Today’s topic for a Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is ‘One-Word Reviews for the Last Ten Books I Read’.

Shouldn’t be too difficult should it? But by ‘one-word’ we really mean ‘one-adjective’ don’t we? And if our ‘one-word’ is a ‘review’ it should be describing how we felt about the book, not what the book was about shouldn’t it? And should I leave at one-word or is some explanation warranted? Let’s see how we go.

‘Incendiary’

For Tinderbox by MJ Akbar. Pakistan is a difficult subject and any book that tries to treat it seriously is going to trek a dangerous path.

‘Difficult’

For Paradise Lost by Milton. Theology delivered via 17^th century blank verse. Not easy reading.

‘Comprehensive’

For A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. A large, detailed canvas. See my review here.

‘Raw’

For Maximum City by Suketu Mehta. If you are going to probe the underworld of Bombay, you have to prepare yourself for what you will find.

‘Testimony’

For The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault. This was a bit tricky to find the right word. The main character bears witness to a rapidly changing world. See my review here.

‘Evocative’

For Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence. The best parts of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’s memoir are his descriptions of the places and people.

‘Fractured’

For The Passage by Justin Cronin. Because the novel covers two time periods with a wide gap between them and little to link them but see my word for the sequel after the one below.

‘Succinct’

For Shame by Salman Rushdie. He expertly tells a multi-generational family saga in less than 300 pages.

‘Dependable’

For The Twelve by Justin Cronin. After being ‘fractured’ by The Passage, this sequel moves between even more locations and time periods but now you feel Cronin has a plan for all of this and you are in safe hands.

‘Progressive’

For Crucibles by Bernard Jaffe. This history of chemistry shows how science ought to be taught – as a history of discoveries and experiments, wrong turns and dead ends, slowly closing the gap between theory and reality.