Top 5 Wednesday: No Peeking. Just Jump Right In

Indian Summer is upon us. It's nice and hot with a good dose of humidity. I'm currently melting out on the porch while the baby naps downstairs. It's a day where you just want to lay in a cool pool of water and do absolutely nothing. Ha...real life gets in the way of that too often, doesn't it? I'll get myself part way there though. I've filled the kiddie pool and I'll be doing a little splashing with B when he wakes up. Maybe we can even talk Daddy into going fishing when he gets home. Cooling down on the lake would be nice. Plus...we need to take advantage of these days before they're gone. Minnesota winter is coming.

It's Wednesday, so that means it's time for a top 5... Ready to find some good reads? I've got a stellar bunch for you today.

Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly book meme created by Lainey of GingerReadsLainey and hosted via Goodreads group by Samantha from Thoughts on Tomes. Each week brings a new twist on a literary topic and a whole host of book bloggers and booktubers take to the internet with their representations of what that means.

This Week's Topic:

Books to Read Without the Synopsis.

We all know that some synopsis writers spoil events that happen halfway through the book or have heard reviewers day "its best to go into this one blind." Discuss those books.

A big part of these books is just being inspired by the titles and the covers. Just go with your gut. The Little Paris Bookshop is one that just needs to be eased into. The synopsis tells you too much and takes away a bit of the magic of the narrative. All you need to know is prepare for all the feels. It is Paris, after all.

With A Man Called Ove, I feel like the synopsis sets the reader up for a predisposed idea of the main character. It's better to get to know Ove chapter by chapter rather than let the book jacket plant seeds in your mind. It keeps Ove more real and I think you can understand him as more of a real person that way than just a 2-dimensional character.

As with Ove, it's best to learn Alice as you go. Finding Alice is intricate and cryptic. Reading it without reading the synopsis makes it more captivating and curious. Just like Alice should be...curiouser and curiouser. It's just better to take this journey a step at a time.

Some books lend themselves to be understood as retellings. The Weight of Feathers is one of those and I think the preconceived notions inherent with that can lead to some expectations that can make a narrative turn flat. It's best to go into this one blind and learn the characters from the ground up.

Honestly, there was no point to even attempting to create a synopsis for this book. It's too much of an enigma. But...no sense screwing with the fabulousness of the mysterious narrative that is The Library at Mount Char. Skip the lackluster synopsis. There's just no adequate way to describe this one. All reviews and descriptions fail to express the awesomeness of this book. Just dive in. And hold on. Because this one is a ride.

Just writing this post has given me all the feels. I have a lot of excitement for these 5 books. They're all worth a read. In my case, they're definitely all worth a reread. So don't hesitate, don't investigate, just crack a spine and jump right in.

Which books would you recommend reading without the synopsis?