Top 5 Tuesday Logo
This week’s topic is, “Top 5 books on my TBR that intimidate me” I haven’t done one of these in a minute, this seemed like a fun one to try.

In alphabetical order by author:

1 Cover for The Annotated Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Annotated Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson and Anthony Rizzuto

I love The Big Sleep–it was my first Chandler novel, it’s the one I’ve read the most often. And the idea of learning more about it, getting background, digging into to some of the scholarship, etc. sounds great (which is why I ordered it months before it came out in 2018). But I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it–there’s part of me that doesn’t want to know that much about it (and I almost never say that kind of thing). I’m also a little afraid that it’s going to flip a switch and I’m going to spend months digging into Chandler scholarship in general.

2 Cover of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

I don’t know that intimidated is the best word, but I needed a fifth book. I’m more apprehensive about dipping back into that world. Also, apathetic. But sure…let’s go with intimidated.

3 The Cover of The Will in Its Theological Relations by John L. Girardeau
The Will in Its Theological Relations by John L. Girardeau

550 pages of a critique of Jonathan Edwards and a restatement of the classic Reformed position on the freedom and bondage of the will in dense 19th Century language. Yeah, that’s easy to see why I’m intimidated.

4 The Cover of Stiletto by Daniel O'Malley
Stiletto by Daniel O’Malley

The Rook is such a good novel, but after seeing some not-as-good reviews, I’ve been putting it off since it was published. I just don’t want anything to tarnish The Rook in my mind.

I should add that I haven’t seen bad reviews for Stiletto, just people who didn’t like it as much as I’d hoped. Which makes it different than the other books by O’Malley.

5 The Cover of Flynn's World by Gregory Mcdonald
Flynn’s World by Gregory Mcdonald

Similarly, I just don’t know if I can muster up the courage to read this one. The Fletch novels that Mcdonald wrote in his later years were good enough, but they were missing something. I’m afraid that this would be the same way–that it came so many years after the Fletch books, makes me even more intimidated by it. The initial Flynn books are probably in my all-time favorite stack. I just don’t want to see it be tarnished.

But there’s a chance I’m missing out on something really good.