I hope you’re all having a magnificent start to your week! Mine has been a little rocky because I’m battling off a sore throat that does not want to leave. Annoyingly, this also put me right on the backfoot for prepping for my first week back at uni for the semester AND all the content creation I usually do on the weekend. Mad.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and this week’s prompt is:

Books with Colours in the Title

Despite my sickly setbacks, here we are with a bit of light-hearted fun today! I decided I wanted to do this prompt literally and see if I could find ten books on my TBR (books I own and haven’t read) that have a colour in the title’s name. Let’s go!

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1. A Spool of Blue Thread
by Anne Tyler

I bought this several years ago when I was on a wild whim thinking I would read some of the short-listed Man Booker Award (Prize?) books. I saw someone’s review for this and it was really positive but I haven’t been motivated to pick it up AT ALL since I bought it. Who knows if I’ll ever read this.

‘It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon…’

This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer’s day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before.

From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century – four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home…

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2. The Black Arrow
by Robert Louis Stevenson

I bought this after I finished reading Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, also written by Stevenson. I loved that classic – it’s probably one of my favourites. In fact, it would seem I have a penchant for horror when it comes to classics, but no other category. Who knew?! The Black Arrow, however, is not a horror as far as I am aware.

Set in England during the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses, this swashbuckling historical novel by the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped tells the story of young Dick Shelton. Betrayed by his treacherous and brutal guardian, Sir Daniel Brackley, Dick seeks the help of John Amend-All, leader of the mysterious fellowship of the Black Arrow—and Brackley’s sworn enemy. Pitted against fierce fighters, a treacherous priest, and Sir Daniel, Dick seeks to become a knight and rescue his true love.

Brimming with adventure, suspense, and romance, this thrilling tale presents a classic portrait of England during one of its most tumultuous eras, as Dick is pulled by his loyalties to the houses of both York and Lancaster. He must make a crucial choice, for his fate and the fate of England hang in the balance.

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3. Words in Deep Blue
by Cath Crowley

I remember getting this book in a book box way back when. I’m not the biggest reader of contemporaries, as we know, so this book has just been indefinitely lost in my TBR for some time. Though I have heard great things about it!

This is a love story.

It’s the story of Howling Books, where readers write letters to strangers, to lovers, to poets.

It’s the story of Henry Jones and Rachel Sweetie. They were best friends once, before Rachel moved to the sea.

Now, she’s back, working at the bookstore, grieving for her brother Cal and looking for the future in the books people love, and the words they leave behind.

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4. Seeing Redd
by Frank Beddor

I have been meaning to get around to this sequel for the longest of times. And sure, I’m cheating the tiniest bit here because this is a play on words rather than it being exactly a colour! Blurb below is for book one – no fear for spoilers!

Alyss of Wonderland?
When Alyss Heart, newly orphaned heir to the Wonderland throne, flees through the Pool of Tears to escape her murderous Aunt Redd, she finds herself lost and alone in Victorian London. Befriended by an aspiring author named Lewis Carrol, Alyss tells the violent, heartbreaking story of her young life. Alyss trusts this author to tell the truth so that someone, somewhere will find her and bring her home. But he gets the story all wrong. He even spells her name incorrectly!

Fortunately, Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan knows all too well the awful truth of Alyss’ story – and he’s searching every corner of our world to find the lost princess and return her to Wonderland, to battle Redd for her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.

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5. Between Shades of Gray
by Ruta Sepetys

This hasn’t been on my TBR too long at all! Even better, it’s on my TBR for this month! I’m hoping to pick this up within the next few weeks and I can’t wait as it will be my first Sepetys book. I loved historical fiction and this woman is all but revered within the genre! I feel the need to grudgingly note that this *is* the American spelling of grey. 

It’s 1941 and fifteen-year-old artist Lina Vilkas is on Stalin’s extermination list. Deported to a prison camp in Siberia, Lina fights for her life, fearless, risking everything to save her family. It’s a long and harrowing journey and it is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day. But will love be enough to keep them alive?

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That’s a wrap!

So there we have it! There were literally only these five books on my TBR of nearly 300 that had a colour in the title. I’m actually quite surprised?! I thought that was going to be really common but there was only a handful. And blue is a popular colour apparently!

Do you know how many books on your TBR have a colour in the title?

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~~ Kirstie ~~

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