Category Archives: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday:  Reasons Why I’m Thankful for Books

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Reasons Why I’m Thankful for Books. What a great topic!

Here are 10 of my reasons why I’m thankful for books:

  1. Escape: I love immersing myself in the world of a book and shutting out reality while I’m reading.
  2. Learning: Although I’m almost exclusively a fiction reader, I still find myself learning so much from what I read — from medical conditions to world history to cultures that are different than my own, there’s so much to explore and experience.
  3. Connection: When I meet someone new and learn they’re a reader too, suddenly, there are endless topics to discuss and bond over.
  4. Comfort: When days are stressful or my brain feels overloaded, it’s lovely to be able to curl up with a well-loved book and feel calm and cozy again.
  5. Boredom busters: I can never be bored if I have a book with me (and I always have a book with me). Waiting rooms? Long lines? Holding for customer service? That’s okay — I have something to read.
  6. Book buddies: I love my inner circle of book buddies, those real-life people who love books as much as I do — we swap, share thoughts, make recommendations, and have book-related experiences that our non-bookish friends just don’t get.
  7. Nostalgia: Certain books take me back to places and people from my earlier years, so reading them again is not only a wonderful reading experience in and of itself, but also brings memories of family and experiences that are tied to those books.
  8. Imaginary journeys: I love it when the world of a book is so immersive that it just sweeps me away.
  9. Words, words, words: Beautiful writing, intricate wordplay, unusual vocabulary… these are a few of my favorite things.
  10. The glamour of it all! Oh, I’m kidding, but I do love just looking at my bookshelves and enjoying how pretty they all are.

What are you thankful for when it comes to books?

If you wrote a TTT post, please share your link!

Wishing all a very happy Thanksgiving!

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Top Ten Tuesday:  Popular Authors that I Still Have Not Read

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is  Mainstream Popular Authors that I Still Have Not Read. I’m not sure what “mainstream” means (in the eye of the beholder, I suppose), but these are all authors who gets lots of buzz and/or time on bestseller lists… and I haven’t read their books!

  1. Colleen Hoover
  2. Elizabeth Gilbert
  3. Elin Hilderbrand
  4. Nora Roberts
  5. Janet Evanovich
  6. Jesmyn Ward
  7. Abraham Verghese
  8. Brandon Sanderson
  9. Sarah J. Maas
  10. Patrick Rothfuss

A few of these I just haven’t gotten to yet but likely will eventually; and some of the authors write in genres or styles that don’t always click for me.

Are there any here that you really love? If you think I should try any of these authors… let me know and try to convince me!

If you wrote a TTT post, please share your link!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Book Titles That Would Make Great Newspaper Headlines

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Book Titles That Would Make Great Newspaper Headlines. I’m not sure that the books I’ve chosen would make great headlines, but hey, I tried!

My list:

  1. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub
  2. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
  3. Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey
  4. The Underside of Joy by Seré Prince Halverson
  5. The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West
  6. The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
  7. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
  8. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
  9. The Bright Side of Disaster by Katherine Center
  10. The Fragile Threads of Power by V. E. Schwab

Do any of these sound like newspaper headlines to you?

If you wrote a TTT post, please share your link!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Halloween freebie — Ten horror books on my TBR list (2023 edition)

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halloweentop10

Happy Halloween!

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie! For my Halloween post, I’m going to focus on horror novels on my to-read list. (I’ve done this topic a few times in the past several years, and given the state of my TBR list, it’s time to do it again.) Some of these books have been around a while, and some are upcoming new releases:

  1. Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
  2. Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison
  3. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
  4. Dread Nation by Justine Ireland
  5. What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher
  6. Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong
  7. The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
  8. The House that Horror Built by Christina Henry
  9. How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive by Craig DiLouie
  10. A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

Have you read any of these (or for the upcoming new releases, do you plan to read them)? Which ones look best to you?

What’s on your Halloween TTT this week? Share your link, please, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Fall 2023 TBR List

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. I wasn’t particularly into this week’s topic (Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book), but since I missed TTT last week, I decided to go ahead and do that topic instead!

My list this week is is Books on My Fall 2023 To-read List. My list includes combination of upcoming new releases, books I already own but haven’t read yet, and one on my library hold list.

My top 10 for fall are:

  1. Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
  2. Starter Villain by John Scalzi
  3. The Wake-Up Call by Beth O’Leary
  4. The Bell in the Fog by Lev AC Rosen
  5. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
  6. Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison
  7. The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn
  8. Heartsong by TJ Klune
  9. The Beginning of Everything by Jackie Fraser
  10. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub

What books are you most excited for this fall? Do we have any in common?

