Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Books With Occupations in the Title
Apparently, I have a lot of books with occupations in the title on my TBR list. I had a hard time narrowing it down to ten but these are the ones higher up on my TBR, so hopefully I’ll actually read some of them soon!
Top Ten Books With Occupations in the Title
- Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie – This has been on my TBR the longest and I don’t even remember why I was interested in it at the time, but it’s relatively short, so I’m curious to get it read and crossed off my list.
- The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan – I’m actually interested in many of Amy Tan’s books, but this is the only one that had an occupation on the title. I’ll make my way through her portfolio eventually!
- The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed – This one calls to me. I love fantasy and horror and it gives me dark fairytale vibes. For some reason, I’m reminded about the Grimm Brother’s fairytales, the dark ones, not the Disney ones, and I hope I’ll get something like that here.
- Call The Midwife by Jennifer Worth – The TV series charmed me although I only watched the first couple of seasons. I just googled it and I’m surprised to learn it’s apparently still ongoing and on its 14th season now! I’m sure it has deviated a lot from the book already, but I’ve lost interest in the show anyway, and I’m curious to read the book itself.
- Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller – I really need to get to this one soon. It calls to the adventurous, swash-buckling feminist in me, and I just want to immerse myself in adventure. It’s the first of a series though, and I’m trying to finish series I’ve already started before starting more.
- The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart – I have a fascination with plants and what they can do and the author has another book called Wicked Plants that’s on my TBR too! This book is about plants that go into alcoholic beverages and I don’t drink, so I’m not as excited about this one compared to Wicked Plants, which is about dangerous and poisonous plants. Perhaps I should clarify that I don’t do poison either! 😂
- Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett – Who doesn’t like Terry Pratchett and the Discworld books? Unfortunately, I haven’t read many of them because I have this thing about series. I find it hard to read them out of order (unless I didn’t know they were a part of a series) even if they’re not sequentially related. One day I’ll either read them all, or I’ll break the series-in-order rule!
- The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi – I found this book in a Little Free Library and brought it home because it caught my attention. I’m not sure when I’ll get to this one; it sounds a little heavy and I think I need to be in the right frame of mind for it.
- The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich – I’ve read The Sentence by the author and loved it, and I have The Mighty Red higher up on the TBR. I intend to read this one after, because I really like the author’s writing style so far and I hope to read more from her.
- The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman – I read The Main Dish and The Making of a Chef by the author and loved them, and of course immediately added this book to my TBR as well. I just love the way he talks about food and cooking. I want more!
Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Would you read any of these books?
I was always SO impressed with the BBC adaptation of Call the Midwife but I haven’t seen any of the seasons for a while now. I always forget the show took inspiration from a book. 🙂
I was surprised to find out about the book too!
The Night Watchman is on my list this week, too. I love Louise Erdrich’s writing.
I’ve only read one book by Erdrich but there’s something about her writing for sure!
I once read another series about midwives that preceded the popular TV series, but I must admit never getting into the BBC adaption. My neighbour works on the side lines of TV and even told me she sourced twin babies for one of its episodes and I still haven’t watched it!
Here’s my list
https://rosieamber.wordpress.com/2025/09/02/%f0%9f%93%9atoptentuesday-10-books-with-occupations-in-their-titles-tuesdaybookblog-booktwitter-booktwt/
Wow, that’s so cool that this is her job! I never even thought about how it’s necessary that the show works with a lot of babies!
So many interesting books here, I’ll have to add some of them to my TBR!
I hope you enjoy them!
I hope you enjoy reading these when you get the opportunity!
Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
https://readbakecreate.com/get-an-unusal-job-ten-books-with-unusual-jobs-in-the-title/
Thank you!
I think I’m skipping doing this week, because I don’t feel like I can put together a fun list, but I like your choices! (Oh, and I loved The Butcher of the Forest.)
Thank you! I love that you love The Butcher of the Forest, that makes me more excited to read it!
The Soul of a Chef sounds good.
I’ve really enjoyed the author’s other books so I’m sure this one will be good!
These look good. I have more books than I thought with occupations in the title. I didn’t have to go back too far to find 10!
Have a great week!
Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog
My post:
https://budgettalesblog.wordpress.com/2025/09/02/top-ten-tuesday-books-with-occupations-in-the-title/
There are so many on my TBR too!
i really enjoyed Daughter of the Pirate King! My TTT
That’s good to know! I hope to read it soon!
Ooh, The Henna Artist! Daughter of the Pirate King! Those are on my TBR as well and I have no idea how I missed them. I can’t wait to read them 😍 I hope you enjoy them too whenever you get around to reading them!
Thank you, I hope you do too!
Both of Amy Stewart’s books you mentioned sound fascinating!
Here is our Top Ten Tuesday. Thank you!
Yeah, I used to be really into botany at one time!
Guards! Guards! is a great pick! Also, the great thing about Pratchett’s Discworld, is you can read them in subseries order, too. So you don’t have to commit to all 40+ books at once, but can break it down into much smaller and more manageable chunks.
I’m so glad to hear that! I’ll have to look at the books again and figure out a strategy for reading them!
I narrowed it down by only doing the ones I own and haven’t read, LOL! You have some great titles on here.
Thanks! I own a couple of these, but they’re mostly just books I want to read!
What a brilliant list! I love that you’ve included books from your TBR list, and it’s so great to see such a wide variety of genres, from classic and fantasy to non-fiction.
Thank you! There are so many great books out there in so many different genres, I can’t narrow them down!
Wow, great choices. I haven’t seen some of these. I included only books on my TBR shelf, or I could have gone on and on.
It never ends!!
The Night Watchman was excellent. I hope you enjoy it.
Thank you!
So many great books. I haven’t read any of these but I have read another Amy Tan book and have another on my TBR.
I’ve heard such great things about Amy Tan!
I used to watch Call the Midwife all the time, but it’s been a few years since I have so I’m WAAYYY behind, especially if the show is still going. I bought the books because I enjoyed the show so much, but I haven’t read them yet. One of these days.
Happy TTT!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
I hope you enjoy them when you do!
You are the first one that I see featuring a botanist! Well done!
Thank you!
I’ve read Call the Midwife, I wish I would have read it before watching the series. Season one of the series follows the book exactly. Sadly, the author Jennifer Worth passed away before the series ever aired, so none of the following ‘stories’ were based on her experiences. And like you I stopped watching after a while but it’s definitely worth a re-read.
Oh, I didn’t know that, that’s so sad that she didn’t get to see the series herself, but I’m glad to hear the first season at least follows the book faithfully.
Great list, I almost added Daughter of the Pirate King to mine.
It looks like it would be a great book!