Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is a quarterly favorite of mine — what I’m hoping to read this season. Before I answer, I thought I’d look back at a few previous iterations of this list, as well as some of the lists for what I’d hoped to read in 2018, to see how I’ve fared previously.

In January, I wrote about 10 of the books I’d meant to read last year. I have since read (and enjoyed) two of them — Wonder Woman: Warbringer and Magpie Murders.

In December, I shared 10 2018 titles I intended to read this year. While, as of today, half of that list has been published, thus far I’ve not read any. I’ve bought Down and Across and it’s sitting in the pile in front of me.

I am doing better in terms of the books I wrote I planned to read this winter: I’ve read three — Teetotaled, Turtles All the Way Down, and Far from the Tree — and am on the hold list for a fourth.

Finally, I went all the way back to last spring to see what I’d hoped to read then. I’ve finished four of them and have a fifth on the go currently.

The lesson here is that no matter what I put on this list, I’m likely to only read, at best, half of them, which is really depressing, but in keeping with how fast I add new titles to my TBR list. Without further ado and for whatever it’s worth, here are the Top Ten Books on My Spring TBR List:

• Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff came out last week. It’s the final book in a chunky epistolary trilogy set in space that I’ve loved and I may have begged the library to hurry up and buy copies so I can read it. Maybe.
• The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and This Zig Zag Life, by Natalie Goldberg comes from my list last spring. I did start it and it induced severe eye rolling on my part, which is really too bad, since I own my copy. I’d like to give it one more try to see if it was just me or if I ought to send this one out into the wild.
• I will read everything that Rainbow Rowell writes, but I draw the line at buying comic books that I’m pretty sure will later be collected into a book. (And, yes, I do understand how the comic book industry works and know that they’re not going to do that if enough people don’t read those flimsy little zines. I just don’t care to give in to that stupid system.) However, lots of people did buy her Runaways series of comics with Kris Anka, so it will be made into a book, The Runaways, Vol. 1, due out in April.
• I got Me Before You by Jojo Moyes in my TBR Secret Santa package in December. Now that we’re moving into spring, I can read books that I know will make me cry again.
• Ashley Weaver’s Murder at the Brightwell was part of my last Ninja Book Swap package. I’m in a mystery mood right now, particularly of a historical bent, and anticipate this being a fun new series.
• I attended an author event last week for The Radical Element, a collection of 12 stories about “daredevils, debutantes, and other dauntless girls.” It contains stories from authors I like, authors whose longer works I haven’t yet gotten to, and an author who also works as a D.C. librarian.
• David Grann’s true crime nonfiction Killers of the Flower Moon is outside my comfort zone, but it was a National Book Award finalist and he is a fellow Conn alum, so I feel like I should at least give it a short.
• Speaking of the National Book Award, I have Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jessmyn Ward out of the library right now and intend to start it as soon as I’ve finished the overdue Towles book. Each of her books is on my TBR list, so I’m hoping to finally be able to cross one off.
• Morgan Parker’s poetry collection There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé was one of two books of verse I bought myself for my birthday. I’ve started one of them and am looking forward to beginning this one soon. I’m thinking of reading several poetry books during April.
• Finally, the aforementioned Down and Across by Arvin Ahmadi. It’s partially set in D.C. and Jenn really likes it, so I’m hopeful. (Also, he said nice things about Jenn when I met him last month, so that’s definitely a count in his favor.)

What are you looking forward to reading this spring?

I managed one Fée Dragée sock within the Sock Madness timeframe, which ends tomorrow at noon. Once I kitchener the toe and submit photos in the morning, I should officially qualify as a cheerleader, which means I’ll still get the rest of the patterns and will be able to knit along at my own turtley pace. I look forward to a completed pair in a couple more weeks.

I haven’t read any more of A Gentleman in Moscow since last week, but it’s soon due back to the library, so I need to get moving on it. Pashmina, which was a Cybils finalist, has been my travel book this week. It’s a slim graphic novel about an Indian-American girl and her immigrant single mom. We’ve just reached the Oz part of the story, that takes place in India in full color and I’m very excited to learn what happens next. On my phone I’m still listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power, which has been very compelling thus far.

I’m joining Kat for her weekly Unraveled Wednesday:

As I showed yesterday, my current knitting is Fée Dragée, which I think of as my “Go, go, Gryffindor!” socks, even though my gold is technically a peachy orange when not rammed up against red yarn.

