Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Meeting up in person to work with a colleague at the library.

2. Rudi and I both came home from Salt Lake.

3. Because we both left so early in the month, it’s still Christmas in the Burrow. My tree weathered our absence surprisingly well. We may celebrate Russian Christmas (redux) this weekend.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

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?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I sprang for an hour at a cat cafe because it’s been ages since we’ve been away from family felines for this long. I had a kitten curl up in my lap for about ten minutes.

2. The bed in our third Air BnB this trip is substantially more comfortable than location number two. I took a nap in it yesterday when we arrived while Rudi did some paperwork.

3. Location #2 was, however, just a mile down the road from a used bookstore that had the first novel in one of Sherry Thomas’ earlier series. I look forward to spending some time with the Marsdens on my flight home Saturday.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Thanks, everyone, for the kind messages about Rudi’s mom. We’re working on a tribute and I’ll be sure to share it here once it’s complete. Suffice it to say, 2022 has been challenging so far.

We’re still in Salt Lake and still dealing with things, so I’m not ready to start blogging every day yet, but I do want to step back in with a couple posts this week so I don’t get too accustomed to not writing.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks about the books that came out last year that we were really excited about, but that for one reason or another (see: life), we didn’t get to cross off our TBR lists before 2021 headed out of town. Here are ten of mine:

1. Sherry Thomas’ Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
2. Beth and Amy by Virginia Kantra
3. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
4. The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary
5. Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sãenz
6. Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
7. Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli
8. Mackenzi Lee’s The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks
9. Pumpkin by Julie Murphy
10. Mary H.K. Choi’s Yolk

How about you? Were there books that came out last year that you couldn’t wait for — but it turns out that you did?

Rudi’s mom died tonight. We were with her when she went, and we had some good days with her before the end, but it’s still a crushing blow for our family. I’ll be going dark here for a bit while we figure out how to move forward with her loss.

Hugs to you, my dear readers, and hugs to your loved ones, as well.