"Hold the ones you love close"

This week's Book Blogger Hop question is What book do you think deserves more love but flies under the radar?

And I have discovered that this is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

Not because I can't think of books I love and would happily shove into other people's hands. That's easy. The problem is the “flies under the radar” part.

Because... whose radar?

I don't really pay much attention anymore to which books are popular. Obviously there are some books that are almost impossible not to know about, but I don't particularly follow bestseller lists or keep track of what's blowing up on BookTok, Bookstagram, or anywhere else.

I mostly just wander around in my own little bookish ecosystem, picking up whatever catches my attention.

And judging by the comments I get on some of my book lists, apparently quite a lot of what I read is flying under everyone else's radar anyway!

There always seems to be at least one variation of “I've never heard of any of these books” in the comments, which simultaneously amuses me and makes me wonder exactly where I'm finding all these things. They don't seem particularly obscure to me when I'm reading them. They're just... books I've found and thought looked interesting.

My reading has become increasingly eclectic over the years. I'll pick something up because I spotted it in a bookshop, because another blogger mentioned it, because the premise sounded wonderfully strange, because I've suddenly developed an intense need to know everything about a particular subject, or simply because the cover caught my eye.

I'm generally much more interested in whether I want to read a book than whether everyone else is reading it.

Which makes identifying one particular underrated book surprisingly difficult.

I could enthusiastically recommend something and announce that it deserves far more attention, only to discover that three million people have read it and there's an enormous fandom somewhere I've simply failed to notice.

Equally, I could assume something is fairly well known because I've encountered it several times in my particular corners of the bookish world, only to mention it on the blog and be greeted by a chorus of “Never heard of it!”

Popularity is weirdly relative like that.

And maybe that's one of the things I like about book blogging. We're not all looking at exactly the same shelves. Someone's obscure little treasure is someone else's lifelong favourite, and something completely unknown to me might be a book another blogger has been yelling about for years.

So I'm going to slightly dodge this week's question.

Rather than picking the book I think flies under the radar, I'm going to say that apparently I read quite a lot of books that do — I just don't know which ones they are until I post about them!

And I'd much rather turn the question around:

What's flying under my radar?

Tell me about the book you can't believe more people aren't talking about. Tell me about the strange little novel you picked up on a whim and adored. Tell me about the backlist book you've been recommending to everyone for twenty years.

My radar clearly isn't terribly reliable.

Let's see what you've got.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s topic is Books With Nationalities in the Title, and honestly, I was really struggling with this one. I was finding hardly anything in my library - and the books I was finding were all much the same.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone at university studying Classical Studies, I have quite a lot of books with either Greek or Roman in the title, but they're mostly variations on a theme, namely, mythology.

And while a list of ‘ten books called Greek or Roman mythology’ would technically follow the prompt, it also somehow feels a little disingenuous. Although... possibly a future blog post idea?

What I did discover, however, is that I own a lot of different social and cultural histories about Britain. So I'm bending the prompt slightly this week. Britain is, of course, a place rather than a nationality - that would be British - but close enough!

I present: Ten Books With Britain in the Title (or, mostly, the subtitle).

Guy de la Bédoyère - Gods with Thunderbolts: Religion in Roman Britain
Romans, religion and archaeology - three things almost guaranteed to get my attention.

George Goodwin - Fatal Rivalry: Flodden, 1513: Henry VIII and James IV and the Battle for Renaissance Britain
Because apparently one dramatic royal family isn't enough; sometimes you need two of them fighting each other.

Ronald Hutton - The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain
A deep dive into the festivals, customs and rituals that have marked the British year - exactly my sort of social history.

Amy Jeffs - Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain
Myths, legends, beautiful storytelling and the strange tales we've told about these islands.

Joe Moran - Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV
Proof that social history doesn't have to be kings and battles - sometimes it's all about what we were watching on the telly.


Alice Roberts - Ancestors: A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials
Seven graves, thousands of years of history, and archaeology being used to piece individual lives back together.

Guy Shrubsole - The Lost Rainforests of Britain
Yes, Britain has rainforests. Finding that out was pretty much enough to make me want to read this.

Phoebe Smith - Wayfarer: Love, Loss and Life on Britain's Ancient Paths
History beneath your feet: ancient routes, landscape and the people who have travelled them before us.

Mark Wallington - The Uke of Wallington: One Man and His Ukulele Round Britain
A man travels around Britain with a ukulele. Sometimes a book really doesn't need a harder sell than that.

Thomas Waters - Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times
Witchcraft, curses and social history - obviously this was going to end up on my shelves.