I put this summary off, thinking I’d get around to sharing 2025’s reads before writing up the books I completed during January. But if I wait any longer, I’ll be behind for this year as well. So, onward to the ten books I read last month (and here’s hoping March is a better month for wrapping up last year):

The Librarians by Sherry Thomas

Shortly after a young widow starts working at the library near her grandmother’s home, two patrons die in seemingly separate events. But it turns out they may not be, and the employees of the branch may or may not be good suspects for their demise. If you like your murders straightforward, this is going to rely on coincidence too much for you. If you like your characters to be realistic, again, probably not your cup of tea. If, however, you are happy to read your murder mysteries with your tongue in your cheek and not to consider the circumstances too closely, I’d joyfully endorse this workplace found-family mystery.

Paper. Library copy. (more…)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is recommendations for armchair travelers:

1. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence (British couple goes on vacation, falls in love with the region, and buys a fixer upper there. Hilarious to read about, but probably not to live through.)
2. The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (Girl and boy meet by chance in New York City and have an adventure.)
3. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (A widow moves her family to Corfu, Greece, in the late-1930s)
4. Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (Middle-aged man and his out-of-shape buddy embark upon a hike of the Appalachian Trail)
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (No matter your opinion of Cathy and Heathcliff, you can’t deny the power of the moors)
6. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (A teen ends up bound to the Mayan god of death and must travel around Mexico to help free him—and her)
7. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes (A forced proximity romance between a widow and an MLB pitcher trying to overcome the yips in a coastal town in Maine)
8. Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia (A treasure hunt through Boston)
9. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (The fictionalized adventures of a vet in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s)
10. Empire of Shadows by Jacquelyn Benson (A woman finds a map to a secret city and travels to Belize to follow it)

Honestly, I feel like there are certain cities (New York, London, Paris…) that I could do individual lists for.

How about you? Are there books you’d recommend especially for the setting?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share bookish discoveries we made last year. I thought I’d focus on writers. Of the 59 authors I read, 39 were new to me. Here are ten of those whose books I gave four stars to:

1. B.K. Borison, Good Spirits (romantasy)
2. Abiola Bello, Love in Winter Wonderland (YA romance)
3. John Scalzi, Starter Villain (sci fi adventure)
4. Kate McKinnon (yes, that one), The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science (kidlit adventure)
5. Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time (sci fi)
6. Emily Henry, Book Lovers (romance)
7. Alexene Farol Follmuth, Twelfth Knight (YA fiction)
8. Sylvie Cathrall, Letters to the Luminous Deep (romantasy)
9. A. Kendra Greene, No Less Strange or Wonderful (nature essays)
10. Sara Raash, The Nightmare Before Kissmas (romantasy)

I’ll definitely be checking out more books by these authors in the future.

How about you? Did you stumble across any authors last year whose books will hit your tbr list?

Before we get to That Artsy Reader Girl’s weekly Top Ten Tuesday topic, our 2026 goals, let’s check in on how I did with last year’s:

1. Read 52 books. 62 titles finished.
2. Read 25 books I own. I managed a piddly four.
3. Read more diversely (15). 18 titles were written by authors who identified as BIPOC or queer.
4. Write at least 6 non-Top Ten Tuesday posts about books this year. I managed six review posts.
5. Read more backlist titles (15 books published outside this half-decade, and at least 7 from before the year 2000). I finished 10 books from before 2020 and only two from the 1900s.
6. Read 3+ books of poetry or novels in verse. Fail, although I did finish two works of prose by poets.
7. Read more nonfiction — at least 5. 10 books.
8. Read a book by an author who lives in Africa and one who lives in Central or South America. Fail.
9. Send the books I’ve bought as gifts to the people they’re meant for. Fail.
10. Give every book I own a permanent home on a shelf. Fail

Okay, so that’s not a great track record. I read more, read more diversely, and read more nonfiction, but still leant toward recent works of fiction from the library.

Let’s see what we can do about it with some goals for this year:

1. Read 52 books. This number works for me as a target.
2. Finish at least 20 books I own.
3. Read 3 works from pre-1900, 5 books from the 20th century, and 10 books (total) published before 2021.
4. Publish reviews for all 12 months DURING 2026 (with a few days’ grace period for December).
5. Finish 1 play, 1 short story collection, and 2 books of poetry.
6. Read works by authors from at least 7 countries, at least 5 of which should be in translation.
7. Read at least 5 books by queer and/or trans writers.
8. Read 5 works of nonfiction, in at least 4 different Dewey Decimal areas.
9. Send the gift books out into the world. (I bought them so friends would get to read them. Silly to hold on to them forever.)
10. Give every book I own its own shelf space. (This should be my ultimate goal for my personal library and if I can’t figure it out, more books should move on to other bibliophiles.

We’re in the midst of annual Top Ten Tuesday topics at That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s is the top ten books we’re most anticipating that are being published before the end of June. Here are mine:

1. Jasper Fforde’s Dark Reading Matter
2. Rainbow Rowell’s Cherry Baby
3. Deana Raybourn’s A Ghastly Catastrophe
4. T.J. Klune’s We Burned So Bright
5. Anne of a Different Island by Virginia Kantra
6. E.B. Asher’s This Will Be Interesting
7. The Astral Library by Kate Quinn
8. Kory Stamper’s True Color
9. By The Book by Jessica George
10. Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett

How about you? What’s coming out in the next six months that you’re excited to read?

About halfway through the summer, I stopped tracking my reading in all the places I’d been recording them, save on Goodreads. But I didn’t stop reading. I’d like to get caught up with reviews here in the next week or so and then share my favorite 2025 reads. And, so, here are my thoughts on what I finished back in July and August:

Empire of Shadows by Jacquelyn Benson

This was a fun read for those who like Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Jungle Cruise, or The Librarian movies/tv series. Ellie — a suffragette arrested during a protest, recently fired museum archivist (see aforementioned activism), and aspiring archaeologist — finds herself in possession of an illicit map that hints that a legendary South American city may exist. The biggest of her problems? A villain knows she has it. So what’s a newly unemployed middle class young woman to do? Get on a boat and go find out, of course! Once she lands in Belize (then British Honduras), she finds it necessary to join forces with an American surveyor and tour guide and hot foot it on her way. They’ll face danger from natural forces, local villagers, and their own mutual distrust, in addition to the unethical people pursuing Ellie in hopes of reaching the mythical city first.

Paper. Library copy. (more…)