Top Ten Tuesday: Celebrating TTT’s 10th Birthday!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week marks ten years of Top Ten Tuesday! I've only been doing it for about 3-4 years myself, but it's become a favorite part of my book blogging experience...I love putting the lists together, and then seeing what other readers have chosen for theirs! This week, we're celebrating by looking through the archives to either re-do a topic or chose a topic we hadn't done before! I'm doing a twist on a topic I did before. Just about two years ago, I told you about series I'd given up on. So here are ten series I have not yet finished but intend to!

Foundation: A nonfiction series! This one is about the history of England, and I liked the first well enough to keep going through the five volumes.

Shatter Me: I am not usually a YA fantasy-type person, but this one hooked me enough that I'm interested in reading at least the next two to see how I feel about continuing through all...six, I think?

Oryx and Crake: Margaret Atwood + post-apocolyptic series = something I am into. Only read the first, but have the other two already!

In The Woods: Lots of people have told me that this series about Irish police detectives doesn't necessarily have to be read in order but I am a traditionalist and will only read them that way. Only read the first so far but have heard the second is the best so I'm looking forward to that one!

The Tudor and Plantangent Novels: I've read several of these books about the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor dynasty but not all of them! They're not actually like high-quality literature but they're cheesy reading fun.

The Talented Mr. Ripley: The movie version is enjoyable so I don't know why my expectations were so low for the original book. Turns out the book is great too and I want to read more about Ripley!

Wolf Hall: I found the first one a little sloggy but the second excellent and have heard rave reviews on the third (which just came out and I have not yet read).

Sloppy Firsts: I'm definitely too old for these books, but loved this diary of a cynical New Jersey teenager and am very much interested in the four following books!

Sabriel: I've read the original trilogy repeatedly, but I haven't yet read the two new books!

Gilead: I was spellbound by this lovely book, which has three sequels that I'm eager to read.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Celebrating TTT’s 10th Birthday!

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recent Books I Really Enjoyed

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're actually meant to be talking about books that gave us "hangovers"...you know, the kind where you finish it and it's so good that you have a hard time getting into your next read because you can't get it out of your head. As a devoted schedule reader (rather than mood reader), I don't really get book hangovers, so I'm twisting this just a bit to be the last books that I really got into.

Columbine: This is a hard book to say one "enjoyed" per se, but it's an incredible piece of journalism about an event that is misunderstood in important ways that have a continuing effect on our culture.

The Talented Mr. Ripley: I'd seen the movie, of course, so I thought this would be similar: kind of lightweight, enjoyable, not especially memorable. But in Tom Ripley, Highsmith created a fascinating villain and I really want to read the sequels!

Marie Antoinette: She's often held up as a symbol of the worst excesses of pre-French Revolution Europe, but this biography tears down the myths and reveals her as a woman whose own faults didn't help anything but was mostly caught up in forces beyond her control from the moment she came to France.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: One of those books you finish and immediately want to read again, telling a multigenerational Dominican (and then Dominican-American) story about a family curse with bright, vivid language.

Battleborn: I don't even particularly care for short stories, but this collection about Nevada was incredible.

Daisy Jones and the Six: I read this before the hype exploded and then became a participant in the hype, because the Behind The Music-style story of a band whose blood and tears created a classic album before it all came crashing down again was impossible to put down.

Bad Blood: We are living in a new era of fraudsters, and Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos were one of the highest-profile ones of all. A fascinating behind-the-scenes look of how the company got so big despite being based on total lies...and how it was all revealed.

Astonish Me: I am a sucker for ballet books, but was a little hesitant because I'd not enjoyed Shipstead's other novel. This one, though, was a treat: it beautifully balances a domestic story about a family against the drama of the exclusive world of ballet and totally captured my attention.

The Winter of the Witch: I loved the first two books and was so worried that the conclusion of the trilogy would falter, but I was wrong to doubt Arden. It was a perfect ending to an incredible story.

Once Upon A River: A historical fiction tale that celebrates storytelling, as a young girl is brought nearly dead into an English tavern and is claimed by several families, any or none of which might be her own.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recent Books I Really Enjoyed

A Month In The Life: November 2019

We're in the homestretch, y'all! Just one more month between us and 2020, which is WILD. And while I've had some awesome experiences this year, I always find myself looking forward to the new one about this time. But first, there are holidays to enjoy!

In Books...

