This week’s Top Ten Tuesday hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl focuses on books set in another time. Here are some of my favorites, all of which are set in the 20th century:

1. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (fiction, WWII)
2. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (fiction, 1985 (I keep trying to say this is set in the 1950s, because this was most certainly not my experience of the mid-’80s))
3. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (novel in verse, 1920s Dust Bowl)
4. Maus: A Survivor’s History by Art Spiegelman (graphic nonfiction, WWII)
5. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (fiction, 1940s)
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (fiction, early 20th century)
7. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (graphic novel, 1931)
8. Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Best Year in Baseball by Cait Murphy (nonfiction, 1908)
9. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (fiction, 1941)
10. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (fiction, 1940s and ’50s)

How about you? What are some of your favorite reads set in other times?

One of the things I promised myself I’d do last year was to share the books I liked best in 2023, none of which I reviewed here. Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites me to get my act together and do a down-and-dirty update of this draft and finally hit publish:

1. Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
   Two generations of Dominican-American women with magical gifts (ranging from the ability to tell if someone is lying to possessing an “alpha vagina”) find their lives upended when Flor, whose gift is knowing when someone will die, announces she’s throwing herself a living wake. Organized as personal narratives/interviews told to Flor’s daughter, an anthropologist, the chapters mostly alternate through all four senior sisters and the two daughters/cousins. Each one looks back at how her life — both in New York and in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic — has been shaped by her gift and her family and how these matrilineal powers cause them to walk through the (male-dominated) world. If you like family sagas or immigrant stories and magical realism, I highly recommend Acevedo’s first novel for adults.
    

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Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to come up with our own love-related topic for this week. I thought I’d share the top ten romantic books I have either out from or on hold at the library:

1. Love in Winter Wonderland by Abiola Bello
2. A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy & Sienna Simone
3. The Twelfth Knight by Alexene Farol Follmuth
4. Old Flames and New Fortunes by Sarah Hogle
5. A Lady’s Guide to Marvels and Misadventure by Angela Bell
6. The Second You’re Single by Cara Tanamachi
7. Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi
8. The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright
9. Empire of the Shadows by Jacquelyn Benson
10. Back After This by Linda Holmes

The first two are Christmas-themed romances that are still lingering into 2025, which is more an indictment of my scattered reading habits thus far this year than of the books themselves.

After I’ve crossed those two off my in-progress list, has anyone read anything from the list they’d recommend I start with?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Arty Reader Girl asks us to share the books that came out last year that we were excited to read — but then didn’t get to. Here are some of mine, all of which I hope make it onto this year’s finished list:

1. Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance
2. T.J. Klune’s Somewhere Beyond the Sea
3. Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde
4. 1000 Words by Jami Attenberg (In fairness, I did start this one and decided I was going to want my own copy, which I now have.)
5. A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall
6. How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin
7. Amor Towles’ Table for Two
8. The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (Currently reading and overdue back to the library)
9. The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
10. 50 Beasts to Break Your Heart and Other Stories by GennaRose Nethercott

How about you? Were there books that came out during 2024 you fully intended to read and then … life?

January is often a high reading count for me, and this year is no exception, with six books already marked off in the done category.

Here are some reviews of what I read last month:

Aliya to the Infinite City by Laila Rifaat

A middle grade fantasy novel that I picked up at the Daunt Books mothership in London last year, Aliya to the Infinite City could reasonably be called an Egyptian Harry Potter — and, in fact, it’s impossible to avoid the comparison, which I suppose Rifaat knew, since she name-checks the series in the story. Aliya lives with her grandfather after her parents are killed in a fire when she was very young. They’ve always gotten along well, but he’s become increasingly erratic in his behavior of late. On her 11th birthday, Aliya learns first that her grandfather has been telling the world she was also dead — and then that she’s from a long line of time-travelers. She ends up in an alternate dimension of Egypt, where she must play catch-up on a lifetime of magical learning, overcome the trauma of her grandfather’s betrayal, and meet other wannabe time-traveling kids who’ve come from all eras of Egyptian history. Add to that, she must try to cope with the stress of poisonings of governmental officials (possibly linked to her roommate and/or house matron), cracks that keep appearing in the sky, and a necklace that once belonged to her mother and recently gifted to her by an anonymous benefactor, which seems to hold enormous — and likely forbidden — power.

Rifaat does have a knack for descriptions. The Infinite City and its residents come alive before your eyes, and you will constantly be hungry because of the feasting that goes on.

It was an okay story, and I would read another in the trilogy if it were to cross my path. But I don’t know if I’d seek it out. Recommended for someone who hasn’t read Harry Potter and might no longer choose to or to someone who wants another version of a magical orphan.

Personal print copy

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the best new-to-us authors we read last year. In 2024, I read 52 books, which had 51 distinct authors/editors. Of those, 30 were either debut authors or authors whose work I hadn’t yet read. Here are the ten whose works I liked best:

1. Carsten Henn: The Door-to-Door Bookstore
2. Katya Balen: October, October
3. Simon Van Booy: Sipsworth
4. Karen Hesse: Out of the Dust
5. Emily Habeck: Shark Heart
6. Rufi Thorpe: Margo’s Got Money Troubles
7. Valérie Perrin: Fresh Water for Flowers
8. Nadi Reed Perez: The Afterlife of Mal Caldera
9. E. Alix Harrow: The Ten Thousand Doors of January
10. Sarah Hogle: Just Like Magic

Half of those are realistic fiction and half are speculative fiction/fantasy.

How about you? Which authors did you discover last year whom you would recommend?