I originally planned to do this by looking at all the books I’ve purchased over the past few years as either preorders or sequels and see which ones I still hadn’t read but I realised that it’s not actually quite 10 books (which is exciting). Instead, I thought I’d go through all the books I bought this year that I haven’t read yet.
I’ve excluded books that I bought for my studies since I mostly read random chapters as they become relevant so I’m not counting that as a book I ‘had’ to have and have then just left and abandoned. This is more about the books that I used my few precious book buying spots to buy (or books I ignored my own self-imposed book buying restrictions to buy) that I still haven’t read.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme originally created by The Broke and the Bookish and currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Covers link to Bookshop.org UK and are affiliate links.
Technically, I have 20 books that I’ve bought this year and not yet finished and that are not also related to my thesis. However, since this is top ten Tuesday, I thought I would just pick the top ten based on how excited/urgent I felt about the book at the time of purchase.
In my top five are books that I preordered and still haven’t read, or books that I was really excited for and am still really excited for but haven’t gotten around to yet. Hopefully I will get to all of these before the end of the year.
Books 6-10 made this list for a variety of reasons. 6-8 are all books about/set in Scotland and since I’m only living here until the end of August, I would have hoped to get through a few more of them before I leave. It is in my plans for August, but we’ll see how well that goes.
Lake of Souls makes this out of shame – I picked it up because of the Imperial Radchalong and we’re now a full month after the readalong for (some of the stories in) this book and I still haven’t started it. I’m not too fussed about finishing the whole thing this year, but I will read the stories set in the Imperial Radch world before we read Provenance in September.
Finally, Expiation is the second book that I bought in 2026 (the first was Poyums by Len Pennie), and it’s by one of my favourite classics authors (Elizabeth von Arnim), so I really need to not be intimidated by its length and just read it.
Which of these books do you think I should prioritise?
Keira x
P.S. To anyone who I told my review of the new Becky Chambers book was coming out on Tuesday (i.e. today) – sorry, I had a brain fart! It’s tomorrow.
![[Review] Under the Oak Tree #1-3 by Suji Kim](https://keirasbookmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/screenshot-2026-07-24-at-13.08.09.png?w=800&h=600&crop=1)
Keira's Bookmark 