Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to reflect on a decade’s worth of releases and to give our favorite book for each of the past ten years.

I should note that I started out considering the best book from each year, but then I realized it wasn’t the question and had to go back to my first couple to consider whether it was, in fact, my favorite. Here’s where I ended up:

2009: Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me
2010: Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
2011: Erin Morganstern’s The Night Circus
2012: A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman
2013: Just One Day by Gayle Forman
2014: Landline by Rainbow Rowell
2015: Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
2016: Sherry Thomas’ A Study in Scarlet Women
2017: Word by Word by Kory Stamper
2018: Julie Murphy’s Puddin’
Bonus: 2019: So far I’ve only read two of this year’s publications. The moment’s winner is Jeff Zentner’s Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite Matinee.

It does not escape me that my list is very white, with Sherry Thomas being the only author of color, I believe. As I mentioned, these are merely the books I enjoyed most, not necessarily the books I thought were most important or best written, which would mostly have resulted in vastly different lists that included books by Jason Reynolds, Angie Thomas, Kwame Alexander, Nicola Yoon, Jacqueline Woodson, Grace Lin, and Cristina Henríquez.

Rudi and I stopped by the local library branch yesterday, where I had a few holds waiting for me. It seems like all my red-spined requests came in at once…

We watched Ant-Man this evening. It was cute. I’ve started The Body Papers by Grace Talusan, a memoir written by the sister of someone I knew from college, and am trying to decide which fictional work to begin next. I’m thinking possibly one of the other books that would qualify for Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which would be Emergency Contact; From Twinkle, With Love; and Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors.

What have you picked up from the library recently?

I should probably have paid attention when Flickr announced they were going to be down for maintenance, because it didn’t occur to me that they meant for 12 hours. And I just don’t have it in me to upload the photo another way right now, so until Flickr comes back online, assume that this paragraph is a shot consisting of a pot of tea, a biscuit, a half skein of yarn that had not yet been cast on for a second sock, and a book on a table outside. It looked not dissimilar from last week’s shot.

The second of my Smock Madness pair was cast on this evening. It’s nice to think that pair could be finished in a couple weeks.

I had Murder in G Major with me again today, so that’s the book that was included in the picture. Gethsemane has survived a poisoning, performed some tunes in the local bar, and convinced a ghost to write her a concerto, so life is looking up a bit for her. Elsewhere, I’m listening to The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss, which starts off at the newly constructed outpost of the Nearly Silent Monastery (they have a vocabulary of eight words and practice listening) here in Washington, D.C., where a small girl has wandered in with no information about where she came from. And I also started Death Prefers Blondes, a y.a. novel about a rich girl who runs a crew of teen drag queens in performing elaborate heists around the L.A. area.

Want to hear about what other folks are reading and crafting (many of them have photos!)? Head over to As Kat Knits to catch the roundup.

Today was my final Tuesday volleyball game for a while, which means I’m likely able to take advantage of $5 movie night again. This turned my thoughts to what might be playing this summer that I’d like to see:

1. Spiderman: Far From Home (I didn’t love Avengers: End Game, but I do love this iteration of Peter Parker.)
2. Rocketman (obviously the soundtrack will be great)
3. Late Night (Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson? Yes, please!)
4. Men in Black International (aka Asgardians in Suits)
5. Yesterday (What if you were suddenly the only person who knew The Beatles’ repertoire?)
6. The Farewell (I’ve loved Awkwafina in everything I’ve seen her in thus far, including that phone/pedicure commercial currently on tv, and will definitely want to see this — with a box of tissues.)
7. Blinded by the Light (Rudi and I just saw a trailer for this film — about a 1980s British Indian teen boy who falls in love with the music of The Boss — last week, and it looks awesome!)
8. Booksmart (Because I probably should have had a couple wild adventures back in the day…)
9. Shaft (I have never seen any of the previous iterations, but this could be fun.)
10. The Spy Behind Home Plate (I missed The Catcher Is Also a Spy last year, so I might do a double-header of this documentary with that biopic.)

Between these and the free outdoor film screenings that started up tonight, I should catch up on a ton of movies this summer. How about you? What would you like to catch at the theater this summer?

A stab toward getting back on track. Here are the three books I finished back in March:

Geekerella, by Ashley Poston

A retelling of Cinderella, this novel is set in modern South Carolina and features geek girl Elle, a hard-working orphan who blogs lovingly about a cheesy sci-fi tv show from the 1980s (the first to feature a lead by an Asian-American actor), and teen soap heartthrob Darien, who’s just been hired to play the hero in a modern reboot movie. As chapters alternate between the two, we learn that Elle, whose parents met at a Starfield signing line and who went on to found a convention in its honor, is spending the summer working in a vegan food truck called the Magic Pumpkin, much to the shame of her stepmother and two stepsisters. Darien, on the other hand, has just discovered that his manager (also his father, but he’s not allowed to call him Dad) has signed him up to appear at a fan convention after shooting wraps at the end of the summer. He has a hard and fast rule about not appearing at Cons, since his ex-friend betrayed him publicly at one several years ago. Hoping to take his destiny back into his own hands, he finds the Con’s website and texts a phone number he finds associated with it. Guess who’s at the other end of that number… (more…)

We had sun and warmth for the first time in ages this afternoon, so I stopped by Big Bear Cafe on my way back from my library book group to sit and read the book I picked up afterwards.

The book, Alexia Gordon’s Murder in G Major, was recommended to me on Monday when I remarked to the Bout of Books Twitter chat that I was really hankering after cozies with non-white main characters. While I’m grateful that this mystery features a Black woman conductor and musician as its lead, and I like an Irish cottage as a setting, I’m not loving the book so far. I’m hoping it gets more comfortable with itself once it’s not introducing characters anymore.

I’m still listening to P.S. I Still Love You and also have picked Kelly Yang’s middle-grade novel Front Desk, about family of Chinese immigrants who run a hotel run by a not-such-a-nice guy.

I didn’t knit on my Smock Madness socks at all last week, so these look exactly like they did then. I found the pattern and I resumed my toe decreases while at the cafe this afternoon. However, I didn’t have a chibi with me, so the second sock had to wait for another day.

Head over to As Kat Knits if you want to read more posts about books and crafting.