• Patron Saints of Nothing: A Filipino-American teenager, Jason, goes to the Philippines to investigate his cousin's mysterious death amidst Duterte's drug war in this book that tries, but can't quite rise above Issue Book tropes. There's merit here, and a clear desire to raise awareness, but thin characterization and clunky exposition keep it from ever taking off.
• The Death and Life of the Great Lakes: Given my strong emotional attachment to the Great Lakes as a native Michigander, this was always going to appeal to me. But the examination of the disasters that have transpired through human meddling is written with a clear-eyed urgency and ease to read that makes it especially compelling.
• Slam: This almost seems like an experiment to see if the man-child attitude of a Nick Hornby character works better on an actual teenage boy. Honestly, it kind of does? Sam is a teenage skateboarder, himself the child of teenage parents, when he gets his girlfriend Alicia pregnant and she elects to keep the baby. I've always enjoyed Hornby's warm humor, but this book just doesn't really go anywhere. 
• The Great Mortality: The Black Death was a historical event I didn't have much of a grasp on and wanted to learn more about, but this book proved to be a bit of a mixed bag. It was clearly well-researched, but John Kelly's writing style was so casual that it didn't really work for me. It shoots for being entertaining and lands too often on cheesy, which is a pity because I did feel like I learned from it and would have liked it more if it had been more restrained. 
• The Talented Mr. Ripley: This movie is one of those that I always enjoy watching, so I was curious about the source material. It's different...the murder takes place much earlier, more time is devoted to Ripley's efforts to evade discovery, but it's still very good. Highsmith builds interesting characters and relationships even while keeping the tension humming. 
• Offshore: This very short novel tells the story of a group of people living on houseboats on the River Thames, with a particular focus on a young wife and mother, Nenna, who is unhappily separated from her husband. The prose is lovely and she does excellent work creating characters without having a lot of pages in which to do so, but the plot didn't quite work for me and the ending left me cold.
• After The Party: This book tells the story of Phyllis, who returns to England with her older husband and three children before World War 2 and gets involved with a movement both her sisters already belong to...the British Union of Fascists. Phyllis had some inconsistencies as a character, which was a problem because she was the narrator, but the prose quality is solid and the story is interesting, and a very different take on a WW2 tale.

In Life...

• Winter begins: It was a pretty quiet November, but with this being Thanksgiving weekend, it's officially the holiday season. I baked a delicious Zingerman's coffee cake for dessert for the big meal, and we got our first significant snowfall of the season!

One Thing:

I was not an especially frequent visitor to sports blog Deadspin, though I look forward every year to Drew Magary's Hater's Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog. But even if you never loaded the website once, the way that it and other media outlets have been purchased and essentially pillaged by private equity is chilling. In a world where getting a reliable paycheck for writing and journalism is growing more and more difficult, the bravery of the whole staff for resigning in protest of the challenges made to their editorial independence is inspiring. Deadspin Forever.

Gratuitous Pug Picture:

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A Month In The Life: November 2019

Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Fall 2019 TBR

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! These are my favorite lists: our quarterly TBRs! This fall looks to bring some books-made-into-movies, some prize-winners, as well as some infectious disease nonfiction, and a bunch of other stuff too.

The Hours: I've wanted to read the book ever since I saw the movie, but thought I should probably read Mrs. Dalloway first. Well, now I have and so it's time to read this!

The Age of Miracles: The concept behind this (the earth's rotation slowing, lengthening days and throwing the world into a panic) seems intriguing, and I heard that it was inspired in part by Jose Saramago's Blindness, which I loved.

The Overstory: The book club pick for next month, this was the most recent Pulitzer Prize winner and I'd actually already bought a copy to read before it was picked!

Plagues and Peoples: The influence of disease on human history is extremely up my alley.

Revolutionary Road: I tend to find suburban dissatisfaction interesting, and I did like the movie version, so I've got high hopes for the book.

The Line of Beauty: I will read anything that has won the Booker Prize.

Patron Saints of Nothing: I don't read a ton of young adult, but this one has a UMich connection, deals with the political situation in the Philippines (which I'd like to learn more about) and has gotten good reviews.

Slam: I've heard some mixed reviews of this one, but I love Nick Hornby so I'll give it a try.

The Great Mortality: It's all about the Black Death, which I've never really learned much about except kind of broadly, so I'm excited to read more about it.

The Talented Mr. Ripley: There's a lot of "I saw the movie" in this quarter! Because that's the appeal here, too.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Fall 2019 TBR