Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share books we loved that were outside our comfort zone:

1. The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez: I mostly don’t love multi-POV novels, so it was a huge surprise that this ended up being the best book I read in 2014.
2. Maus 1: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman: This was the first graphic novel I ever read, back in college when Spiegelman was coming to speak. I don’t love WWII stories and I hadn’t read a book where pictures were equally important to the story in ages.
3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Spoiler alert: I don’t love tragic novels. But this one was so well-crafted that I couldn’t help but be impressed when I read it in grad school.
4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: Sometimes I get swayed by all the positive reviews I see of a book, but when it isn’t for me, I quit reading. Again, WWII and multiple POVs, but in this case the short chapters and change in narrators gave me places to breathe and put the book down when things got too intense to keep reading.
5. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid: More war. But the lyrical prose and the distance between the reader and the main characters combined with the magical realism of doors that transcend space made this a must-read story about refugees.
6. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: When I first reviewed this book, I stated quite plainly that while I could see its appeal, I didn’t like it because I don’t like books that end in a depressing way. But when it came time to round up the best books I read in 2010, I found that it had stuck with me in a visceral way that other books hadn’t.
7. The entire Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith: I like mysteries and detective novels, but only when they aren’t especially dark and tense. However, I also don’t like them when they’re stupid and obvious, and there’s a narrow path to walk between those two things. The more literary novels tend toward thrillers and the less uncomfortable ones tend to give the story away in the first chapter. When I’m trying to give people examples of where the line is I point them to the Cormoran Strike novels, which fall at the very extreme end of how dark a novel I can get through.
8. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness: I’m pretty sure I just bawled through this entire novel, which is not how I like to enjoy my reading.
9. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi: I do not like short stories, but these were so well-executed and mostly much less dreary than most collections.
10. The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak: While waiting unsuccessfully in line for the last panel of the day at Book Fest on Saturday, I struck up a conversation with a young woman holding a copy of this novel. I shared that I’d been put off by Death as a narrator so much that it took me forever to read it. (I took it out of the library back when it came out and then racked up library fines for six months before returning it and a large donation to the library and buying my own copy. This underlines why I appreciate D.C.’s altering their fine system because this is not the only book where this has occurred.)

How about you? Have you loved certain books in spite of their not being your usual reading fare?

Here’s some of what I hope this weekend includes:

• Attend BookFest. I’d like to see Rainbow Rowell, Barbara Kingsolver, Ngozi Ukazu, RBG, Julia Alvarez, Madeline Miller, Pablo Cartaya, Shannon Hale, Jon Klassen, Juana Medina, Renée Watson, and Mitali Perkins, among others, but between the crowds and the schedule overlap, I’d be happy to cross three of them off my list. After the first year when they moved the festival indoors from the Mall and I experienced a panic attack at the crowds (200,000 people attended last year’s festival), I came up with a game plan that seems to work for me — go a little later, bring food, find corners where breaks can be taken, and be attached to no particular author. Mostly I’ve gotten to see folks, but I don’t wait in lines (other than the five minutes before a new talk begins) and I am willing to miss out on hearing pretty much anyone (rooms have fire code restrictions about how many people can be inside). (I’m already pretty much resigned that I will not get into the RBG room.) But there is rarely a period of time where I have no one who interests me and usually you can squeeze in someplace — particularly in the outskirts around the children’s stages.
• Swim. The outdoor pools close on Monday — just in time for our next heatwave.
• Send out some writing samples. I’m keeping options open for the future and have decided to start investigating freelance work. (I have no illusion that that earns one a livable wage at the outset, but one must acquire a first client somehow…)
• Plant some fall seeds. Our growing season easily lasts into November, and I often harvest all the way until the end of the year, so now is a good time to put leafy greens back into the rotation and try planting some more root veggies and a fall bean crop.
• Shop at the farmers market. I need milk and raspberries and maybe plums or peaches for a tart.
• Watch baseball.
• Do laundry.
• Send some thank you notes.
• Knit on my shawl.
• Finish another book.

How about you? What’s on your weekend wish list?

