This week at That Artsy Reader Girl, we’re invited to share our Top Ten Most Anticipated Releases from the Second Half of 2020:

1. Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas (latest in my favorite series)
2. Jasper Fforde’s The Constant Rabbit (another standalone from my favorite author)
3. Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith (Yes, I know JKR has said some bigoted and truly hurtful things about trans people and I shouldn’t want to read any more in the Cormoran Strike series. But I do.)
4. Faith by Julie Murphy (She writes the best job writing working class YA)
5. Kind of a Big Deal by Meg Cabot Shannon Hale (The main character starts getting sucked into books — literally!)
6. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (Highly imaginative fantasy from a great world builder)
7. Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (What if you could read the story of what happened if you’d made a different choice? What if there were a whole building filled with those stories?)
8. Dear Justyce by Nic Stone (The follow-up to her Dear Martin)
9. Brandy Colbert’s The Voting Booth
10. Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim

How about you? What books are you looking forward to coming out over the next six months?

Today is the tenth anniversary of the bookish meme, Top Ten Tuesday, hosted first by The Broke and the Bookish and now by That Artsy Reader Girl.

To celebrate, Jana has invited us to consider two options, including a past TTT topic you wish you’d done, but didn’t get a chance to do.

I’ve chosen week #134 (more than seven years ago), which allows me to focus on my favorite in genre fiction, mysteries and fantasy:

Top Ten Series I Want to Start, but Haven’t Yet:

1. Earthly Delights (Corinna Chapman) by Kerry Greenwood (by the same author who writes the Miss Fisher storise)
2. Delicious (The Marsdens) by Sherry Thomas
3. A Winter’s Promise (The Mirror Visitor) by Christelle Dabos
4. Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet) by Roshani Chokshi
5. Brilliant (Kick Keswick) by Marne Davis Kellogg
6. The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
7. Black Widow: Forever Red by Margaret Stohl
8. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez
9. Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen
10. His Majesty’s Dragons (Temeraire) by Naomi Novik

Do you recommend any of these series? (Or, conversely, do you recommend against any of them?)

How about you? Are there series you’ve always meant to read, but that you just haven’t gotten around to yet?

The library hasn’t been open since I posted my list of spring tbr’s, but that’s not going to stop me from giving you an entirely different list of top ten books on my summer to-read list:

1. Clean Getaway by Nic Stone
2. Love, Creekwood by Becky Albertalli
3. Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why by Alexandra Petri
4. By the Book by Amanda Sellet
5. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez
6. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
7. The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal
8. Gloom Town by Ronald Smith
9. Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz
10. So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

How about you? What are you planning to read during the warm months?

I’m about a third of the way into Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, about a grieving Chicago boy spending his summer on his grandparents’ farm who discovers the Black and African folktales his grandmother has raised him on actually exist in a parallel universe and that he, as the latest in a line of powerful storytellers, may be needed to save both worlds. So far I’m really enjoying it and recommend it to anyone, like me, who is woefully versed in this folk tradition or whose tenuous knowledge comes largely from a certain Disney film.

I continue to be an unmotivated knitter. I finished the leg of my second Smock Madness, which means I have about eight hours of knitting left before this becomes a wearable pair of socks. And yet…

Normally, I’d be considering a couple new projects right about now, in advance of the Summer Olympics and the Tour de France, but it feels like I should trudge through some of these older projects and get them crossed off. Sadly, that’s also the story of my work life, which may be contributing to my reluctance to pick up my knitting. Finishing anything at this point would probably go a long way toward making me feel more productive on all fronts, so hopefully I will power through.

Head to As Kat Knits to see projects and books from people who do not have this frustrating lack of ambition in their work.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us about the Top Ten Books I’ve Added to My TBR and Forgotten Why. I’ve added more than 3,100 titles to my list of books I’d like to read since I first joined Goodreads more than a dozen years ago. Obviously they sounded interesting at the time…

1. The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
2. Sororophobia: Differences Among Women in Literature and Culture by Helena Michie
3. How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons
4. Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
5. The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfield
6. Tallulah Falls by Christine Fletcher
7. The September Sisters by Jillian Cantor
8. Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
9. The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg
10. The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis

Have you read any of these books?

This week I started reading I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal, about two teen girls, one white and one black, and how they try to get home after the football game they’re both at erupts in violence. I’d picked it up before the pandemic and it had lingered on my pile. It’s really good and one of those instances where alternating points of view work to enhance the reader’s understanding.

I also started listening to a romance novel, Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Tallia Hibbert, as a total change of pace after finishing up the Inspector Gamache mystery I was listening to.

I think I may do some re-reading as well. I have a lot of books about Black activism and storytelling from when I was in college, and it feels like time to literally dust off and dive back into Anna Deveare Smith, Angela Davis, and others’ works while I wait for newer books to become available.

What books are you finding helpful and educational in response to what’s going on in the world right now?