Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader girl asks about the new-to-me authors I read last year that I liked best. I read a lot of favorite authors and series last year, but there were still some great new additions to my reading repertoire:

1. Amor Towles: To say I kept forgetting A Gentleman in Moscow was fiction is a compliment of highest order. I look forward to checking out his debut novel, Rules of Civility, next.
2. Elizabeth Acevedo: I started two of her books — her poetry collection, Beastgirl and Other Origin Myths and her debut verse novel, The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for young people and which I nominated for the Cybils poetry category — last year that I haven’t yet finished, but that is more an indication of where my head is than of her writing. It will be embarrassing when she wins the Cybil and I haven’t finished reading the book I nominated, so I plan to check that off my list soon.
3. Kevin Kwan: I didn’t have any interest in reading Crazy Rich Asians when it (or its sequels came out), but the movie trailer and then the film itself piqued my interest. His riff on Jane Austen was well executed and lots of fun and I look forward to reading more of his work.
4. Michelle Obama: I was already a fan of our former First Lady, but her Becoming has been a wonderful listen. I haven’t finished reading it, but will soon.
5. Ashley Blake Herring wrote the adorable middle grade novel Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World, which uses the combined forces of an Emily Dickinson poem and a tornado to great effect in a novel about first crushes and sexual orientation.
6. Karina Yan Glaser: Her middle-grade debut, The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, offered a glimpse into a working-class biracial family of seven who are about to be displaced from their Harlem home at the holidays. Reminiscent of and as timeless as the Melendys and the Penderwicks, but wholly modern. I look forward to revisiting the family in Yan Glaser’s sequel.
7. Jennifer Mathieu: Her YA novel, Moxie, is an enjoyable look at teen girls, zines, and feminism set in a small Texas town that shuts down for Friday night football games and reveres the boys who play it. She penned a #MeToo antidote to toxic masculinity for the next generation.
8. Jons Mellgren: In his unique heart-breaking and heart-healing picture book, Elsa and the Night, this Swedish author-artist shares the story of a badger named Elsa, who doesn’t sleep anymore in the wake of the death of her friend and who captures the Night, who she finds hiding under her table, in a cookie jar. Without Night coming at the end of each day, though, the rest of the world no longer works quite right. But the Night and Elsa can maybe help each other out.
9. David Grann: My fellow Conn College Camel has penned a fascinating and depressing expose of a forgotten period of American history. Killers of the Flower Moon looks at a tribe of fabulously wealthy Osage Indians, who were denied the right to look after their own finances by a racist U.S. government and then murdered one-by-one for their money and oil rights.
10. Andrew Shaffer: Hope Never Dies is a laugh-out-loud buddy flick of a book starring Joe Biden and Barack Obama as our crime-solving heroes. He gets the voices right and takes neither his protagonists nor his text too seriously, serving up precisely the book you want to read. Others agree and he has a sequel due out later this year.

How about you? Who were your favorite newly discovered writers last year?

Yesterday it was so warm I spent the early part of the evening sitting outside at my local coffeehouse with my book. I had a tshirt and sweatshirt on and added a scarf while I was sitting there after sunset, but didn’t need to break out my hat or mitts from my bag and I certainly didn’t need a coat. Today it blustered a lot and snowed a little (not enough to stick, but still).

Anyway, this was what I was reading yesterday, but it was so charming that I was quickly done with it. If you enjoy historical fiction (it’s set in WWII London) that mostly (see previous parentheses) ends on an up-note, do check it out.

I’ve tried starting both An American Marriage and Washington Black, but I don’t want to read bleak but Important stories right now. Which I recognize makes me the worst type of liberal White reader, so I’ve just put them to the side for now rather than taking them back to the library just yet in the hopes that I can get out of my own way in the near future. I pulled out (carefully, because it was under my holiday light display) the illustrated version of the third Harry Potter film and picked up where I left off back in the fall, figuring it may help me over my reading hiccup. Or it may not, but at least I’ll have enjoyed it.

My knitting is also experiencing a hump. I could show you the various skeins of yarn I’ve pulled out of storage (quite pretty!), the older projects I’ve moved closer to the couch but haven’t otherwise touched (I could have FO’s with so little work!), or the six rows I actually knit on the beginning of that blue shawlette I thought would be done by (this, rather than next) New Year’s, but none of it is really knitting, but knitting-approximate, and we all know the difference.

Anyway … maybe by next week.

Head over to Kat’s where you can see what people who actually pick up their needles are making.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday asks us to share our most anticipated releases for the first half of 2019:

1. Early Riser by Jasper Fforde. He’s coming to Politics and Prose the week of my birthday next month, so no one ask me to do anything on Feb. 18 because I am busy! (I know someone on Twitter who has read an ARC and she says it’s less thrillerish than it sounds, which is good because I was very nervous about the description.)
2. Angie Thomas’ On the Come Up. Her The Hate U Give was the best book I read in 2017, so I’m definitely on board for her sophomore effort.
3. Deanna Raybourn’s latest Veronica Speedwell mystery, A Dangerous Collaboration. Something INTERESTING happened at the end of the last novel, so I’m excited to see where it goes.
4. Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. They have a new series!!!!!
5. Elizabeth Acevedo’s With the Fire on High. I’m loving The Poet X (so much so that I nominated it for a Cybil without having finished it) and look forward to Elizabeth’s next book.
6. Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America, edited by Ibi Zoboi and Tracey Baptiste. I want to like short story collections more than I actually do and I’m a sucker for this kind that features a bunch of authors whose novels I like.
7. Local author Kosoko Jackson has a queer historical fiction novel, A Place for Wolves, coming out this spring and even though describing anything as “[X] meets Code Name Verity” sounds like it’s going to be desperately sad and therefore not my cup of tea, I want to want to read it, but this could be a game-time decision.
8. Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Okay, so I hadn’t heard of this until I started looking at publication dates, but I am all in for a romance between the First Son (his mom is President) and the Prince of Wales.
9. Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan. I enjoyed Watson’s last book and this sounds like it will carry on the themes of some of my favorite books from 2018.
10. Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner. This YA novel sounds like it should be a wild ride.