I had hoped to have my shawl done by the end of August and to block it over Labor Day weekend, but I just haven’t put the time in on it the last few weeks to make that happen. Part because life and part because the rows are so long now that it takes almost half an hour to get a pair of them done. That said, Saturday is the National Book Festival and in rooms where I can get a seat (the children’s stages allow for standing because they’re in a cavernous room that extends a couple city blocks), I will be knitting while I listen and tweet. (I go by myself, so that’s how I make it a little less lonely and anxiety-inducing.) So I suppose it’s a possibility that I could still finish, but I won’t count on it. I’ve told myself that wrapping it up next week would still be within the two-month mark which is pretty good for me.

On the reading front, my lack of ability to concentrate on anything means I continue dipping in and out of books. Wordslut (nonfiction on feminism and linguistics) and The Kiss Quotient (adult romance) are both overdue at the library, so I should finish them up first. I’m nearly done listening to The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (historical fiction), which is good because it expires over the weekend. The Dust Bowl Ballads and Shuri are both graphic novels and could be finished quickly if I put my mind to them. Tove Jansson’s memoir, The Summer Book, is topical and I’d like to start it soon. There There is important, but neither a format (connected short stories) nor a topic (mass shootings and racism) I enjoy, so I keep picking it up and then putting it back down (even skimming the ending didn’t really help). Girl Waits with Gun (historical fiction) is mine and I can read it in places where it might get wet. You see how things go…

If you want to see how some people actually progress with their goals, head over to As Kat Knits for the weekly roundup.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to consider books we’d like on our personal bookshelf.

Rudi would tell you that I own a lot of books. And I do. But I own way fewer books than I read. I couldn’t afford to be a reader if I had to buy every book I read. So these days I try not to buy too many books for my personal collection because I am neither made of money nor do I have unlimited (or even a reasonable amount of) space for them.

But if I did have a steady cash flow and a spare room with built-in bookshelves, here’s some of what I’d like to add to my personal library:

1. A complete unabridged copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (The last print addition was 20 volumes with three supplements. It’s the first thing I’m going to buy after I win the lottery (and procure a house in which to store it).)
2. The illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which will be published this fall
3. To be fair, I’d ideally like to own a copy of each of the sets of the Harry Potter series, but again that’s a wait until you win the lottery kind of acquisition.
4. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks, which comes out today
5. Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell, which comes out next month (she is the rare automatic-buy author for me)
6. The Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas (I own the third book, but love this series enough I can envision rereading it over the years and it would be nice to have my own copies.)
7. I’m not sure if I finally procured a personal copy of The Polar Express or not (Christmas books are stored in the closet during the year), but if I haven’t, it’s one of my favorite picture books — and one I was originally introduced to in French.
8. Grace Lin’s beautifully illustrated middle-grade folklore books — Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Starry River of the Sky, and When the Sea Turned to Silver
9. Erin Morgenstern’s upcoming The Starless Sea
10. Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me (I don’t think I own a copy of this book, but there is a possibility that I picked it up because I liked it so much after reading a library copy.)

Whoops. I didn’t read this carefully enough and apparently I was only supposed to include books I’ve already read, which reduces my list significantly. Oh well, I’m just going to hit publish anyway.

It wasn’t until earlier this week, when Rudi and I were sitting on the patio of our local coffeehouse, that I realized my shawl matches our summer sunsets. I wanted to try to capture that, so I apologize for the wrongly focused image, but it does catch the glint of the sparkles in the purple yarn better than other shots I’ve taken.

This week’s reading has included portions of a mystery set in wintry 1920s Vermont; a contemporary mystery set in India; a detective novel set in New Jersey in 1914; a feminist guide to linguistics; a graphic novel about Black Panther‘s kick-ass hero, Shuri; and a feminist y.a. novel set in the early 18th century. So mysteries, history, and feminism, basically.

Check out what other folks are reading and working on at As Kat Knits’ Unraveled Wednesday roundup.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is favorite tropes in our reading material.

Mine include:

1. Found families (if you’re surprised to find this at the top, you haven’t been paying attention)
2. Heists
3. Cozies (People who are not professional law officers solve crimes that stump aforementioned pros!)
4. Bequests that let you change your life
5. Nerdy girl/guy saves the day (Hermione forever)
6. Bad guy isn’t really a bad guy
7. Booklovers love books
8. Sisters are doin’ it for themselves (be they literal sisters or BFFs, they’ve got each other’s back)
9. Definitely not love at first sight (or even like, really)
10. Crossovers (I feel like this is getting more common as ways for authors to write sequels without writing sequels. Or when they have enough series where a character from one can show up in another.)

What are some of your favorite tropes/themes to discover in books?