Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl concerns cover redesigns, which mostly doesn’t interest me, unless it has to do with the Harry Potter series, in which case then I mostly just want to own them all, but will not because I do not possess Belle and the Beast’s library.

So instead today I thought I’d share ten of the books I’m reading off and on again because that’s how I roll right now:

1. There There by Tommy Orange: I don’t love short story collections or connected novels, but this book has been getting rave reviews, so I’m working on it.
2. Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston: I left the First Son and His Royal Highness in the midst of enjoying their relationship, but I know things are about to get hard for them, so I’ve resisted picking it back up again because I just want to skip to the happy ending.
3. Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: This is the book I’m reading most right now and I’ll likely finish the last section tomorrow because I’m down to three or so chapters left. Then I just have to wait for them to write another book. This pair writes my favorite alternating POV stories and I cannot believe no one has made a movie/tv series of The Illuminae Files yet.
4. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid: I got this audiobook out on cd, which means it’s currently living on my laptop. I have 16 hours of train rides coming in the next week, though, so there’s every possibility I could put a good dent in finishing it.
5. Naughty on Ice by Maia Chance: I put this aside for deadline reading and just need to get back to it. There’s probably less than two hours of reading left before it’s done.
6. The Big Kahuna by Janet Evanovich and Peter Evanovich: My audiobook copy will likely expire tomorrow before I finish listening to it, although I’m going to go put another dent in what remains while I wash today’s dishes. I’ve got holds on it at all three libraries I belong to, though, so hope to get another copy before too long.
7. Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart: I only like to take books that belong to me to the pool and I recently picked this up at my local Little Free Library. I’m 50 pages in so far, which is probably about half of what I made it through when I started it four years ago.
8. Calamity at the Continental Club by Colleen J. Shogun: I made it two chapters into this locally set mystery this weekend, but I’m not sure I’ll make it another two. I’m giving it one more chapter before I make a final call about proceeding or not.
9. The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan: This companion novel to The Bookshop on the Corner expired before I had a chance to finish listening to it and I want to know what happens before our characters get to their happy endings. (Unlike Red, White, and Royal Blue, they have not yet reached a stage where everyone seems happy, so I am motivated to return to them sooner.)
10. Early Riser by Jasper Fforde: This is another novel that just needs me to sit down with it for ninety minutes to finish it off. Seriously, I just need to get it done.

How about you? Are you a one-book-at-a-time kind of person? Or do you have masses of books going at once strewn about your home?

My Tour de France shawl was not finished by the time the cyclists circled the Arc de Triomphe the final time, but progress does continue noticeably. It would be faster if I didn’t have to keep doing spit splices of my pink yarn. Some of the breaks were due to moth damage from a project I was working on several years ago, but I’m now also finding problems on the interior of the center pull ball, which makes me think I got it caught in the yarn winder gear, which happens periodically. It’s been probably eight years since I wound it, so I don’t have a ton of recollection about the specifics of winding it up. Either way, I’m one more repeat of the pink pattern stitch section to go before I return to more mosaic work. Keep your needles crossed for long sections of unbroken yarn.

I started Aurora Uprising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff this week. The pair wrote The Illuminae Files trilogy, my favorite y.a. space opera series in a while, and this marks the start of a new series for them. They are good at characters and pacing and plot and impending doom, and really all you’d like for a book set in space in the future. I look forward to finishing it over the weekend while Rudi’s away biking. (I also still need to finish There There, which I’ve made progress on, and Red, White, and Royal Blue, which I haven’t picked up in a couple weeks, since they’re both overdue to the library.)

As I knit, I’m listening to The Big Kahuna by Janet Evanovich and Peter Evanovich, who replaces Lee Goldberg as coauthor for the latest installment of the Fox and O’Hare heist series. The change is not to the betterment of the series, which is disappointing. The series is not great literature in the first place (although it is a lot of fun and a quick listen), and to the younger Evanovich’s credit the word “panties” has not appeared in the first two thirds of the book, which definitely beats all the previous novels in the series.

