List of to be read books for Spring 2025: This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt is easy to list out … though for me, very difficult to cover! Oh well, let’s see how this year fares.
What’s your TBR for Spring 2025 looking like?
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt is to recall profound/ witty/ [insert your chosen adjective] things that book characters have said. It made me think of quotes that have seemed miraculous to me, full of insight and capable of bringing great healing. I call them “talisman” quotes.
“When someone who I have given a great deal to
And who has been a source of great hope
Betrays and insults me,
May I regard him as a great sacred friend.”
~ Shantideva (as quoted in The Anger Diet by Brenda Shoshanna)
“These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, We Are the Builders of Our Fortunes: Success through Self-Reliance
Ten Bookish Goals? Hmm, that’s a lot. I cannot think of a list of 10 bookish goals for Year ’25, for this week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt. At most, here are 6 goals and I’d be very surprised if I can manage 2 or more of these:
The challenge, of course, remains in shortlisting 12 out of the TBR Pile…
That means, not just sticking to SFF or historicals – but to also try out more horror (incl. the new “cozy horror” niche), more philosophy, more humor, perhaps a thriller here and there.
The aim is to see how the author has grown over the years, and of course, enjoy the books and the process along the way. Perhaps: Lois McMaster Bujold or Patricia A. McKillip. Any other suggestions (in any genre) are welcome 🙂
I signed up for the Classics Club challenge last year and sometimes, when you are overwhelmed by the busy pace of things, an old classic seems the right solution.
There was a reason I set it up in 2020 (to create! to stay connected!), and I do need to water the bookish garden now and then.
In which case, I need to figure out how to move content from Bluehost to the new unpaid version. If anyone has solutions for this, please share!
How about you? Did you manage to work up a plan for reading and blogging this year? What are your top bookish goals for Year ‘25? Do any of our goals align?
It’s time to list our top 10 reads of 2024 (and download massive TBR reclists, of course). Not much of reading this year, but I would not have missed this Top 10 Tuesday theme for the world!
I have not been a great fan or follower of the Grishaverse, so was hesitant in picking this up. But what a marvelous story this turned out to be. We peer into the ages of 16th century when anti-semitism was rife. Luzia is desperately trying to escape her confined pitiful life with her displays of magical craft… but soon ends up getting embroiled in a larger political net. Everything in this book was so impressive – the Spanish Golden Age/ Renaissance feel, the worldbuilding, the writing, the prose, the characterizations. Aaaaand, it is a standalone. If you’ve liked Mistress of the Art of Death, you’ll love this one too.
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has an interesting theme – how our reading habits have changed over time. This actually proved to be a fun walk down memory lane. Let me count the ways, then!
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday is about listing books that you have picked up – or avoided – because of the hype around them. I fall in neither group — I’m a little wary of Hyped Books, so while I add them to my TBR, but save them for a later day. Instead, it’s the lesser known books which catch my eye… hoping to find some hidden gem perhaps?
So — here’s a list of some obscure books that I really think deserve a lot more love! Er, you may have seen these recommended around these parts before…
Several months ago, I had decided to participate in the Classics Club Challenge and signed up with a bucket list of 100 classic literature books that I wanted to read. Occasionally, a random number is also generated by by the hosts at The Classics Club, and you can play along by reading that entry number from your chosen list. Rules are here.
This is my first CC Spin, and the Lucky Spin Number this time around is …
On my list, entry #17 is Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot (1857). If I remember correctly, I chose this book because Eliot seems to have had a difficult relationship with her father and she has reflected some of that tension in this book. Plus, Eliot is one of my favorite all-time authors.
Not a very promising book cover, that. But let’s see…
Are you participating in CC Spin #38, or generally in the Classics Club Challenge this year?
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has us looking at our Spring ’24 TBR. I don’t know about you, but I’d be lucky to finish these off for the whole year! Still – subject to change and all that – here’s my set:
Folks, how have you been? Anybody else feeling the reading blues lately? Or, er, since last year? What are your solutions — and of course, your own Spring ’24 TBR lists?
I have decided to sign up for The Classics Club reading challenge this year. Based on this sign-up post and this FAQs post, we can choose our own criteria for what maketh a “classic” and then we have to make a list of 100 classics that we want to read – not immediately – but over the next 5 years.
For my own “classics” criteria, I’m going with a mixed bag of books famous in a specific genre* OR any books published before 1974 (i.e. more than 50 years ago). Here follows the list!
Top 10 zippy reads? I am all for it these days – and that’s the theme for this week’s Top 10 Tuesday. Here are my recs, with equally zippy blurbs!
The Throme of the Erril of Sherill by Patricia A. McKillip
Tropes: Knight quests, Riddles, Puns, Folktales
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
Tropes: Snarky, Retelling, The Odyssey, Ulysses hero-not-hero
Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente
Tropes: Native American, Retelling, Snow White, Wild West
Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa
Tropes: Anthology, Japanese folklore, Dark, Compassionate
Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
Tropes: Anthology, Science-Fiction, Bizarre, Quirky Horror
Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West
Tropes: Essays, ROFL Funny, Old blockbuster movies, Punchlines
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Terror
Tropes: Surreal, Otherwordly, Lurid, Anthology, Poetic
How the World Became Quiet by Rachel Swirsky
Tropes: Anthology, Science-Fiction, AI & Identity Crisis, Evolution
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Tropes: Graphic Novel, Poetic, Feel-Good, Found Families
Princess Floralinda & the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir
Tropes: Snarky, 40-floor fall, Coming of Age, Unexpected friends
So, do any of our choices match? Do you have any zippy read recs? Let’s chat!