First Top 10 Tuesday post of 2026! Happy New Year, everyone!!!
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt has us look at our best books of 2025, and I am eager to see what everyone has to share!
My own favorites are listed below, and reviews shared earlier by me HERE. My reading list is still heavier on the historical fantasy fiction side, but I am glad I managed to pick up on non-fiction reads as well.
So, which were your best books of 2025? Do share in the comments!
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt (ten books in special settings or time period) was so cool and could have gone a thousand different ways. Yet, what I ended up thinking of were books set in ominous places.
I was thinking of places that are remarkable and likely very dangerous, not somewhere you may want to venture — at least, not outside of a book.
1 / The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Trapped in a castle with a wicked uncle and no way out? Crossed out.
2 / Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
Stuck at an afternoon picnic where reality and dreaming are blurred? Crossed out.
3 / The Tower at Stony Wood by Patricia McKillip
Desperate to enter a tower which won’t let you in? Crossed out.
4 / In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss
Lots of known fairy tale characters forgetting what’s important? Crossed out.
5 / Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Living in an amusement park in a swamp while wrestling alligators and fighting off rabid competitors? Crossed out.
6 / The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Raised in a library that is not really a library? Crossed out.
7 / The City in the Lake by Rachel Neumeier
Trying to figure out a mirror city that is trying to become the real city? Crossed out.
8 / Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Packed off to a remote and dreary island for reformation? Crossed out.
9 / The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino
Feasting with weird and melodramatic people straight out of tarot decks? (Hopefully) crossed out.
10 / The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Living in fear for your life in a house surrounded by a moat, when you know Sherlock Holmes will be too late to the rescue? Crossed out.
What about you? Which ominous fictional places have stood out in your recent bookish memory?
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?