2020. I currently have a copy of this cool-sounding audio drama loaded up on my phone and I hope to listen to it soon, I have just been a bit overwhelmed with audiobooks in the last few months. This audio drama features an amazing collection of celebrities who are helping to bring Neil Gaiman’s iconic The Sandman comic to life in a new format. I have heard some amazing things about both the comic and the audio drama and I cannot wait to see how this adaptation turns out.
The Bluffs by Kyle Perry
The Bluffs is a grim and dark Australian crime fiction novel that came out a few months ago. The debut novel of Australian author Kyle Perry, The Bluffs sounds like a fantastic read set deep within the wild Tasmanian bush, and I hope to get a chance to read it soon.
The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart
This is another debut that I am particularly sorry I have not read yet. The Bone Shard Daughter is a very cool-sounding fantasy novel by Andrea Stewart that deals with bone magic and the fate of a nation. I have heard some very impressive things about The Bone Shard Daughter and I will need to read it in the first half of the year in order to grab any potential sequels coming out in 2021.
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
The final entry on my list is Black Sun by acclaimed author Rebecca Roanhorse. Roanhorse has released a lot of interesting novels in the last few years, and while I did enjoy her Star Wars tie-in novel, Resistance Reborn, I have not had the chance to read any of her original series. I was hoping to check out her 2020 release, Black Sun, which served as the first entry in a new series, but alas I failed to do so. This is a real shame, as Black Sun was another Roanhorse novel that got an immense amount of praise from reviewers. I must try and read this one soon as I am sure it is going to be an epic and outstanding read.
Well, that is the end of my latest list and it looks like I have a lot catch-up reading to do if I am going to make a dent in it. There are some truly amazing-sounding novels on this list and I fully intend to get through all of them at some point, although with all the outstanding books coming out in 2021, it might take me a little time. In the meantime, let me know what books you most regret not reading in 2020 in the comments below.
The Unseen Library 