This week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share bookish discoveries we made last year. I thought I’d focus on writers. Of the 59 authors I read, 39 were new to me. Here are ten of those whose books I gave four stars to:

1. B.K. Borison, Good Spirits (romantasy)
2. Abiola Bello, Love in Winter Wonderland (YA romance)
3. John Scalzi, Starter Villain (sci fi adventure)
4. Kate McKinnon (yes, that one), The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science (kidlit adventure)
5. Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time (sci fi)
6. Emily Henry, Book Lovers (romance)
7. Alexene Farol Follmuth, Twelfth Knight (YA fiction)
8. Sylvie Cathrall, Letters to the Luminous Deep (romantasy)
9. A. Kendra Greene, No Less Strange or Wonderful (nature essays)
10. Sara Raash, The Nightmare Before Kissmas (romantasy)

I’ll definitely be checking out more books by these authors in the future.

How about you? Did you stumble across any authors last year whose books will hit your tbr list?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I went to the big Safeway in Georgetown last weekend and ran into one of my middle school players and her girlfriend while I was there. It was really nice to see them and to touch base.

2. My team’s season started this week, and half the team was unable to make the game. A friend had offered to sub in when I needed an extra player, and while I hadn’t expected to accept on week one, it felt great to see him after a couple of months.

3. Sunday offered conversational snow — the sort that you remark upon, but which requires no work from you. I tucked myself into boots and the hot pink cape my mother made me and took myself out for a walk. As I paused on the bridge to take a picture of the snow drifting down into the creek below (the snow did not show up in the shot, so it looks just like every other day), I noticed the girl behind me paused as well. I glanced her way and she said, “I’m sorry. I had to take your photo. You were the only color in the entire landscape. Do you mind?” And I didn’t, because I was.

Before we get to That Artsy Reader Girl’s weekly Top Ten Tuesday topic, our 2026 goals, let’s check in on how I did with last year’s:

1. Read 52 books. 62 titles finished.
2. Read 25 books I own. I managed a piddly four.
3. Read more diversely (15). 18 titles were written by authors who identified as BIPOC or queer.
4. Write at least 6 non-Top Ten Tuesday posts about books this year. I managed six review posts.
5. Read more backlist titles (15 books published outside this half-decade, and at least 7 from before the year 2000). I finished 10 books from before 2020 and only two from the 1900s.
6. Read 3+ books of poetry or novels in verse. Fail, although I did finish two works of prose by poets.
7. Read more nonfiction — at least 5. 10 books.
8. Read a book by an author who lives in Africa and one who lives in Central or South America. Fail.
9. Send the books I’ve bought as gifts to the people they’re meant for. Fail.
10. Give every book I own a permanent home on a shelf. Fail

Okay, so that’s not a great track record. I read more, read more diversely, and read more nonfiction, but still leant toward recent works of fiction from the library.

Let’s see what we can do about it with some goals for this year:

1. Read 52 books. This number works for me as a target.
2. Finish at least 20 books I own.
3. Read 3 works from pre-1900, 5 books from the 20th century, and 10 books (total) published before 2021.
4. Publish reviews for all 12 months DURING 2026 (with a few days’ grace period for December).
5. Finish 1 play, 1 short story collection, and 2 books of poetry.
6. Read works by authors from at least 7 countries, at least 5 of which should be in translation.
7. Read at least 5 books by queer and/or trans writers.
8. Read 5 works of nonfiction, in at least 4 different Dewey Decimal areas.
9. Send the gift books out into the world. (I bought them so friends would get to read them. Silly to hold on to them forever.)
10. Give every book I own its own shelf space. (This should be my ultimate goal for my personal library and if I can’t figure it out, more books should move on to other bibliophiles.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Volunteering started back up this week after our holiday break. We’ve switched up groups of kids, so it’s exciting to think about sharing volleyball with a new class.

2. I got to play pickup at the elementary school by my apartment, which offered a fun time and a short commute home afterwards.

3. I was trying to make crackers out of sourdough starter discard this week, and while the outcome isn’t really a cracker, it is crisp-like and still quite tasty.

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

We’re in the midst of annual Top Ten Tuesday topics at That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s is the top ten books we’re most anticipating that are being published before the end of June. Here are mine:

1. Jasper Fforde’s Dark Reading Matter
2. Rainbow Rowell’s Cherry Baby
3. Deana Raybourn’s A Ghastly Catastrophe
4. T.J. Klune’s We Burned So Bright
5. Anne of a Different Island by Virginia Kantra
6. E.B. Asher’s This Will Be Interesting
7. The Astral Library by Kate Quinn
8. Kory Stamper’s True Color
9. By The Book by Jessica George
10. Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett

How about you? What’s coming out in the next six months that you’re excited to read?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. As of the start of the week, the sun is now setting after 5 p.m. here (and the sun is up before 7:30 for those of you who care about that part).

2. Rudi makes borscht and we exchange the last of our gifts on Russian Christmas.

3. We got 60s and sunny one afternoon this week, so I took chai and a couple books to the park.

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