Want to see more of what people are crafting and reading? Head to As Kat Knits for the roundup!

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie week, where host Jana of That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to make up our own bookish topic.

I recently finished one book that starts in Washington, D.C., and another that includes D.C. among several settings, which made me think about other books set in the area. Rather than give you a list of books set here that I’d recommend (although I’d be happy to do so if you leave a note in the comments), I thought I’d share ten books set locally that I’d like to read:

1. Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson* (ya)
2. Rebound by Kwame Alexander (mg)
3. Down and Across by Arvin Ahmadi* (ya)
4. The Van Gogh Deception by Deron Hicks (mg)
5. Calamity at the Continental Club by Colleen Shogan (adult)
6. All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones (adult)
7. All-American Girl by Meg Cabot (ya)
8. Training School for Negro Girls by Camille Acker (adult)
9. Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala (ya)
10. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (adult)

*I own a copy and have no excuse why I haven’t read it yet.

Have you read any of these books?

Nan at Letters from a Hill Farm and raidergirl3 at an adventure in reading highlighted a meme that Jo at The Book Jotter runs annually, considering the first half of a reading year. It seemed fun, and she has a ton of categories to choose from, so play along if you’d like.

Here are my chosen selections:

1. Six bookshops I have visited
   1. Politics and Prose is the biggest bookstore in D.C. and my favorite. It now boasts three locations: its flagship store in Chevy Chase with its expansive children’s section and two outposts in newer, hipper neighborhoods at Union Market and The Wharf.
   2. Kramerbooks is my local bookshop (and restaurant and bar) and has recently expanded. It keeps late hours on a daily basis in case you have a book emergency in the wee smalls.
   3. Capitol Hill Books is a used bookshop adjacent to Eastern Market and is the sort of used bookshop that immediately makes you love its owners and fear for their safety. They have removed the piles of books from the stairs since we moved here and have begun hostly monthly Saturday afternoon happy hours in their back garden.
   4. Bridge Street Books in Georgetown is the last indie bookshop in the lower part of the neighborhood. Beloved by university professors, it has a great poetry collection and a number of books in foreign languages, as well as a discount table out front and the usual bestsellers. Plus, it faces down an Amazon storefront on a daily basis.
   5. East City Books is just a couple blocks from Capitol Hill Books, but instead of selling used and antiquarian tomes, it is home to newer books. It has an excellent children’s and YA section downstairs (and spacious stroller parking in their pedestrian alley) and welcomes the dogs of the neighborhood (it has an alcove with their photos featured).
   6. Loyalty Bookstore is the new name of Upshur Street Books after the original owner sold it to two of his booksellers. They are a small, highly curated shop and are highly attuned to the needs of their Petworth neighborhood. If you go on a weekend evening, you can go to the bar next door for literary-themed cocktails.
2. Six new authors to me
   1. Jasmine Guillory (The Proposal)
   2. Sonali Dev (Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors)
   3. Mary H.K. Choi (Emergency Contact)
   4. Stephanie Garber (Caraval)
   5. Nnedi Okorafor (Akata Witch)
   6. Ngozi Ukazu (Check, Please!)
3. Six favourite places to read
   1. The couch
   2. The park
   3. The Western-facing patio of the coffeehouse near my apartment
   4. The metro
   5. At the sink while washing dishes (audiobooks, obviously)
   6. In line at Trader Joe’s
4. Six series of books read or started
   1. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han (recently finished #2)
   2. Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery by A.J. Herbert (#1)
   3. Gethsemane Brown Mysteries by Alexia Gordon (#1)
   4. Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend (#1)
   5. Lady Sherlock by Sherry Thomas (#3)
   6. Veronica Speedwell by Deanna Raybourn (#4)
5. Six books I started in the first six months of the year and was still caught up with in July
   1. Jasper Fforde’s Early Riser
   2. The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss
   3. Naughty on Ice by Maia Chance
   4. Front Desk by Kelly Yang
   5. On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
   6. Insomnia by Marina Benjamin
6. Six authors I read last year — but not so far this year
   1. Neil Gaiman
   2. Barbara Kingsolver
   3. Andrew Shaffer
   4. Melissa Albert
   5. Leigh Bardugo
   6. Karina Yan Glaser

