Top Ten Tuesday: Backlist books that I STILL haven’t read // Help me pick one to read this month

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and 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. This week’s theme is:

November 6: Backlist Books I Want to Read

Oh this topic is to perfect for me, they may as well @ me next time. I have so many books on my shelves that are more than a few years old and I’ve still yet to get to, that my ‘backlist’ is probably at least a third of my shelves at this point (help). But I’ve picked ten that I’m desperate to read, but am somehow still procrastinating on.

These four have been out for quite a few years (more than a few in the case of 1984) and I’ve owned all of them for at least two or three years, but still haven’t managed to pick them up. I think a combination of knowing that they’ll always be there for when I have some time and constantly picking up exciting new releases is responsible for me having let them sit on my shelves for a while.

Assassin’s Apprentice is the only one of these three that I actually own, but I’ve come close to borrowing Wild Swans from the library so many times that it’s become part of my virtual backlist. Nevernight is another that I’ve been saying I’ll read for about a year, and it sounds right up my street, but I always end up prioritising other books. I think once a book has been out for a while, it sometimes gets moved down my TBR so that I can get to newer releases first. And thus it ends up on the backlist. A place where no book wants to go.

With The Bloody Chamber, I’m guilty of not motivating myself enough to pick it up. It sounds intriguing, it has predominantly good reviews, and I could easily read it in a few hours, but I always look at other books and think that looks more exciting. So I pick those up instead. Hopefully, Radio Silence won’t be staying on my backlist for long, as I’ve vowed to try and read it by the end of the year. I’ve owned a copy for about two years, but I only read my first Alice Oseman book earlier this year, so until that point, I hadn’t discovered how great her writing is. But now that I have, I’m determined to get to it. Emma is another book I think I’d really enjoy, but I have it on e-book, and every time I open my library, I see another book that I want to read sooner.

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So those are my ten sins. I’m feeling increasingly guilty about still not having read them, so I’ve decided to do something about it! Help me out by picking one book from this list, and I’ll try and read it before the end of this month, so it can finally be removed from my backlist. The book with the most votes will be the one I read.

Which books are on your backlist? Which one of these should I try and read during November?