This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a freebie, so I thought I’d do a quick rundown of the first ten books I read in 2021 and see how far into the year that gets me:

1. In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren: A cute holiday romance about three families, their grown children (and grandchildren), and the holiday cabin they visit every year. What happens when the adult daughter of one couple falls for the adult son of another? And what happens if they relive this one vacation over and over again? Groundhog Day meets Hallmark holiday movie.
2. Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore: I don’t remember how this one came onto my radar, but it’s set in Victorian times and features a young woman who gets the chance to attend university and who takes up with the suffragette movement. One of their hopes for an upcoming swing vote is a young duke, who’s been commissioned by the queen to quash the movement. A solid historic romance.
3. One Day in December by Josie Silver: A girl on a bus and a guy at a bus stop see each other one day in December and fall instantaneously in love. But the next time they cross paths it’s when her roommate introduces her to the guy she’s been dating, whom she thinks could be the one. Of course it’s him! And so it goes for years. Fans of Cecilia Ahern will enjoy this one.
4. Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev: In a tribute to the Jane Austen classic, the second in this interlocking series of four stories about an Indian-American family focuses on Ashna, a chef, who is paired in a celebrity cooking contest with Rico Silva, a soccer star, who just happens to have been her secret high school boy friend — and the boy her father sent away because he wasn’t good enough for her. I love this series and recommend it to everyone.
5. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig: A young woman attempts suicide only to find that she’s been transported to a purgatory where she’s allowed to try out the different stories she might have lived if she’d made different choices through the years. The idea was an interesting one, but its execution didn’t live up to the premise.
6. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez: A cute middle-grade story about a boy, who in his grief at losing his mother a couple years earlier, accidentally found a way to access the multiverse. When he starts at a new school, a girl with an eye for details figures out what’s happening, and they set out on a series of adventures that just might destroy the world.
7. An Unexpected Peril by Deanna Raybourn: The latest in the Veronica Speedwell mystery series, it this time focuses on a  nation caught in the pre-WWI European machinations, its princess (who just so happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to our plucky lepidopterist), and a female climber who died while attempting to summit its highest peak. When the princess goes missing prior to a retrospective of the climber’s life that Veronica and Stoker are mounting, her envoys request Veronica’s assistance with some diplomatic subterfuge to save a treaty. Always a fun series.
8. The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jiminez: A woman is on her way to her fiance’s grave on the one-year anniversary of his death when a dog jumps through her open sunroof. Turns out the pup belongs to a guy who’s currently in Australia, and she agrees to take care of the dog until he returns. But they start to fall in love through texts and cell phone calls and emails — until he returns and she finds out that he’s both exactly who he says he is … and also so much more. A romance that looks at what happens when one half of the couple has experienced the ultimate loss.
9. Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas: The latest in the Lady Sherlock series, this Christmassy story sees Charlotte, Mrs. Watson, and Lord Ingram having to solve a murder that Inspector Treadles has been accused of. I adore this series and highly recommend it.
10. The Bounty by Janet Evanovich and Steve Hamilton: The latest in the Fox and O’Hare series focuses on FBI agent Kate and master burglar Nick, their respective fathers, and a heist that leads back to Nazi Germany. It’s better than the last book in the series, but lacks the joy of the books co-authored by Lee Goldberg.

And with that, we’re caught up through my April reads.

I have one and a half more mosaic charts left to knit and then I return to the wasteland of ribbing and an icord bindoff. It’s possible I’ll finish the shawl in the next month, which would be great, because I’m over knitting it.

Jared Reck’s Donuts and Other Proclamations of Love has had a slower start than I would have hoped, since who doesn’t love the idea of a doughnut and kebab sandwich food truck? I also wanted a little space from the audiobook I started last week, so I decided to pick up a long-neglected listen, Michelle Obama’s Becoming. We just reached the 2004 Democratic National Convention, which is when most of us first became aware of her husband.

Head over to As Kat Knits for the weekly roundup of reads and crafts.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a seasonal favorite of mine: the top ten books I’m looking forward to reading this fall:

1. Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune
2. Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas
3. The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee
4. Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell (first I have to read Wayward Son, though)
5. The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling
6. Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
7. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
8. Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
9. Stuntboy by Jason Reynolds
10. Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

How about you? What are you looking forward to reading now that fall is nearly upon us?

I finally made it out of the ribbing section of my shawl. I’ve got two and a half mosaic sections left before the final ribbing section and the bindoff. At this rate, I may finish it right around the time it gets cool enough to wear it.

I’ve got four books going (these three plus an audiobook, Happily Ever After by Elise Bryant). The graphic novel is middle-grade, and the other three are YA, and none of them has wholly grabbed me yet. I’m hoping one does soon.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share favorite books with numbers in their title:

1. Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History by Cait Murphy
2. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
3. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
4. Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
5. Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
6. For Every One by Jason Reynolds
7. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
8. The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde
9. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
10. Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Apparently I enjoy books with numbers in the titles; I easily could have kept going with this topic. How about you?

About to return to the mosaic knitting, just as we’re about to head back to school with Jerry Craft’s Class Act, a second look into the microaggressions a Black kid has to go through at a prep school in New York City.