I have reached the first mosaic portion of my Tour de France shawl! I’m really happy that I didn’t end up settling for a different contrast yarn, holding out for finding something in my stash that really popped. It is remarkably unlikely that I’ll be done knitting by the time the cyclists are circling the Arc de Triomphe on Sunday afternoon, but I could be through this first mosaic section and maybe even through the first solid pink section, provided I’m a little more careful with not having to rip back the pattern stitch that populates the solids.

On the reading front, what you see here are the three books I picked up at the library this evening. I’m glad I brought a plastic bag with me, because I was heading to my volleyball game afterwards and a rogue rainstorm drizzled on us for over an hour. I’ve only read the first few pages of Wordslut so far, definitely not enough to form any reasonable opinion about the work.

I need to finish reading Red, White, and Royal Blue and There There, both of which are overdue to the library with long holds lists. I should be able to cross both off my list and return them this coming week.

I have a handful of chapters left of Peter Mayle’s The Vintage Caper to listen to. It’s been a light, pleasant, French-centered accompaniment to my Tour de France watching and knitting, but I am not so caught up in it that I’ll be sorry to reach its finale. That feeling is probably increased by the fact that a bunch of audiobooks have come off hold for me recently, and I have Jenny Colgan’s The Bookshop on the Shore, Janet and Peter Evanovich’s The Big Kahuna, and Tricia Levenseller’s Daughter of the Siren Queen waiting impatiently in the wings.

Want to see what other people are reading and crafting? Head over to As Kat Knits for the roundup.

Perpetually behind in my reviews, but always aspiring to catch up…

I finished four books in May:

Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite Matinee, by Jeff Zentner

Delia and Josie are best friends about to graduate from high school, who co-host a weekly horror creature-feature on their local cable access channel while dressed as the vampires Delilah and Rayne. Think Elvira meets Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Delia, who thought up the show because she and her absentee dad used to watch cheesy horror films together when she was little, is heading to community college and looking to expand the show beyond its small syndication to a national audience. She plans to stay on her meds, which help with her depression, and hopes she can help her mom, who struggles with her own depression and, thus, with finances. Josie, who aspires to a job in mainstream media, was supposed to go to a college nearby and keep hosting the show with Delia, but also has gotten into a bigger, more illustrious program out of the area that her upper middle-class parents are pressuring her to pursue. How does she pick? And how does her feelings about Lawson, an über-sweet, teenaged MMA fighter, who is an impromptu guest on their show one night, play into her decision?

When an opportunity to meet the most famous has-been producer in cheesy horror arises, bargains are made and compromises hang in the balance. Will Josie and Delia’s friendship survive a trip into that creepy basement? What will emerge from the mysterious lagoon of their future?

This book was a lot funnier than I expected it to be (the meet cute hinges on some dim acquaintances who think that a beagle eventually grows up into a basset hound) and a lot sweeter:

But the thing with a best friend is that you’re never talking about nothing. Even when you’re talking about nothing, it’s something. The times when you think you’re talking about nothing, you’re actually talking about how you have someone with whom you can talk about nothing, and it’s fine.

Neither of Zentner’s other novel premises have particularly appealed to me, but I really liked this story and will reconsider his earlier work based on this. Recommended to those who pursue their dreams and who still sometimes miss out on them, but also those with best friends they can’t imagine their lives without.

Pages: 400. Library copy.

Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, by Tony Cliff

Delilah (how often will you read two Delilahs in a single month?) Dirk is a biracial treasure-hunter with a flying ship, who has come to Turkey to rob a sultan and who surprises a gentle palace guard, Selim, who would rather make tea than bash heads, when he finds that he is inexplicably drawn to her and her tales of adventures. In the first of a graphic novel series, the two of them flee Constantinople (not Istanbul), crash her ship (helium-filled transportation is not a good place to make a pot of tea), and then escape across the countryside, swords blazing. As with Selim, Delilah has gotten in my head, and I look forward greatly to many more misadventures with her in the future.