If you wrote a TTT post, please share your link!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Water, water, everywhere…

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Water — as a topic, title, book cover element, or whatever we want.

I decided to keep it simple and feature ten books I’ve read that have Water in the title:

  1. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
  2. Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell
  3. Circles on the Water by Marge Piercy
  4. Rainwater by Sandra Brown
  5. Dead in the Water by Dana Stabenow
  6. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris
  7. By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain by Joe Hill
  8. Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley & Peter Dickinson
  9. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
  10. The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy

What “watery” books have you read?

If you did a TTT post this week, please share your link!

Top Ten Tuesday: Genre Freebie — 10 celebrity memoirs I’ve read… and a few from my TBR too

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a Genre Freebie — which means we all pick a genre to focus on and build a top 10 list from there.

I bounced back and forth a bit, but decided to go with celebrity memoirs for my freebie theme. Not that I’m a huge celebrity follower! I rarely care about movie stars or other fancy folks… but I do find myself drawn to interesting life stories or memoirs that give insights into something I’m interested in. When I started this list, I was actually surprised by how many I’ve read!

Here are 10 memoirs I’ve enjoyed in recent years (with links to my reviews, if any):

  1. Waypoints by Sam Heughan
  2. Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton
  3. Spare by Prince Harry
  4. I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
  5. Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies by Michael Ausiello
  6. I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom
  7. Becoming by Michelle Obama
  8. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
  9. Life by Keith Richards
  10. Broken Music by Sting

Plus, here are a few on my TBR list that I hope to get to eventually:

Do you have any favorite memoirs to recommend? What genre did you feature for this week’s TTT?

If you did a TTT post this week, please share your link!

Top Ten Tuesday: Characters from Different Books Who Should Team Up

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Characters from Different Books Who Should Team Up. I couldn’t actually come up with a list of ten, but here are a few characters who I think should hang out, make a connection, maybe share advice…

1. Mercy Thompson & October Daye: My two favorite heroines from favorite ongoing fantasy series! They’re quite different, but both are fiercely loyal, protective of loved ones, brave to the core, and amazing when they need to do battle. They’d be unstoppable together!

    2. Adam Hauptman (Mercy Thompson series) and Tybalt (October Daye series): These two are leaders who are also absolutely besotted with their mates/lovers. They’re probably both too alpha to tolerate each other for long, but perhaps they could form a support group for supernatural men who love semi-mortal women with a tendency to run toward, not away from, danger.

    3. Charlie Spring (Hearstopper) and Ox Matheson (Wolfsong): Charlie is such a lovely snowflake who’s endured horrible bullying as a teen, and Ox is the ultimate protector. I wish Charlie had had Ox to walk through the school halls by his side!

    4. Elizabeth Zott (Lessons in Chemistry) and Olive Smith (The Love Hypothesis): I wish there was a way for Elizabeth to see into the future and see that while not without challenges, there are many more opportunities for women in STEM than in her own time.

    5. London Kelley (The Hookup Plan) and Harriet Kilpatrick (Happy Place): I loved Happy Place, but did not like (spoiler alert!) that Harriet ends up leaving medicine altogether as a way to find happiness in her life. Why not look for a career using her medical degree in some other way? I feel like if Harriet had a friend like London, a passionately dedicated physician as well as a devoted support to her friends, she might have an outlet for talking about her frustrations and thinking more clearly about her options.

    6. Edward Cullen (Twilight) and Matthew Clairmont (A Discovery of Witches): I’d like Edward to have a good role model, to show him that an immortal vampire has career options beyond going to high school for eternity.

    7. Claire Fraser (Outlander) and Emmy Lake (Dear Mrs. Bird): At the time of the Emmy Lake books, Claire would not yet have traveled through the stones and discovered her true love, Jamie Fraser — she spent WWII as a battlefield nurse. It would be amazing if the two women could meet somehow and Emmy could write a profile of Claire for her magazine — how inspiring for the readers of Woman’s Friend!

    What book characters would you want to introduce to one another?

    If you did a TTT post this week, please share your link!

    Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’ve added to my TBR because of other bloggers

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    Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Books I’ve Read/Want to Read Because of Top Ten Tuesday — but I (unfortunately) don’t usually remember to keep track of where I first heard of a book, so I couldn’t be sure that the books I thought of were actually ones I learned of through TTT posts.

    So… instead, I’ll just list some books that I became aware of thanks to other bloggers — through book review posts, cover reveals, “waiting on…” post, and yes, even TTT lists. Please consider this a THANK YOU to those who featured these books, even if I can’t quite remember specifically where I came across them!

