Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week's prompt is...

Top Ten Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf

The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton's spellbinding final novel, telling a story of love in the gilded age that crossed the boundaries of society. It is about five wealthy American girls denied entry into New York Society because their parents' money is too new. At the suggestion of their clever governess, the girls sail to London, where they marry lords, earls, and dukes who find their beauty charming—and their wealth extremely useful. - Amazon

🔹️I'd been saving this one for last, as it's Wharton's final novel. But now that I have read all of hers that I own a copy, I guess I'd as well read this one next . It sounds delightful!

The Scarlett Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

A timeless novel of adventure, intrigue, and romance is sparked by one man's defiance in the face of authority...
The year is 1792. The French Revolution, driven to excess by its own triumph, has turned into a reign of terror. Daily, tumbrels bearing new victims to the guillotine roll over the cobbled streets of Paris.… Thus the stage is set for one of the most enthralling novels of historical adventure ever written. - Amazon

🔹️ I haven't read this either. I'm most excited about it, though. Oh... if only every book sold along with time to read it!!

Greenglass House by Kate Milford

It’s wintertime at Greenglass House. The creaky smuggler’s inn is always quiet during this season, and twelve-year-old Milo, the innkeepers’ adopted son, plans to spend his holidays relaxing. But on the first icy night of vacation, out of nowhere, the guest bell rings. Then rings again. And again. Soon Milo’s home is bursting with odd, secretive guests, each one bearing a strange story that is somehow connected to the rambling old house. As objects go missing and tempers flare, Milo and Meddy, the cook’s daughter, must decipher clues and untangle the web of deepening mysteries to discover the truth about Greenglass House—and themselves. - Goodreads

🔹️ I have added this book into my TBR only last month, but I can't wait to read it. It sounds thrilling, right?

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually devoured by legal costs, the romance of Esther Summerson and the secrets of her origin, the sleuthing of Detective Inspector Bucket and the fate of Jo the crossing-sweeper, these are some of the lives Dickens invokes to portray London society, rich and poor, as no other novelist has done. - Goodreads

🔹️ My own review

So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan

No matter when or how recently you've read [The Great Gatsby], Corrigan offers a fresh perspective on what makes it so enduringly relevant and powerful. Drawing on her experience as a reader, lecturer, and critic, her book will be a rousing consideration of Gatsby: not just its literary achievements, but also its path to "classic" (its initial lukewarm reception has been a form of cold comfort to struggling novelists for decades), its under-acknowledged debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its commentaries on race, class, and gender. - Goodreads

🔹️I have read this book as companion when re-reading The Great Gatsby, but I read it sporadically. Maybe it's time to revisit it to give it full credit.

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

🔹️ This is always my favorite play of Shakespeare; been reading it twice, but maybe the third is nearly due?...
My review of the second read

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders." - Goodreads

🔹️ Another one I have yet to read. I have planned to, but then Covid-19 came, and a book about plague is the last thing I had liked to do, so it has to wait.

Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk (The Dancer) by Ahmad Tohari

Set in the tumultuous days of the mid 1960s, "The Dancer" describes a village community struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing world. It also provides readers with a ground-level view of the political turmoil and human tragedy leading up to and following the abortive Communist coup. This trilogy of novels traces the lives of two characters: Srintil, a dancer whose unwitting involvement with the region's leftist propaganda machine sets her at odds with Rasus, the love of her life who embraces Islam and finds a career in the army. - Goodreads

🔹️ I have read this book only two months ago; here's my thoughts.

Vita Brevis: A Letter to St. Augustine by Jostein Gaarder

A box of Latin manuscripts comes to light in an Argentine flea market. An apocryphral invention by some 17th or 18th century scholar, or a transcript of what it appears to be — hitherto unheard of letters to St Augustine from a woman he renounced for chastity? VITA BREVIS is both an entrancing human document and a fascinating insight into the life and philosophy of St. Augustine. - Goodreads

🔹️ I have read this book years ago. Though I didn't quite impressed, it's a unique reading. Its history made it more interesting. My thoughts.

The Greek Treasure by Irving Stone

A fictionalized narrative of the derided but determined efforts of German traveler-archaeologist, Henry Schliemann, and his second wife, Sophia Engastronenos, to excavate the sites of Homeric Troy and ancient Mycenae. - Amazon

🔹️ I almost forgot I own this book! I have enjoyed several Irving Stone's biographical novels before, he never disappoints! Now I can't wait to read it.