Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Tropes

For That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday:

August 20: Favorite Tropes (a trope is a commonly used theme or plot device) (submitted by Andrea @ Books for Muse)

1. Mysterious school

• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• A Great And Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
• Villette by Charlotte Bronte

2. Slow burn romance

• North and South/ Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The complete works of Jane Austen

3. Small towns

• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
• Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery (well, pretty much all the books set in Avonlea)

4. Missing/Absent parents

• The Secret Garden / A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
• Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

5. Family secrets

• The Distant Hours / The Forgotten Garden / The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
• The Girl Who Chased the Moon / The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

6. Gothic

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

7. Neo-Victorian

• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
• The Quincunx by Charles Palliser

8. Time Travel / Time Slips

• The House on the Stand by Daphne DuMaurier
• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
• The Doomesday Book by Connie Willis

9. Dual Timelines

• Mariana / A Desperate Fortune / The Winter Sea / The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley
• The Address / The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis
• Possession by AS Byatt

10. Fairy Tale retellings

• Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
• Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Cater
• Beautiful by Fran Laniado (apparently I’m not above a bit of shameless self promotion here!)

I’ve Been…

• Working. Hard. Mid-Winter break has just started and I find myself needing it desperately. I think that if teachers didn’t have these breaks we’d go absolutely insane. The kids would too, but teachers? Definitely. If you’re a parent and you don’t think teachers work hard, think about how difficult your kids are. Then picture 30 of them in a classroom. Try to manage their behavior. Plan lessons. Be accountable for their learning. Add some administrative responsibilities. Get the idea yet? I love my students but I definitely like being able to give them back at the end of the day. That’s how I know I’m not ready for kids of my own (well that and other reasons!)
• Polishing up my Beautiful manuscript. In the next month, I plan to send it out to a few more beta readers just to make sure that all the wrinkles are smoothed, and then compile the whole thing, send out some advance copies to reviewers and see what happens! When I first decided to publish it, it felt like I was daring myself to do it. It still feels like that but in a more real way. Like it’s actually happening.
• Working on the (so far) untitled follow up to Beautiful. I’m about halfway through which is a tough point. You’re not at the beginning where it’s new and you’re excited anymore, and the end is still a long way off…
• Watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is living up to the praise I’ve heard. I got a 30 day free trial of Amazon prime a few days ago and I’m trying to take advantage of it as much as I can before it runs out. Recommendations are welcome!
• Reading a lot of the Belletrist book club picks. It feels sort of weird to choose books based on the recommendation of a celebrity, but Emma Roberts has good taste! So far I’ve read The Rules Do Not Apply, Sex and Rage, and South and West. The Immortalists and An American Marriage are also on my TBR.