This week’s Top Ten Tuesday post from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share any topic we’d like related to “love” in honor of Valentine’s Day. I thought I’d share the 11 books I have rated with four or five stars in Goodreads with some form of the word in the title:

1. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
2. Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
3. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
4. Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison
6. Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
7. My True Love Gave To Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins
8. Book Love by Debbie Tung
9. The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone
10. Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
11. The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough

That’s out of 46 books with “love” in the title.

Interestingly, it’s a pretty balanced list: three books by guys, two nonfiction titles, one book of poetry, one collection of comics, one collection of short stories, two classics, and three books aimed at kids or young adults.

How about you? What “love” books have you loved?

I have absolutely nothing new to report on the knitting front. I still have to bind off my shawl. I would like to do that this week, so I can take it home with me to Connecticut and block it there in a place where there are doors to close against cats who like to lie on wool and pick up small things (like T pins) in their mouths. (To be fair, Corey has never actually picked up a T pin, but I imagine it’s only because I’ve never given him the opportunity.)

I’m also still carrying around the sock project in my bag that I started back before Christmas, thinking that it would certainly be done by the end of January. I did unravel a knot in the yarn last week, but that really seems like a low standard of success, unless you judge it based on the Senate, in which case I’ve won the week.

I was hoping to knit up my Valentine’s Day hat before next Friday, but at this point, that seems unlikely. But who knows…

I’ve had a better reading week. I didn’t take The Paper Magician with me to California because it was a library book, instead grabbing Cath Crowley’s Words in Deep Blue, part of my #tbtbSanta gift this year. It was a fantastic choice, demanding to keep being read long after I should have put it down and threatening to force me to buy a new book for the trip home. (It did not and I did not, which is good, because that was not in my budget and I don’t think I could have convinced work it was a mandatory travel expense, although…) But I did finish it on Saturday after I got back to D.C., and it was excellent, and actually worked together nicely with The Paper Magician, since it, too, highlights the magical power of words. (It’s a new year, so book reviews should resume shortly. They don’t usually fall off altogether until spring.)

I also started listening to A Fatal Grace over the weekend. I don’t love books that change points of view every chapter, and I clearly forgot about that from the first book, but Louise Penny has such affection for her characters that I think it will be fine. And who wouldn’t want to spend Christmas in Three Pines, particularly if you could guarantee you weren’t going to be the one being murdered? (It’s probably too much to ask that you aren’t amongst the suspects; I’m hoping your own conscience will keep you from being the murderer.)

I hope you’ve also had books you loved this week and that your craft projects are moving forward faster than mine… (Check As Kat Knits for people who are more productive than I — and who also don’t let their phone batteries die just as they need a blog photo.)

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to consider books that we just know we’re going to absolutely love. For the purposes of simplicity, I’m not going to consider books that are parts of series.

Books I predict will be 5-star reads:

1. Nic Stone’s Shuri (my favorite Black Panther princess-scientist)
2. The Telephone Box Library by Rachael Lucas (someone wrote a book about Little Free Libraries, essentially)
3. The 24-Hour Café by Libby Page (I would like to live in the title of this book)
4. Abbi Waxman’s The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (there might be more to life than reading?!)
5. Sherry Thomas’ The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan (I loved the movie; I love the author)
6. Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer (I am a grammar snob)
7. The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi (caper!)
8. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo (I mean, isn’t everything she writes brilliant?)
9. Rebecca Stead’s The List of Things That Will Not Change (ditto)
10. Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed (they wrote a romance about political canvassing)

How about you? Are there books you are confident were written with you in mind as a reader?

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Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is a choose-your-own-adventure from That Artsy Reader Girl. Anything is fine as long as it relates to book covers. I debated about being deliberately snarky (clever?) and telling you about my favorite adaptations, but I’m hoping to get a few more things done tonight and I decided instead to just go short and simple:

That’s a photo showing you the ten covers I like best from the 22 (!) books I currently have out of the library:

Top Row: I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal, The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg, and Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbali

Middle Row: Lynne Kelly’s Song for a Whale, Don’t Date Rosa Santos by Nina Moreno, Homerooms and Hallpasses by Tom O’Donnell, and The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee

Bottom Row: The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart, Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell, and We Met in December by Rosie Curtis

Of the group The Paper Magician, We Met in December, The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise and Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky are my favorites.

No new knitting news to report at the moment, but I do have some reading updates.

I have finished listening to Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia. Next up in the headphones will be the second installment in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, A Fatal Grace. I put both my paper books aside. I have a plane flight next week, so if I’m awake for any of it, it should be good listening.

I put both my paper books aside last week to finish Tuesday and am in no rush to pick them up again. I have a bunch of middle grade and YA titles out of the library right now though, so sampled a couple tonight to decide what will be next. Lynne Kelly’s Song for a Whale looks promising, but didn’t grab me the way Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia did. In this story, Tristan’s best friend has died, leaving him a journal filled with African and African American-based folklore stories from a class project they’d been working on. Except now the journal glows green and has an unusual symbol on the cover. Tristan is heading to Alabama to work on his grandparents’ farm for the summer and get past his grief, except that now, in addition to mending fences, he might also have to help John Henry and Brer Rabbit contend with African gods. Doesn’t it sound so good?

What are you reading?

For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the top ten most recent additions to our personal bookish collections:

1. Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller: I picked up this at a Little Free Library on Saturday.
2. Kate Murphy’s You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters: This book came as a freebie with the purchase of …
3. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern: I bought this on New Year’s Day, when one of our local indie bookshops was having a sale, because I loved her debut novel.
4. A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, edited by Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick: Karen gave me this collection of letters for Christmas.
5. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang: A surprise gift from my parents for Christmas.
6. The Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling: Rudi’s mom gave me the illustrated version for Christmas.
7. Hillary McKay’s The Skylark’s War: I picked this up while doing some last minute Christmas shopping when I saw it, because I hadn’t realized it had finally been published in the U.S.
8. Jasmine Guillory’s Royal Holiday
9. Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley
10. The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary: All three of these books came from my #TBTBSanta, Helen.

What are some of the most recent additions to your personal library?