Tag Archives: weekly memes

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Meant to Read in 2023 but Didn’t Get To

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by
snowy10

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 Meant to Read in 2023 but Didn’t Get To.

At the end of each year, I share a list of all my book purchases that I didn’t actually read (All the Books I Meant to Read), and I don’t really want to repeat myself, so…

I thought I’d focus on the books I listed on my 2023 quarterly TBR posts… but realized that I mainly read them all! So, I’m digging back a little further, and just listing 10 books from the past couple of years that I’ve been meaning to read… and haven’t yet.

My top 10 are:

  1. Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor
  2. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
  3. Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
  4. Saga, volume 11 by Brian K. Vaughn
  5. Infinity Gate by M. R. Carey
  6. The Thorns Remain by JJA Harwod
  7. Pat of Silver Bush by L. M. Montgomery
  8. A Brilliant Night of Stars and Ice by Rebecca Connolly
  9. Deaf Utopia by Nyle DiMarco
  10. Gilded by Marissa Meyer

Have you read any of these? Which should I make a top priority?

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

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals for 2024

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by
snowy10

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 Bookish Goals for 2024.

OK, I’m more or less repeating what I’ve written in past years. I’m not a big fan of resolutions, so let’s consider this instead that I’m setting some basic intentions. Whether or not I’ll stick to these as the year progresses remains to be seen… and I’m fine with that.

These are a few general concepts I hope to apply to my reading this year:

Read whatever I feel like. I say this every year… and every year it’s worth repeating! Other than book group reading commitments, I’m always happiest when I read without a plan. It’s a wonderful feeling!

Keep ARCS manageable. I have a lot of ARCs on my plate for books releasing in the first half of the year, but many of these are books I’d want to read no matter what. I intend to slow down my requests from this point forward — so I can get back to the point above!

Spend some time reading (or sampling) at least a few of the books/series I highlighted in my series-to-read post for this year.

Make a dent in my classic reading plans. I’ve been participating in the Classics Club spins for the past couple of years, which I love — but I have a big list of classics yet to read, and I’d like to carve out some time for at least one or two outside of the “spin cycle”.

Decide what to do with the books I’ve pulled from my shelves but haven’t yet removed from my house. I keep fantasizing about installing a Little Free Library, but I’m not sure that where I live is really conducive to having one of those. So, I need to start doing some sorting – some nicer books to try to sell, some to trade it an a used bookstore, and some to go to my library’s donation center.

Do a big audiobook reread: I’ve been planning to do audio rereads of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and also want to do the same with the Green Creek series. Both will take a lot of time, and are probably multi-year projects. I want to at least get started in 2024.

Mostly, for 2024 and always, this pretty much sums up my attitude:

What are your bookish goals for 2024? Whatever they may be… wishing you lots of bookish delights!

Top Ten Tuesday: Water, water, everywhere…

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by

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

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by

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

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by

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

    Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by

    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

    Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by

    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!

    Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish

    Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by

    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 Ten Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish.

    I struggled for a bit to come up with a list, since lately, I don’t even really consider a book a DNF if I put it down after only a few pages. Finally, though, I came up with 10, from the last couple of years of reading:

    1) Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling: DNF at approx 20%. The book was bleak and just did not grab me at all.

    2) Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty: Such a disappointment! I’ve really enjoyed other books by this author. This book felt like it was trying too hard to be cute, with forced humor and inconsistent plotting. I quit after about 25%.

    3) The Only Purple House in Town by Ann Aguirre: It definitely was not clear from the synopsis that this book belonged to a series, or that there was some sort of witchcraft/paranormal element. I thought I’d give it a try anyway, but I just didn’t get along with the writing and DNFd after one chapter.

    4) On Rotation by Shirlene Obuobi: This book may have turned out to be fine, but there are footnotes on practically every page, and you can’t really skip them and still follow the story — which made this a nightmare to read as an eARC. DNFd after trying to stick it out, somewhere about 2 or 3 chapters along.

    5) The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo: I’m not even sure that this counts as a DNF, since I dropped it almost as soon as I started it. I hadn’t known ahead of time that this would be a Gatsby retelling, and as soon as I realized that, I lost all interest.

    6) For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten: I read several chapters, which was enough for me to know that I didn’t care for the story or the world-building.

    7) Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman: I’ve read a couple of really good horror novels by this author, but I found the first chapter off-putting and couldn’t bring myself to continue. (Terrible ARC formatting didn’t help either.)

    8) Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert: Unpopular opinion time! I know people love these books, but within the first two pages of this one, I remembered everything I didn’t like about the first book in the series and realized this just wasn’t going to be for me.

    9) In the Garden of Spite by Camilla Bruce: I guess super-bleak books don’t tend to be what I feel like reading these days. I tried, but felt so unhappy every time I picked up this book to read another chapter that I had to stop.

    10) The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult: I enjoy so many of Jodi Picoult’s books… and this one made no sense to me at all. DNFd after about three chapters.

    What books have you DNFd recently?

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

    Top Ten Tuesday: Books With One-Word Titles

    Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by

    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 With One-Word Titles — a topic I’ve done multiple times over the years (see here, here, and here). So, the challenge for me today is finding ten MORE books with one-word titles without repeating myself!

    Here’s what I’ve come up with — all books that I’ve read within the last year or so:

    1. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
    2. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
    3. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
    4. Reputation by Lex Croucher
    5. Waypoints by Sam Heughan
    6. Wolfsong by TJ Klune
    7. Scorpica by G. R. Macallister
    8. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
    9. Passing by Nella Larsen
    10. Anatomy by Dana Schwartz

    What books made your list this week?

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

    Top Ten Tuesday: My daughter’s top 10 books from the past 12 months

    Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by

    Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week is a Freebie week, so we all come up with our own topics. I was drawing a complete blank, so I decided to enlist my daughter once again! Not only is she an amazing human being — she’s also an amazing reader, so seeing her top 10 lists is always a treat.

    She originally sent me a list of 20, but put in a valiant effort and narrowed it down to 10. Here are the books she’s loved recently:

    1. Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk
    2. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
    3. The Deep by Rivers Solomon
    4. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
    5. Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola
    6. Love Radio by Eboney LaDelle
    7. Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
    8. The Street by Ann Petry
    9. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
    10. Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan

    Have you read any of these? If so, what did you think? (I’ve read 3 out of 10, have one all queued up to read this summer, and have my eye on at least two more of these!)

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