It’s Time! It’s the first Top 5 Tuesday of 2020! Shanah has some awesome topics cooked up already. The first one being the 5 books I need to read in 2020. This has been the first topic of the year for a while now, and I thought it would be depressing fun to look back on the last 2 years of these posts, and see how I failed did.
Top 5 Books I MUST Read in 2018
Invictus
by Ryan Graudin
DID NOT READ
That’s right. This book has been on my shelf for 2 complete years and I did nothing but stare at it and feel bad about myself. And guess what! It’s not the last one on this list with the exact same story!
Sea of Rust
by C. Robert Cargill
DID NOT READ
See? Told you.
Nevernight
by Jay Kristoff
READ IT!
Yay! I got one! See? I’m not completely useless!
All Rights Reserved
by Gregory Scott Katsoulis
DID NOT READ
I’m useless again. But since we’re talking about this book, author Gregory Scott Katsoulis recently started following me on twitter. Not sure what I did to deserve such a prestigious follower, but I’m pumped to have him.
A Darker Shade of Magic
by V.E. Schwab
DID NOT READ
This one is probably my biggest shame over the past two years. It’s usually the first book I bring up when talking about books I need to read and it’s been on my shelf for over 2 years. smh
Okay. So 2018 didn’t turn out anything like I wanted it to. I still read a lot of great books that year, and it was also the year that I discovered the slippery slope of ARCs. I had no idea how common it was for requests for digital ARCs to be granted, and I spent 2018 almost exclusively reading ARCs. Let’s see how the year after that went…
Top 5 Books I MUST Read in 2019
The Lies of Locke Lamora
by Scott Lynch
READ IT!
Look at that! 2019 starting off with a bang! This one might have had to do with the fact that it was a buddy read with the Top 5 Tuesday creator herself.
Godsgrave
by Jay Kristoff
READ IT!
Two for two! There’s no way I can keep up these kind of results. Or can I?
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
DID NOT READ
Nope. I guess I can’t.
Scythe
by Neal Shusterman
DID NOT READ
I haven’t had this one on my shelf since the very beginning on 2018, but probably 6 months or more…
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
by Chris Hadfield
Apparently, being non-fiction doesn’t get you read any faster than anything else when it comes to my lists…
Hmm… Not much better. I’m seeing a trend developing. I was able to limit my requests of ARCs in 2019 by quite a bit, but still too many. Hopefully I’ll have even more control in 2020 so I can get around to reading the books I really want to read…
Top 5 Books I MUST Read in 2020
Gideon the Ninth
by Tamsyn Muir
Who hasn’t heard about this book? I’ve been hearing about it everywhere and all of it ranges from good to great to amazing.
Sabbath
by Mick Mamatas
I only heard about this one at the end of last year. Basically, an eleventh century warrior dropped in present day New York to hunt down the living personifications of the seven deadly sins. See you there. I’ll bring the popcorn.
Darkdawn
by Jay Kristoff
Third year, third book of the Nevernight series. And considering the others are pretty much the only titles off of previous years’ lists to be read, I feel pretty good about this one.
Iron Gold & Dark Age
by Pierce Brown
I was trying to pick newer books, so I was going to go with Dark Age, but I haven’t read Iron Gold yet (I know I need my Red Rising fanatic card confiscated.)
Wanderers
by Chuck Wendig
This is the only book in this entire post that I don’t already own. That’s going to cost me some points in The Cheapskate Reading Challenge, but I think it’s going to be worth it!
I hope you will do better this year around haha!
(www.evelynreads.com)
I can’t believe you haven’t read Sea of Rust yet!!! We both need to hold each other accountable. I’ve failed miserably every single year. I’ll yell at you every month or so to get to these lol
Love that you looked back on previous years — even if it was depressing lol. I’m terrified to think what I’d find if I looked back on previous seasonal TBR lists! I still need to read Scythe, Red Rising quintet (?), and Wanderers. I purchased the later on sale at the end of 2019 so here’s hoping we both find the time in 2020!!
Red Rising is kind of 2 trilogies. The original one, and one taking place 10 years later. A sixth book is coming
Good to know. I’ve just heard it’s incredible and I’m an “idiot” for not having read them yet lol.
I hope you’re able to get to all of these this year.
I think we all suffer where we have good intentions but sometimes it just didn’t work out – I think it’s why I’m trying to stop putting a list together because I’ll never meet it.
I really need to read Lies of Locke Lamora. I’ve also got Gideon the Ninth out from the library at the moment so want to get to that soon.
I’ve also told myself I would read A Darker Shade of Magic for the past few years now and it’s just never quite worked out.
That’s a great idea to look back at your previous posts Joe!!!
Thanks!
Oh, now there was a great idea, to retrospectively look back at what you did and didn’t get around to reading!
It would be an even better idea if I had actually read the books from previous years! lol. But I created a new list on Goodreads called MUST READ 2020 and it has all the books from this post on it. Here’s hoping that helps!
Hi Joe 🙂
I am not great at following my TBRs either haha (therefore I stopped doing them, but don’t follow my example!!) That’s great to hear that you’ve enjoyed the Nevernight series so far. I haven’t officially put these books on my TBR however they have always been on my radar!
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