This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is Books I Enjoyed, but Have Never Mentioned On My Blog. I don’t know for certain that I’ve never mentioned them, but here are a baker’s dozen books I rated* as “excellent” or “very good” in 2001, according to my reading journal that year:

1. Night Flying by Rita Murphy: “The story of a unique young woman’s coming of age in a Vermont matriarchy … Debut novel — must read her next!”
2. High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver: “Wow! What a goldmine! WOW!”
3. The Seer and the Sword by Victoria Hanley: “The story of Torina, a princess who must flee with only her life, and Landen, an enslaved prince turned bandit. Torina is master of her own fate — no princess in need of rescue, she!”
4. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: “I really enjoyed this collection, although I wasn’t sure I would. I found the characters human and the struggles — although centered on the Indian-American experience — universal.”
5. The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden
6. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: “Must read 2nd part soon!”
7. World of Pies by Karen Stolz: “Sweet, but not sickly”
8. Come to Me by Amy Bloom: “Would re-read”
9. Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss: “Semi-autobiographical tale of a woman growing up in the South in the 1960s”
10. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede: “Particularly appreciated the sarcastic tone of the princess in her dealings with dumb princes. Also liked the pokes she took at the traditional fairy tale stereotypes.”
11. Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster: “If the ending was predictable by her freshman summer, the book was still enjoyable and her appreciation for educated, modern women quite refreshing. I also enjoyed the short bio about Webster in the epilogue. Might be interesting to read more about her.”
12. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich: “Very interesting story of the author’s attempts to find out how women survived after leaving welfare following the welfare reform bills of the late 1990s.”
13. Shiva’s Fire by Suzanne Fisher Staples: “The modern story of a poor Indian girl who, through fortune and innate talent, brings financial security to her family and happiness to herself. [Now I want] to see bharata natyam performed.”

There are a few books in here, like Roald Dahl’s The BFG, where I’ve given no rating, and I cannot see why. I suppose I wanted to sit with it a bit longer before committing.

* I rated books as excellent, very good, quite good, fair, and okay.