Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to reflect on a decade’s worth of releases and to give our favorite book for each of the past ten years.

I should note that I started out considering the best book from each year, but then I realized it wasn’t the question and had to go back to my first couple to consider whether it was, in fact, my favorite. Here’s where I ended up:

2009: Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me
2010: Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
2011: Erin Morganstern’s The Night Circus
2012: A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman
2013: Just One Day by Gayle Forman
2014: Landline by Rainbow Rowell
2015: Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
2016: Sherry Thomas’ A Study in Scarlet Women
2017: Word by Word by Kory Stamper
2018: Julie Murphy’s Puddin’
Bonus: 2019: So far I’ve only read two of this year’s publications. The moment’s winner is Jeff Zentner’s Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite Matinee.

It does not escape me that my list is very white, with Sherry Thomas being the only author of color, I believe. As I mentioned, these are merely the books I enjoyed most, not necessarily the books I thought were most important or best written, which would mostly have resulted in vastly different lists that included books by Jason Reynolds, Angie Thomas, Kwame Alexander, Nicola Yoon, Jacqueline Woodson, Grace Lin, and Cristina Henríquez.

Rudi and I stopped by the local library branch yesterday, where I had a few holds waiting for me. It seems like all my red-spined requests came in at once…

We watched Ant-Man this evening. It was cute. I’ve started The Body Papers by Grace Talusan, a memoir written by the sister of someone I knew from college, and am trying to decide which fictional work to begin next. I’m thinking possibly one of the other books that would qualify for Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which would be Emergency Contact; From Twinkle, With Love; and Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors.

What have you picked up from the library recently?

We have peas!

Also, I consulted all my seed packets. All the green ones I planted are English shelling peas. The purple ones are snap peas — and are so sweet. Their seam is green, as are the peas inside. We had them on our salads for supper tonight, which were based on greens from the garden. I picked enough leaves for us to have at least one more round of salads before we need to harvest more.

We also brought home a dozen strawberries, which were delicious with ice cream for dessert, and half a dozen onions/shallots.

And my potatoes are in the ground, so unless I find any more growing in my kitchen, we should be good to go.

I ought to get beans in the ground soon. And I might need a couple more basil plants, because the ones I’ve planted so far are looking a little scraggly, which is not the adjective you want to have to use for basil. I’ll see what I can find at the farmers market tomorrow.

Finally, a glimpse of a new crop to come next month:

Fava beans! (These are the Robin Hood variety, which grow on bushy plants only about a foot high, so I’m thinking the bean pods will be smaller at harvest than what I usually see at the farmers market, but who knows?!)

It’s a holiday weekend here honoring those who’ve sacrificed their lives in the protection of the U.S. and unofficially kicking off the summer season. Here in D.C., outdoor pools open for the season (on weekends only right now; daily after school lets out) and outdoor films and concerts start occurring more regularly.

Here’s what I’m hoping the next three days include:

• Spending time at the pool.
• Finally dealing with the clothing switch. (The last time I planned it, high temps dipped back down to March averages and all incentive was gone. But there are several 90s in the next week, so I absolutely no longer care about pants.)
• Harvesting peas and strawberries and spending time in the garden.
• Listening to some baseball.
• Drinking strawberry daiquiris.
• Reading outside. (I started Caraval earlier today and am loving it so far, for you y.a. fantasy fans.)
• Backing up my phone. (It’s really irritating how much space it feels it needs in order to operate at peak efficiency, but it’s probably not a bad thing to have a second copy of my photos.)
• Painting my fingernails. (I did my toes the other day and pulled out the bottles for my hands, but decided to wait until after I did my volunteer shift yesterday, since I wasn’t sure how hands-on it would be.)
• Picking up some holds at the library.
• Baking something. My audiobook mentioned handpies last night, so maybe some of them…
• Swapping out the duvet cover for a lightweight one.
• Seeing a friend.

How about you? What’s on your to-do list for the weekend? Is it all barbecue and beach trips? Sleeping until afternoon? Parades?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I knew there were afternoon thundershowers expected around the time I was getting out of my volunteer shift, but I’d hoped to beat the storm home. I was still a dozen blocks away when I realized that the wind gusts were making cycling too dangerous to continue, so I docked my bike by the library and ran inside, a little damp from the first drops of rain, but ahead of the deluge that followed moments later — and the tornado warning that came on its heels. I parked myself at a table and read until the warning lifted.

2. Author Kevin Kwan appeared at the Library of Congress yesterday and they showed a screening of Crazy Rich Asians beforehand. I don’t tend to love interview-style author events (although I do understand why some authors might find them more enjoyable than having to get up on stage and riff for half an hour), but Kwan was affable to both his interviewer and to the audience members who asked questions, offering up a pleasant way to pass an evening. (They’re filming the second and third movies at the same time next year, and he’s currently working on two tv series and at least two novels.)

3. Because I have the ability to use my phone as a hotspot, I sometimes take my laptop up to the park on beautiful days and hang out at a picnic table for several hours. On Monday, I headed up in the late afternoon, was still there in the early evening when Rudi stopped by on his way out with friends, and finally closed things up after dark (I wasn’t the only one still there on such a beautiful night), when he texted he was on his way home from the film.

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

I should probably have paid attention when Flickr announced they were going to be down for maintenance, because it didn’t occur to me that they meant for 12 hours. And I just don’t have it in me to upload the photo another way right now, so until Flickr comes back online, assume that this paragraph is a shot consisting of a pot of tea, a biscuit, a half skein of yarn that had not yet been cast on for a second sock, and a book on a table outside. It looked not dissimilar from last week’s shot.

The second of my Smock Madness pair was cast on this evening. It’s nice to think that pair could be finished in a couple weeks.

I had Murder in G Major with me again today, so that’s the book that was included in the picture. Gethsemane has survived a poisoning, performed some tunes in the local bar, and convinced a ghost to write her a concerto, so life is looking up a bit for her. Elsewhere, I’m listening to The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss, which starts off at the newly constructed outpost of the Nearly Silent Monastery (they have a vocabulary of eight words and practice listening) here in Washington, D.C., where a small girl has wandered in with no information about where she came from. And I also started Death Prefers Blondes, a y.a. novel about a rich girl who runs a crew of teen drag queens in performing elaborate heists around the L.A. area.

Want to hear about what other folks are reading and crafting (many of them have photos!)? Head over to As Kat Knits to catch the roundup.