I just looked back at my summer tbr list and found I’ve finished none of the books I’d listed. Sigh.

Will that stop me from listing ten more books I hope to read this fall as part of That Artsy Reader Girl’s seasonal Top Ten Tuesday? No, no it will not:

1. Erin Sterling’s The Wedding Witch
2. A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle Jensen
3. Holmes, Marple, and Poe by James Patterson and Brian Sitts
4. Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders
5. Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi
6. The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright
7. Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year
8. The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez
9. The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
10. How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

What’s on your TBR for this fall? Mysteries? Fantastical tales? Classic lit to be read as the evenings fall earlier?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the debuts we enjoyed — those first published works by authors that completely wowed us. Here are ten of mine:

1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
2. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
3. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
4. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
5. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
6. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
7. Me: Moth by Amber McBride
8. Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt
9. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
10. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

How about you? What debut novels have you loved?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share the books we’re most looking forward to that come out between July and December. Other than Rainbow’s and Maehrer’s books, I’ve not included any I listed last week, but I did have to cheat and expand the list to 11:

1. Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance
2. Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
3. Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune
4. The Frindle Files by Andrew Clements
5. S.J. Bennett’s A Death in Diamonds
6. A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sanju Mandanna
7. The Witching Wind by Natalie Lloyd
8. Naomi Novik’s Buried Deep and Other Stories
9. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
10. The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
11. Erin Sterling’s The Wedding Witch

How about you? What’s coming out during the second half of 2024 that you can’t wait to get your hands on?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl is a seasonal favorite — the top ten books on my summer TBR list:

1. Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance
2. A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvia Cathrall
3. Nicola Yoon’s One of Our Kind
4. Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
5. How to Read a Book by Monica Wood
6. The Summer Pact by Emily Giffin
7. Kate Quinn’s The Briar Club
8. A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb
9. We Shall Be Monsters by Tara Sim
10. A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic by J. Penner

What books are you hoping to read this summer?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is Authors I’d Love a New Book From. Here are ten of mine:

1. Rainbow Rowell (This is cheating, because her next novel is due out in July, but still…)
2. Maia Chance (It looks like she has a thriller coming out this summer, but I was really hoping for one of her mysteries.)
3. Deanna Raybourn (I downed the latest Veronica Speedwell a few weeks ago and would be delighted with another in that series or another standalone.)
4. Sonali Dev (I haven’t read her latest, but know I’ll devour it quickly and then I’ll want more!)
5. Erin Morgenstern (I have, but haven’t read, The Starless Sea, but even that came out five years ago.)
6. Grace Lin (Her middle grade novels are exquisite.)
7. Carsten Henn (It looks like he has other books, but they don’t seem to have been translated.)
8. Michael Scott (I want him to write something new and then come to the U.S. to promote it, because he was such a great author to hear live.)
9. Chad Harbach (How has he never published another novel?!)
10. Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (A third series from them would be just great from my perspective!)

How about you? Are there authors you’d like to have send you a new manuscript right now?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the (petty) reasons we’ve lowered the rating or just failed to finish a book.

I will be honest. I start and fail to finish books all the time. The first few chapters aren’t great. (I rarely bother to enter those into Goodreads at all.) It’s in a bag I don’t pick up for three months. The book is overdue to the library. It’s just not the right fit for my mood, but is otherwise perfectly fine. Goodreads lists my currently reading total as 50 (and my “on-hiatus” tally as nearly 100) for these reasons and more. Probably maybe I’ll get back around to them.

These are not the books I’m talking about today. Today we’re talking about the books that lure me past page 50. That trick me into finishing them or that are so bad that I want people to know I could not bring myself to finish them.

Let’s look at why that might be:

1. It didn’t seem like it would have a sad ending and then it had a sad ending. Number one reason something gets one star from me on Goodreads. (Spoiler alert.)
2. I hate the main character. Number one reason I won’t finish a book after investing actual time in it.
3. Appallingly bad writing, but an interesting enough story idea that I wanted to know what happens (but then didn’t think the ending was done well).
4. A mystery where I know who does it before I even know what’s been done. (Sometimes, stories are told where you get the narrative from the perpetrator’s point of view as well as the detective. I don’t usually love those, but they are not my complaints here.)
5. Ridiculously conventional gender roles. (See, often, romances.)
6. There is no mystery in a mystery novel. (Like, what is this even?)
7. The author doesn’t know how to end the book.
8. A mystery where my solution is better than the author’s.
9. Nonfiction where the author is a pompous ass. (On rare occasion, also true in fiction.)
10. A romance where I don’t care if the couple ends up together or not.

How about you? What drives you bat-shit crazy about a book?