Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is audiobooks. Because the focus within that is up to us, I thought I’d share some audiobooks that really worked for me:

1. The Harry Potter series, narrated by Jim Dale.
   Yes, Dale’s Hermione is awful and screechy (and while Hermione can be screechy, that’s not her default) and his take on other female characters isn’t much better, but each one of his characters stands on their own — and there are a lot of them over the course of seven books.
2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, narrated by Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landor, John Lee, and Juliet Mills.
   I listened to this after reading the print book, which is good, because I knew what was going to happen and didn’t have to feel all the feels the first time through listening. This multi-voice cast does a great job with the story and really bringing the correspondents to life.
3. See You in the Cosmos, narrated by Kivlighan de Montebello, Brittany Pressley, Graham Halstead, Michael Crouch, and Jason Culp.
   Another multi-voice cast brings this heartwarming middle grade novel about an eleven-year-old boy, his dog Carl Sagan, and his quest to launch a golden ipod (filled with the sounds of the world around him) into space as he journeys across the west and as his family life falls apart — and rebuilds itself in new and surprising ways.
4. The Woman Who Smashed Codes, narrated by Cassandra Campbell.
   This nonfiction history was a recent read for me. Campbell does such a good job narrating a book written by a guy that I kept being surprised she wasn’t the author. She really brings cryptologist Elizebeth Smith Friedman to life and helps you appreciate the great debt we owe her — both for her work bringing Nazis in South America to justice and for helping to develop the very codes that form the bedrock of our modern spy system — and our modern electronics. (If you like Campbell as a narrator, raidergirl3 has a whole list of books narrated by her that she recommends.)
5. Becoming, narrated by Michelle Obama.
   I love this book. I love this woman. Listening to her read it just makes me feel so much better about the world.
6. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, narrated by Xe Sands.
   Sands does a good job voicing an 85-year-old New Yorker heading out for an evening stroll on New Year’s Eve in 1984 and thinking back on her life.
7. Norse Mythology, narrated by Neil Gaiman.
   Count me amongst those who would listen to Gaiman read the phone book. He has such a surprisingly soothing voice for someone who makes a living with his pen. For me, listening to this title allowed me to better picture the story peopled by the actors of the Marvel movies, from Tom Hiddleston to Jamie Alexander to Anthony Hopkins.
8. A Conspiracy in Belgravia, narrated by Kate Reading.
   I love the Lady Sherlock mysteries and Reading (pronounced “redding”) does a great job reading. I love when people’s names and occupations match up! Rudi and I listened to this one together and both of us enjoyed it.
9. Creative Quest by Questlove.
   I’m still in the middle of reading this self-help guide to creativity from the literary drummer of The Roots, but am really enjoying his casual approach to the narration. He paused at one point in talking about a French chef to phone the guy and ask him to pronounce his name. He intersperses his explanations of drummers whose work has inspired him with beats they’ve laid down. It just really works in this format.
10. The Fox and O’Hare series, narrated by Scott Brick.
    This is a cheesy heist series, and Brick’s reading makes certain interactions between FBI agent Kate O’Hare and master thief Nicholas Fox seem more salacious than sexy, but maybe they would come across that way on the page, as well. Either way, this is totally ear candy.

Are there audiobooks you’ve particularly enjoyed listening to?

While biking between appointments this afternoon, I decided to stop by a sunny patio at a local café for a little while to pass the time. We’re due for more than an inch of rain tomorrow, so this seemed like a smart move for my mental wellbeing. It was just 50 degrees, but in the sun it felt quite pleasant in just my sweatshirt and cowl.

While there, I had an apple muffin and a pot of Earl Grey tea and followed it up with a bowl of white bean and kale soup when I decided I should eat something before volleyball.

I read some and knit. The shawl is too awkward to travel with, so this is the first of the stockinette socks I have on the go, which works well for multitasking. I’ve got about an inch before I decrease for the toe.