Rainbow Rowell’s graphic novel, Pumpkinheads, isn’t due out until the end of August, but the release date for her latest regular novel, Wayward Son, hasn’t been announced yet, other than sometime this year. If it’s sooner, I will definitely be reading it, too.

I’m doing the Bout of Books again this week and it’s not too late if you want to sign up!

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, January 7th, and runs through Sunday, January 13th, in whatever time zone you are in.

Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 24 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog.

– From the Bout of Books team

My goal for the challenge is to read every day, to finish An American Marriage and Dear Mrs. Bird, and to share my top ten reads from 2018.

So far, I’m about two-thirds of the way done with Dear Mrs. Bird, which I’m enjoying quite a bit and stuck in the first chapter of An American Marriage because bad things are going to happen and I’m not feeling up to it.

Monday’s challenge was to introduce yourself in six words:

How about this?

Would love to read for work.

Today’s challenge is to host a literary dinner party for five of your favorite characters.

Who do you invite and what food do you serve?

1. Jo March
2. Thursday Next (who will likely already know everyone else)
3. Hermione Granger
4. Charlotte Holmes
5. Petrova Fossil

And I’ll serve breakfast for supper — waffles, I think, or crepes, in case someone (I’m leaning toward Hermione) really wants vegetables with her dinner. And ice cream sundaes, of course!

I’ve only got half of this week’s unraveling here, having not knit a stitch in a week. I will put a pair of socks on the needles tomorrow and will pull out a project that’s further along to work on until I am feeling like working on the shawl I showed you last week.

I am delighted to report though, that I am enjoying the latest Lady Sherlock novel, The Hollow of Fear, tremendously. Charlotte is currently masquerading as Sherrinford Holmes, brother to the fictional Sherlock, whom she also portrays in the series, hoping to figure out how the estranged wife of her dearest friend, Lord Ashcroft Ingram, ended up dead in his ice house. Sherrinford cuts a far more dandified figure than Sherlock, who is too much an invalid to see anyone in person, relying on intermediaries to relate his revelations to those seeking his expertise.

Next up will be An American Marriage and Children of Blood and Bone, both of which were due back to the library today. The latter has a far shorter wait list to take it out again, should I decide to be an upright library user and return them immediately. (We have a 30 day grace period before fines kick in…)

I finished listening to the last of Cornelia Funke’s When Santa Fell to Earth last night. I should listen to the last few chapters of American Street so I can stop having to borrow and reborrow it. It’s stressful, though, so I tend to be inclined to leave it until it’s too late to listen to what remains before it expires from my phone… After that, I’m thinking The Lido, which I understand makes you feel good about life.

Head over to As Kat Knits to learn what everyone else is reading and knitting.

The Broke and the Bookish came out of retirement briefly to conduct their annual Secret Santa book swap earlier this month.

My package came from Lea of Lea Out West. She lives in Lake Tahoe, but her brother lives here in D.C. and surprisingly close by!

It didn’t strike me as unusual that both cats were interested in the box Lea sent. They’re big fans of boxes of any kind. But what I didn’t realize was that Lea had included presents for Jeremiah and Corey. I’d barely gotten the box open to pull things out when Corey hopped up, rooted around inside quickly, and ran off with this squirrel tail:

Jeremiah was not to be left out, but he is older and knew he should wait patiently for me to share a present with him. He got toast.

I’m not sure they shared willingly, but they did each steal the other toy to make sure they got to experience both.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Lea was my cats’ favorite person that night. It shouldn’t surprise me, since this is the great Christmas card she sent:

But it was not just the cats who got presents. I got some as well!

I’ll be honest. Lea’s package arrived the week before Christmas, and it was kind of a crappy week for me. I was PMSing, the apartment had flooded, my Christmas preparations were not humming along in the way that it felt like they should for someone with no day job to distract them from getting stuff done, and I was in the emotional and mental place one might expect to result from that combination. So I used the package as a daily pick-me-up. Every day I opened a gift or two, and every time I did, the world felt a little bit more right.

I have four new books to read and have already started in on the Christmas-themed one. I’m saving the other three as treats to read this winter (okay, the new Lady Sherlock may only wait until New Year’s Day — I can’t wait to start it!). I have new nail polish in sparkly confetti and purples, which will be the festive manicure I give myself on New Year’s Day while watching the parade. There is a fancy tea to drink late at night when I should be sleeping (like now). There are bookmarks (already in use!), notepads, sparkly pens, stickers, and bags to tuck into purses to hold pens, pads, and knitting needles (the last of those may not have been in Lea’s plan, but they’re just the right size!).

It really is a great package, don’t you think? Thank you so much to Lea for making me a box that I (and the cats) loved and to Jamie and Jana for running the swap again. I had a lot of fun shopping for my swap partner (Megan of The Hungry Bookworm) and got so much enjoyment out of opening each present Lea sent.