If you like Indiana Jones, swashbucklers, and kick-ass feminist fantasy heroes on the page or screen, you should definitely check out this super-fun series. (I admit that I was worried about how race and gender would be covered since it’s written and drawn by a Western white guy and focuses on two people of color in the Middle East, but I was pleasantly surprised. I did a little googling to make sure my own white privilege wasn’t blinding me to what might glaringly concern others, but I have not come across any thus far.)

Pages: 176. Library copy.

For Every One, by Jason Reynolds

While I love Jason Reynolds, book-length, self-helpish poems aren’t really my scene and I probably would have skipped out on reading this if it hadn’t been for a tornado warning. I was biking home one afternoon when a severe thunderstorm popped up and I decided it was unsafe to try to race it the dozen remaining blocks home. I took shelter in a library along the route, all our phones suddenly sounded alarms, and I found myself a seat and some reading material that looked like it might be done around the same time as the warning.

It was really good. Like pick this up for every person you know who is doubting themselves and their dreams, which is probably like 98% of us. I mean, while Jason says he wrote this before any of his success found him, acclaim has certainly moved into his house since then, and no one would have blamed him if he chose to burn this or read it only in dark of night when his edits aren’t going well. He didn’t have to share it. But he did because he knows how much it sucks when you’ve got a burning desire to do something, be something, and then that thing doesn’t happen on the timetable you expected. He knows how it feels when everyone, including your rational self, tells you to give up, move on, pick something safer, be more realistic. He wants you to know that he sees you and he believes in you and that you should believe in you, too, because it’s never too late and it’s never too early and it’s never on time.

Highly recommended. Plus, it’ll only take you the length of a tornado warning to read if you want to sample it from your local library or while you’re browsing at the bookstore.

Pages: 112. Library copy.

Caraval, by Stephanie Garber

Scarlett and her younger sister, Tella, have grown up on a remote island under the tyranny of her father, the governor, but she is nearly ready to escape into an arranged marriage with a wealthy older man she has never met, but one who will let her rescue her sister. She also is nearly ready to give up on her dream of experiencing the Caraval, a magical annual performance in which some audience members take part, that her grandmother related stories of at bedtime years ago. After all, her secret letters to its magician host have gone unanswered all these years. Yet now that her letter informs him that this will be her final correspondence, he replies and sends invitations for her, Tella, and her fiance to join him in this year’s festivities, should they be able to travel to his location in time.

Scarlett does not want to jeopardize her sister’s safety, so is willing to miss the performance after all, but Tella does not want to see her sister settle, particularly when neither of them is positive what lies at the other end of their escape. So she pays a young sailor to kidnap them and transport them across the sea in time to reach Caraval before it commences.

But their safety is still not assured. The sisters are separated and then it is announced that the game participants must find Tella, who has been whisked away, with her life as penalty if they do not. Scarlett is frantic and does not know whom to trust. Can she trust the young man who colluded with Tella to kidnap her? What about the strange people she meets as she follows clues about her sister’s whereabouts? And, most dangerous of all, can she trust her own heart and mind, when the stakes are at their highest?

I’d heard many accolades from members of my book club about this engrossing introduction to a fantasy trilogy, but kept forgetting to pick it up. With the third book in the series out earlier this year, I finally got around to starting it. I’m excited to still have two more books to see how this story plays out and what the future holds. Recommended if you enjoy role-playing, literary sisters, or heroic fantasy.

Pages: 407. Library copy.

May stats:

Total number of books read: 4.
Total pages read: 1,095.
Intended audience: All young adult.
Source: All from the library.
Format: All in paper.
Classification: 2 fiction; 1 book-length poem; 1 graphic novel.
Diversity of authors: 3 Americans, 1 Canadian. 1 author of color (Black). One woman.