Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks, if stranded on a deserted island, what would be the ten books you’d like to have with you:

1. One of those all in one OEDs with the magnifying glasses so you can read the tiny print. How irritating would it be to not be able to think of the word you’re looking for and to only have your own decaying brain to rely on? (Bonus, the magnifying glass can be used to help with starting a fire. Minus, I don’t know how to do that and would not want to waste one of my ten slots on a book that tells me.)
2. That said, there is a single-volume encyclopedia that dates from earlier this century, the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Sure, it’s already outdated. However, I’m stranded, and there’s benefit to a 2000-page book on 28,000 topics. (Side note: did you know there is still a print encyclopedia being made? Clearly I couldn’t take a 22-volume set on a doomed cruise or flight, but it’s something to keep in mind for more mundane needs.)
3. I took The Sagas of the Icelanders (all 848 pages of it) with me to Reykjavik, and didn’t get very far. I’m assuming I’ll be stranded for more than a week, though, so having a lengthy tome would be helpful.
4. Sticking with the big books theme, let’s go with a Complete Works of Shakespeare. Dad has one that he once kindly offered to lend me when I was reading … maybe Pericles? … but since I was mostly reading it on the Metro, that seemed impractical. Endless days on the beach or in a makeshift hammock, though? Sure! (And Pericles would be a great play to return to for this scenario.)
5. Poetry would be a good choice for a deserted island. Lots of time to dissect word choice and layered meanings. I’m thinking Good Poems for Hard Times, edited by Garrison Keillor, might be an apt choice. I’d be open to a different poetry collection, but I’d want to stick with one with multiple authors.
6. I have a collected works of Charlotte and Emily Brontë (I don’t know why they slighted Anne) that I bought on vacation in middle school at an Annie’s Book Stop on Cape Cod. (I am too lazy to walk over to the bookshelf by the bathroom and find the actual title.) This would be a good selection, because I could finally get around to reading Charlotte’s other works, and if I needed to burn pages to start a fire, I could start with the St. John chapters of Jane Eyre and any part of Wuthering Heights that still pisses me off. (I loved it as a melodramatic teen, can’t remember my thoughts from college, and hated it in grad school. Who knows what re-reading it in my 40s will bring?)
7. Again, sticking with a theme, I’m thinking for my last item (I already wrote the next group), I’d go with The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I imagine the longer I’m stuck on the island, the more I’ll be grateful for this choice. (Although including it does bump Austen off my list.)
8. -10. The last three are sentimental favorites — books that went with me to college and that came down with me to D.C. when we pretty much just moved cats, sleeping bags, microwave, and a single box of Very Important Books (because I couldn’t see how I’d get through the move without them): Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone.

How about you? What sort of books would you want to have with you if you were stuck on a desert isle?

This evening, I took my book out with me, rather than my knitting, and sat on the local Greek restaurant’s patio with a cup of tea. (Bars might have reopened, but few of the coffeehouses near me have resumed evening hours. Even the Starbucks on the Circle closes at 8 these days.)

I’m far enough into the book at this point to be invested in the characters, so I expect it to go quickly from here on.

The Olympics kick off the evening after tomorrow, so I expect that’s when knitting will begin again in earnest. After all, I should be able to finish a smallish project within two multi-week sporting events, right?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks about books that should be read in a single sitting. Here are ten titles that I either did that with, or where it feels that way in retrospect:

1. Any of the Harry Potter books
2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
3. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
4. The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
5. The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O’Neill (it is a picture book)
6. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
7. If God Invented Baseball by E. Ethelbert Miller
8. The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
9. Booked by Alexander Kwame
10. Trouble Makes a Comeback by Stephanie Tromly

How about you? Are there any books that you’ve just absolutely torn through?

We’re back to considering punctuated books for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl. Here are ten titles with question marks in them on my to-be read list:

1. Is Every One Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
2. What’s Your Exit? A Literary Detour through New Jersey by Joe Vallese
3. Are You Ready to Hatch an Unusual Chicken? by Kelly Jones
4. Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
5. Oh There You Are I Can’t See You Is It Raining? by Laura Broadbent
6. Are You Seeing Me? by Darren Groth
7. Which Witch? by Eva Ibbotson
8. Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne
9. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
10. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum

Do you have any interrogatory reads I should add to my list?

I spent the entire night tonight lying on the couch, eating tortilla chips, playing phone games, and listening to an audiobook.

It’s that last bit that saves it, right? I mean, sure, it would absolutely have been better if I’d been knitting or cleaning or doing laundry while the book was playing, but at least listening to an audiobook while doing nothing else productive makes it not a complete waste of a perfectly good evening.

And it wasn’t. I wrapped up that audiobook in less than 24 hours, which has to have been a record for me. But in a year where reading has been slower than ever before, tearing through a book — any book — is such a relief.

It means somewhere under all this exhaustion and stress and depression and frustration, my core me is still there, waiting just to be sucked into a story at the expense of everything else.

And if it’s through my phone, rather than on paper, that’s cool, too, because reading is reading. And the page turning will come back, too.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is “Reasons I Love Reading.” It reminded me of my grandmother who once (during an 11-day power outage) shared with me that she felt sorry for people who don’t read. “What do they do with all their time?” What indeed?

1. Language excites me. A well-turned phrase needs to be shared with whoever is nearby (whether they’re interested or not. Sorry, Rudi.) New words are like candy. And I love how manipulating the way words are put together conveys so much.
2. Waiting with a book is an opportunity to get a few pages in, rather than an opportunity for tedium or irritation.
3. I love being transported to a different time and place.
4. I am not wealthy enough or endowed with enough vacation time to go to all the places I want to visit … except with my library card.
5. A shared love of a story is a shortcut. My college roommate said she knew the first night we’d be friends because I put a copy of Anne of Green Gables on my desk. And seeing people reading the Harry Potter books in the first days after release helped me know there were lots of people who shared something important with me.
6. I can juggle different worlds. At a tense point in the fantasy story? Dive into that romance novel until you’re feeling ready to go on. Someone once remarked they didn’t understand how I could read multiple books at once. “Don’t you get them mixed up?” I replied that I was perfectly capable of not confusing the details of multiple friends and this wasn’t especially different.
7. Books can fill in for friends (for a little while) when you’re feeling lonely and out of your element. When we moved to D.C., we brought a carload of stuff with us at a time. I had a box of books I insisted had to come with me first off.
8. Your books tell me about you. The first thing I do on going to someone’s home for the first time is to look at their bookshelves.
9. It’s the best way to learn things! I mean, sure YouTube is absolutely faster if I want to learn how to knit an i-cord. But if I want to learn the history of knitting or why microaggressions are so virulent? I’m turning to a book.
10. Sometimes, a magical book will make you feel seen in a way that nothing else does.

Why do you love to read?

Oh, and while I have you bookish people here: Are there spoilers to Six of Crows if I start reading it before I finish watching season one of Shadow and Bone on Netflix? I started listening to it last year and quickly realized it would be a book I’d enjoy more in print.