    My top 10 are:

    1. The Real Queen Charlotte: Inside the Real Bridgerton Court by Catherine Curzon (added based on review at Hopewell’s Public Library of Life)
    2. Love Theoretically (and other books) by Ali Hazelwood: I don’t think I would have considered these books without having seen all the raves on various blogs! I’ve read two of her novels so far, and I’m glad I did.
    3. The Unfinished Clue by Georgette Heyer: A review at Literary Potpourri convinced me to add this author’s mysteries to my TBR, when previously I’d only been aware of her historical romances.
    4. Various novels by Judy Leigh: This is an author whose books I definitely was not aware of until I started seeing bloggers talking about how much they enjoyed them. I’ve seen read two, and have my eye on a bunch more.
    5. Whalefall by Daniel Kraus: I first added this book to my TBR thanks to an early preview via Books, Bones & Buffy… and I can’t wait to read it.
    6. The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry: This book popped up in my feeds quite a bit, but it was a review by Jonetta at Blue Mood Cafe that convinced me to add it to my TBR.
    7. The Spectacular by Fiona Davis: This book wasn’t on my radar at all until I saw a great review at The Chocolate Lady’s Book Blog.
    8. Wildwood Magic by Willa Reece: Another one from Books, Bones & Buffy! I read Tammy’s review this week, and that was enough to convince me to add it to my TBR.
    9. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros: This book is everywhere (including all over the bestseller lists), but I know I first became aware of it via multiple TTT posts.
    10. The Celebrants by Steven Rowley: The only one on this list that I’ve actually read! I had skipped right by it originally, but after seeing a few posts featuring this as a “most anticipated” book for 2023, I had to know more… and I absolutely loved it.

    Putting this list together makes me realize I should keep better track of where I first learned about the books I add to my TBR list. (I have a friend who keeps a huge spreadsheet for this, but I’m not quite ready to go that far just yet!)

    What book did you read or add to your TBR lists because of other bloggers?

    If you did a TTT post this week, please share your link!

    Top Ten Tuesday: Forgotten Backlist Titles

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    Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Forgotten Backlist Titles (Spread love for books that people don’t talk about much anymore!).

    I’m not sure that I’d consider these books “forgotten” — but I’ve put together a list of earlier books by authors with more recent books making a big splash. Here are my ten:

    1) Green Creek series by TJ Klune: This may be a bit of a cheat, since this series is being reissued this year and next. TJ Klune broke into bestseller stardom with The House in the Cerulean Sea in 2020, but before that, his books included this outstanding werewolf series (of which, I’ve read books 1 & 2 — Wolfsong and Ravensong — and can’t wait to dive into 3 & 4!)

    2) Lord John books by Diana Gabaldon: Sure, everyone knows about Outlander, but die-hard fans also read the Lord John books, which fill in critical pieces of LJ’s story and help a lot by the time you get to later books in the Outlander series as well.

    3) Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid: This was my TJR gateway book! Before Daisy Jones or Evelyn Hugo, I read this one, then all of her earlier books. These books deserve love too!

    4) A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher: I loved this magical fantasy! My first introductions to T Kingfisher were horror novels, but going back and reading her fantasy stories is a total kick.

    5) River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey: This author has had some big hits since, but I will never get tired of talking about the American Hippo books!

    6) The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black: I’ve since read many more Holly Black books, including the Folk of the Air series (my favorite) — but I remember loving this one, and have been thinking I should go back for a reread.

    7) The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi: You really can’t go wrong with a Scalzi book. I don’t know many people who’ve read this one, but it’s hilarious (especially if you listen to the audiobook version).

    8) The Pact by Jodi Picoult: This author is a huge bestseller, but of all her books, this is the one that’s really stayed with me across the years. It’s the first of her books that I ever read, and maybe because of the combination of subject matter and the particular time in my life that I read it, it’s haunted me ever since.

    9) Rosie Hopkins series by Jenny Colgan: I love this author’s books, with their sunny outlook on life, quirky characters, and cakes, cookies, and candies to die for! I feel like this series is very under-the-radar, but I thought it was a stand-out.

    10) Newsflesh series by Mira Grant: Mira Grant is one of Seanan McGuire’s pen names, under which she writes terrific horror. This series is outstanding, and I don’t know that I’d consider it forgotten in any way… but I just don’t see it getting mentioned very often. I love these books, and recommend them whenever I get a chance.

    Have you read any of my backlist books? What backlist books do you wish more people would read?

    If you did a TTT post this week, please share your link!