My reading is a little all over the place right now, but in a good way, I think. My fantasy chunkster is Laini Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer, which is significantly overdue at the library and which will start accruing late fees if I don’t return it this weekend. My historical fiction, which I just started tonight, is Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow. It’s probably not something I would have picked up on my own (although I probably added it to TBR mountain when it came out), but it is routinely cited by my book group as a favorite, so I figured I’d give it a shot. The first couple chapters were funny, in a wry sort of way, so I’m hopeful even though adult novels wherein a protagonist must stand up against an oppressive regime usually end poorly. The slight book next to my sock is Beastgirl and Other Origin Myths, by local poet Elizabeth Acevedo, which I treated myself to on my birthday and which I have tucked into my knitting bag. She has a new YA novel out this week, but I want to finish her poetry collection before moving on. Finally, in my ears I have Ta-Nahesi Coates’ latest essay collection, We Were Eight Years in Power. I’m up to year four and have not yet canceled my hold request for the print copy, because I think I might want to read certain sections (such as tonight’s on the Civil War) with my eyes, where I can better process and retain information I want to refer to later.

How about you? Are you reading or crafting anything interesting?

So none of this is what I’m currently working on, but everything here has been finished since Sunday night:

The shawl is Kirsten Kapur’s Andrea’s Shawl, which I started knitting for the 2016 Ravellenic Games and which I finished while watching the Closing Ceremony of this year’s Olympics (several hours after this year’s Ravellenic Games finished, unfortunately). I was going to block it tomorrow after work, but Rudi’s final coaching gig of the season has been postponed by a day, so it’ll be Friday night when I tackle that job.

The books are Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which I finally found lurking on the shelf under my desk, and Sun-mi Hwang’s The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly (translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim), a novella fable not unlike Animal Farm. I wanted to re-read the former before the movie came out, and I’m glad I did because I’d forgotten all about Aunt Beast! And I read the latter because I wanted to read something from a South Korean writer during the Olympics and this seemed like the least depressing option of what I saw recommended. I keep seeing it compared to Charlotte’s Web and recommended for children, but that feels inaccurate with motherhood and self-determination being major themes. Animal Farm feels like the better comparison, although Hen is significantly less depressing than that book.

Head to Kat’s for more of what folks are reading and knitting.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday question asked which books I could read over and over again. Since I’ve embarked upon a last-minute re-read of A Wrinkle in Time and feel the same warm feeling I get whenever I spend time with an old friend, I thought it a reasonable question to consider. In no particular order:

1. The Harry Potter series
2. Little Women
3. Anne of Green Gables
4. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
5. A Year in Provence
6. Ballet Shoes
7. Pride and Prejudice
8. The Eyre Affair
9. The Secret Garden
10. A Wrinkle in Time

I’ve only included books I’ve re-read as an adult and only ones I’ve actually read multiple times, as opposed to ones I intend to read again, which let out things like The Night Circus, A Man Called Ove, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Looking at the list, I’m unsurprised to find a combination of favorites from childhood and comfort reads from my adult years, but I do also see that the list is very white (and leans British), so I’m thinking I should make a point of re-reading some of my five-star favorites by authors of color to reacquaint myself with The Color Purple and The Joy Luck Club.

How about you? Do you re-read? And, if so, which books do you have the greatest affinity for?

Joining in today with Kat for Unraveled Wednesdays:

In my print reading, these are the two books I have going. The Stars Beneath Our Feet is a YA contemporary and The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is a novella (akin to Animal Farm) translated from Korean. (I figured I’d read a South Korean writer during the Olympics, and this was one of the few I found recommended that seemed like it might be a good fit. Apparently, it’s been adapted for both a comic book series and an animated film. I need to read Strange the Dreamer soon; it was due back to the library almost 10 days ago.

Finally, audiobooks. Having finished listening to Magpie Murders today at work (while cutting and pasting text from one website to another), I’m about to begin a new audiobook, American Street, which I have to polish off before the end of the weekend, when its expiration date is on Overdrive.

With my Ravellenic Games sweater not working out, I’ve moved on to WIPs. This is a shawl I started two years ago, which just needs to have a final border knit. I have a couple other projects I plan to move on to after this.