I haven’t been especially good about reading this year, which is due in large part to working too much and being depressed and then working some more. But summer is a time of lounging by the pool and soaking up rays at the beach and staying out late at the park. I bet if I made dates with some of my friends to just go read at a cafe, they’d be down for that. So I will do that.

To help with that plan come That Artsy Reader Girl and this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, a perennial seasonal favorite — the top ten books I plan to read this summer:

1. Incense and Sensibility by Sonali Dev — The latest in one of my favorite series — retellings of Jane Austen’s novels — drops the first week in July.
2. Beth & Amy by Virginia Kantra — The sequel to Meg & Jo, a modern reimagining of the four March sisters as 20-somethings who grew up on a farm in the Carolinas.
3. Pride & Premeditation by Tirzah Price — Yup, another Austen spin, but this time with a murder subplot.
4. The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary — I loved The Flatshare and road trips just scream summertime.
5. A Lady’s Formula for Love by Elizabeth Everett — A Victorian romance, but set between a fiercely independent scientist who heads a women’s intellectual circle and the bodyguard assigned to protect her. I’m hoping for a readalike to the Veronica Speedwell series.
6. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo — A heist novel, this is part of the Grishaverse and features some of the characters from the recent Shadows and Bone series on Netflix. I’d started it on audio months ago and then decided it would work better on paper and have been waiting for it on the holds list ever since.
7. The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina — Based on a true story, this novel tells about a telephone booth in a Japanese garden — and the unique purpose strangers put it to.
8. The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray — Historical fiction aboutBelle de Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian and a Black woman passing as white.
9. You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar — Real-life anecdotes from about Living While Black from Amber Ruffin and her sister.

How about you? What’s on your summer TBR list?

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I finished up print and audio books this week and will complete the toe of my first sock tomorrow.

In the ears, I’ve started Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert, the third of the Brown sisters trilogy. I’m sad to wrap up their tales, but hold out hope the author will give their grandmother, Gigi, her own book(s).

On paper, I’m about to begin Mia P. Manansala’s Arsenic and Adobo, in which the main character’s life is described on the back cover as swerving from “Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case.” It’s slightly overdue, but I expect to quickly tear through it. (And our library system doesn’t charge fines, so it’s simply my own guilt over being a bad library citizen I need to overcome.)

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting this week.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share Books I Loved that Made Me Want More Books Like Them. I couldn’t think of titles that sent me scrambling for read-alikes, but I could come up with a list of books that made me want to read everything its author had written/will write:

1. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (I used to save money for trips to Waldenbooks at the Meriden Square, where I went through all the Anne books and into Montgomery’s other series/standalones.)
2. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (I might not love everything he writes, but I will read it.)
3. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (I recognize this book has some problems with the portrayal of Park, but I loved it.)
4. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (This is another book with some problems in terms of racial interactions, which Kingsolver tried to address in her later Pigs in Heaven. I haven’t reread it in a long time and can’t speak for how it holds up, but I adore it has made me a Kingsolver devotee.)
5. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle (Pretty sure it’s time for a reread of this classic tale of home improvement and cultural miscues)
6. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber (I don’t know how to best categorize Thurber’s works except maybe to say it has a strong moral compass and a witty soul.)
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (Another must-read author of my youth. I’ve even read her religious essays.)
8. When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin (Her descriptions are pure poetry.)
9. A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd (This book conveys such a love of words!)
10. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (I adored his way of telling stories through both words and pictures.)

Other books in this same category include Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Booked by Kwame Alexander, and The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon.

How about you?

I’m a little further along on my sock foot than I was last week. I’m also about a third of the way through Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz. And in audiobooks, I’m past the halfway point on The Bookshop of Second Chances and most of the way through No Time like the Future, Michael J. Fox’s latest memoir.

Check out As Kat Knits for the weekly knitting and reading roundup.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader is a freebie, so I thought I’d share ten of the books I currently have checked out from the library that I’m particularly looking forward to reading:

1. Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price
2. Arsenic and Adobo by Mia Manansala
3. Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlaine
4. Trowbridge Road by Marcella Fleischman Pixley
5. Class Act by Jerry Craft
6. The Magic Fish by Le Nguyen Trung
7. You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar
8. Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Sutanto
9. The Resisters by Jen Gish
10. Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristof

How about you? Do you have anything out from the library you’re particularly looking forward to?

I’m onto the foot of my first rainbow and clouds sock. Maybe I’ll finish it while I’m up visiting my folks.

I finished the print book I’d been reading and am now just picking which library books that are due soon after I get back to town I should take for vacation reading. Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala is one possibility.

On Overdrive, I’m about halfway through Jackie Fraser’s The Bookshop of Second Chances. I’ve got a couple memoirs for Rudi and me to listen to on the drive — Michael J. Fox’s most recent one and the book Amber Ruffin wrote with her sister, Lacey Lamar.

Check out As Kat Knits for what others are reading and crafting.