This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl could be interpreted through a lens of regret — books we meant to read last year and didn’t get around to. Instead, I’m going to consider them delayed gratification or prolonged anticipation reads — ten books that I put on my to-be-read list, were published, or came into my possession last year and that I still get to look forward to diving into:

1. Brian Selznick’s Big Tree
2. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
3. David Grann’s The Wager
4. Lies and Other Love Languages by Sonali Dev
5. Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
6. Anna-Marie McLemore’s Blanca & Roja
7. Woman Without Shame by Sandra Cisneros
8. In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune
9. Bill Watterson’s The Mysteries
10. A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas

How about you? What books do you still get to look forward to that you were sure would be read by now?

Edited to add: I went back and looked at the past four times topics of this sort have been covered, and I’ve read 8 of the ~35 books I shared at the time. Oops.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We have booked a trip for my birthday next month.

2. It snowed several inches on Monday, and Rudi was around to shovel. (This was particularly beautiful because he will *not* be around for Friday’s snow.)

3. With snow still gently falling, a day off for many people already, and nearly two years since we’d had any accumulation, folks had a lot of fun playing outdoors. I watched kids (and parents) sledding down on on the “beach.” At at the Circle, one very excited Bernese alternated between flopping and rolling around on the ground and tugging on its leash to pull its adult owner and its child on a sled around faster and faster.

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share our bookish goals for 2024. But first, let me do a final touch of 2023’s goals:

Last year I finished 52 books, 12 of which I own. The other 40 were from the library, including 14 audiobooks. (Thank god for libraries!) Nearly a third were from diverse authors and about a quarter by authors who were not Americans (including four in translation — three from Japanese and one from Swedish). Five books were nonfiction, one was poetry, and the rest were fiction (10 of which were graphic novels).

I failed completely at only two and generally hit the mark on most of the rest, so, yay!

Now, for this year:

1. Read 52 books.
2. Review said books here on the blog, even if it’s just a couple of sentences. And get any best of lists — definitely 2023, but did I post one for 2022? — published here, too.
3. Buy books in another country. (More info on this goal coming soon!)
4. Read at least two classics, including a Russian novel.
5. Finish the School Library Journal’s Top 100 Children’s Books. (Maybe I have 15 left to go, none of which were at my local library branch when I checked for them last month. (The system has them, so I just need to place some holds.))
6. Read 13 books from my own collection, including at least five I’ve had for more than two years.
7. Listen to 20 audiobooks.
8. Read at least three books of poetry.
9. Read at least five books in translation.
10. Get all my books onto shelves (which will necessitate donating some to make space).

How about you? Do you have bookish goals for this year?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. It’s been ages (like since spring), but BW and I finally got a chance to have a nice, long call to catch up.

2. Our volleyball team beat the #2 team on a solid hit by one of my teammates who is sometimes reluctant to spike the ball to advance to the league finals. We lost that game, but the four of us who went out for dinner afterwards agreed that it was a good night regardless.

3. My new passport has arrived in record time. (Literally — it took a week.)

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. For the first time since the pandemic, Sarah, Rudi, and I resumed our New Year’s Eve movie marathon. (It was a mini marathon, but still!) We watched The Color Purple and Wonka — and enjoyed both — and ate Chinese food in lieu of pizza because Ella’s was closed. But at midnight, we were together, and that is what has been lacking since 2019.

2. Chris and Julie treat me to supper at a local restaurant the night after I get back to town on my own.

3. I baked last week and both cookies I made here were delicious and easy.

Salted peanut butter cookies (with thanks to Chris for his birthday request and Smitten Kitchen for coming through with a recipe, as I fully expected her to):

Gochujang caramel cookies (an Eric Kim recipe from the New York Times I’ve had open in a tab since December 2022 (not a typo), proving you really may eventually get back to it):

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

I’m working on my top ten books of 2023, but in the meantime wanted to share that Bout of Books is currently going on. You should join me in reading — as much or as little as you want — this week.

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, January 1st, and runs through Sunday, January 7th, in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, daily Discord questions, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For all Bout of Books 39 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team