On the reading front, I’m still working through Early Riser, which I’m now only reading during the day because it’s filled with bad dreams and zombies and evil corporations, none of which I want to be thinking about before bed, as well as two audiobooks, A Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy and Creative Quest. In the past two days, I’ve started the charming graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang (It’s the tale of a 17th century seamstress who, after making one scandalous dress for a Parisian ball, becomes the personal designer for a prince who’d like to secretly go out in society in dresses) and A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos, about a magical girl who’s been betrothed to a stranger. I also resumed How To Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric with the intention of finishing it off. I’m hopeful it will have some useful advice. (It’s already made me feel better about my paralysis about the direction of my life; I’m hoping its next step will be to prod me problem-solving.)

Want to see what others are crafting and reading? Head over to As Kat Knits.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is one of my seasonal favorites: the top ten books on my spring tbr list. I’m going to ignore the books I’m already in the midst of reading, because clearly there’s the possibility I could finish all of them by tomorrow evening, when spring arrives, right?

Thus:

1. Angie Thomas’ On the Come Up
2. Woman Rebel by Peter Bagge
3. Deanna Raybourn’s A Dangerous Collaboration
4. Circe by Madeline Miller
5. Markus Zuzak’s Bridge of Clay
6. Tiffany Jackson’s Monday’s Not Coming
7. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
8. Jessica Townsend’s The Trials of Morrigan Crow
9. Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan
10. Jenny Han’s P.S. I Still Love You

How about you? What are you hoping to read this spring?

Progress on my two main projects — Jasper Fforde’s Early Riser and Smock Madness — continues apace. I’m nearly to mid-foot on the latter and, in the former, our protagonist Charlie (whose gender I decided on page 70 I’d incorrectly assigned at the start of the novel, but whose pronouns I keep ascribing to my original assumption) has gotten stuck in the worst possible region to overwinter due to a fit of retributive pique.

I need to finish a complete pair of Smock Madnesses by late morning on Sunday in order to advance to the next round. I suppose it’s possible, particularly as Rudi is leaving early on Friday, but I’ll chalk it up as unlikely. I need only finish one by that time in order to qualify as a cheerleader and to keep receiving the patterns to knit along with at my glacial pace, which seems a far more plausible — and, frankly, pleasant — outcome.

We watched the film adaptation of The Hate U Give last night, which was perfectly fine (Rudi, who hadn’t read the book, liked it quite a bit), but it paled in comparison to the book. (I sometimes wonder why they bother trying.) It made me want to get started on Angie Thomas’ sophomore novel, On the Come Up, which Rudi gave me for my birthday and which is sitting temptingly on our coffee table just beyond my reach. But first I need to get past the roving gangsters and winter monsters and viral dreams of Wales in order to move on.

I’m also listening to two audiobooks. Questlove’s Creative Quest is what I listen to while I’m watching dishes, because I’ve discovered I’m prone to dozing off if I listen to him on the couch, no matter how interesting I find his thoughts on creativity. The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, a followup to Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is much more suited to playing while I knit once I’ve tired of reruns of Agents of SHIELD and Miss Fisher for the night.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what other people are reading and crafting.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic invites participants to consider some of the one-off books we love that we’d enjoy revisiting. While recognizing that authors may not do kind things with beloved characters once they hit the keyboard again (see To Kill a Mockingbird), then, are ten standalone books I still mostly wish had a sequel (or two):

1. Eleanor and Park
2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
3. Pride and Prejudice
4. The Night Circus
5. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
6. Travels with Charley
7. Dear Mrs. Bird
8. Geekerella
9. A Snicker of Magic
10. Wonder Woman: Warbringer

How about you? Are there standalones you’ve read that you wish would suddenly become a series.

[March 23: I was just looking at my calendar and was confused to see an empty spot for the 10th. I’d written a post — what had happened? I don’t know. But here is the post that was scheduled for 1:39 a.m. that day that didn’t publish. -sprite]

Earlier in the week, I was feeling under the weather — mostly just exhausted and irritable. Tonight, Rudi had the same thing, so he went to bed early (a wise move, since he has to be in Pennsylvania at 7 a.m., which his body thinks is 6) and I spent the time working on my sock, watching an episode of Agatha Raisin, and listening to the end of Geekerella.

Next up on audio is either resuming Creative Quest or starting A Boy Called Bat (Kare, did Marshall ever read it and if he did, does he think I’d like it? If he didn’t, no worries…) or Aru Shah and the End of Time. Or, you know, something totally different.