This week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl is Dynamic Duos. Here are ten of my favorite pairings:

1. Anne and Diana from Anne of Green Gables
2. Fred and George from Harry Potter
3. Jo and Laurie from Little Women
4. Idgie and Ruth from Fried Green Tomatoes
5. Silas and Bod from The Graveyard Book
6. Thursday and Pickwick from The Eyre Affair
7. Ove and Cat Annoyance from A Man Called Ove
8. Agnieszka and Kasia in Uprooted
9. Cecelia and Kate in Sorcery & Cecelia
10. Hugo and Isabelle from The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Who are some of your favorite literary pairs?

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in a formal readalong, but this seemed like a good time for one. Marg of The Intrepid Reader is hosting a Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

I’m going to sign up at the Victorian Reader level, committing to read 5 books of historical fiction. That seems reasonable, given my current output of reads the past two years has been at an all-time low.

I’ve got Sherry Thomas’ Miss Moriarty, I Presume? sitting on the coffee table and a Victorian romance on hold at the library in Virginia, which seems to be a good starting place. I’m looking forward to reading along.

I thought I’d share some of the books I’m hoping to read during February as part of Black History Month:

• Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon
• Moth by Amber McBride
• Black Boy Joy, edited by Kwame Mbalia
• Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory
• So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

What are you reading this month?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl is a write-your-own topic related to love in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Romance has become a favorite genre during the pandemic, because I desperately need to cling to the certainty of a happy ending. Here are the top ten romances on my library holds lists:

1. A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
2. The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer
3. A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore
4. Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
5. Serendipity, edited by Marissa Meyer
6. The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune
7. Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis J. Hall
8. Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell
9. Not Here to Be Liked by Michelle Quach
10. Digging Up Love by Chandra Blumberg

How about you? Got any romance recommendations for by holds list?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share books with character names in the title. Here are the last ten I read:

1. Faith: Taking Flight by Julie Murphy
2. Bruno and the Carol Singer by Martin Walker
3. Nancy Drew: The Palace of Wisdom by Kelly Thompson
4. Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
5. Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Anonymous
6. Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert
7. Jo and Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz
8. Serena Singh Flips the Script by Sonya Lalli
9. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez
10. Bandette, Vol. 3: The House of the Green Mask by Paul Tobin and Colleen Hoover

Have you read any books recently with a character’s name in the title? Would you recommend them?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share new author discoveries from the past year. Here are ten new-to-me authors I discovered in 2021 (in no particular order):

1. Evie Dunmore
2. Carlos Hernandez
3. Abby Jimenez
4. Sonya Lalli
5. Jackie Fraser
6. S.J. Bennett
7. Elizabeth Everett
8. Kelly Thompson
9. Farah Heron
10. Tirzah Price

Conveniently, many of these authors already had series in progress or in the works when I stumbled across them, which makes finding the next read from them super easy!

How about you? Did you discover any authors last year you’ll be reading again?