I love the seasonal posts at That Artsy Reader Girl if for no other reason than I get to start looking ahead to what’s come out recently and what’s coming out in the next couple months. Am I supposed to be reading more backlist titles this year? Absolutely I am! But that doesn’t stop me from looking ahead. And the keyword there is “more”; I’m just supposed to look backwards in between new releases.

Here are ten books I hope to read this spring:

1. Deanna Raybourn’s A Ghastly Catastrophe
2. The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer
3. Rainbow Rowell’s Cherry Baby
4. Love by the Book by Jessica George
5. Kory Stamper’s True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color—from Azure to Zinc Pink
6. Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe
7. Smash or Pass by Birdie Schae
8. Mac Barnett’s Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children
9. The Insomniacs by Allison Winn Scotch
10. Behind Five Willows by June Hur

Which books are you looking forward to this spring?

I finished five books during February, which feels a bit like I slacked after January’s ten. But that’s how it goes…

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley

A middle-aged magazine advice columnist commutes into London every day with her dog. She doesn’t make eye contact. She certainly never talks to anyone, even if she does recognize the regulars on her route and form judgments based on what she observes. Until one of those regulars starts choking in front of her and she has to get involved. And once one of those rules fall, she finds herself unable to put the lid back on, intermingling with a bullied student, a nursing student, a young woman starting her career, and men having marital and career woes. A heartwarming story for those who love found family stories. Some of the twists are telegraphed early, but you never mind.

Library. Audio. (more…)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share ten books with titles that contain ordinal numbers. I wanted to give you just one for each, but capped out of individual numbers I’d read at nine. I’ve doubled up on “first,” which is also the number that appears most in books I’ve listed as to-read.

1. First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
2. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
3. The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser
4. The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde
5. The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary by Laura Shovan
6. Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes
7. Twelfth Knight by Alexene Farol Follmuth
8. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
9. Miracle on 34th Street by Valentine Davies
10. The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser

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?

Once upon a time, bloggers used to share poetry on February 2nd to mark St. Brigid’s Day and the Imbolc festival, which span the first couple days of February and mark, like Groundhog Day and Candlemas, the midway point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.

Largely, the practice has faded away, but I’m fond of it, so today you get a poem by Billy Collins, which I think may resonate with a certain number of us in the wake of the last week:

Shoveling Snow With Buddha
    ~Billy Collins

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

In previous years, I’ve shared poems by Vadim Kagan, Tom Disch, Sharon Olds, Emily Dickinson, Kyle Dargan, Barbara Crooker, William Stafford, Mary Oliver (twice), Wislawa Szymborska, Stuart Dischell, Jean Esteve, John Frederick Nims, Grace Paley, Heather McHugh, and Barbara Hamby, all of which are worth another read.