Things That Make Me Automatically Want to Read a Book (Read-Bait!) Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I’ve written a ton of posts like this that you can find in my Read-Bait series and in various TTTs over the years. I’ve also talked about my auto-buy authors. I won’t reinvent the wheel here too much but these are some worth highlighting now. (I’m super tempted to just paste in my TTT from 2019 about this because it’s a great summary, but instead feel free to check out the link.)   Timey things: parallel worlds/lives/choices, multiverse, Groundhog day I always include this as the first one on these lists because it’s arguably what I’m most excited to read about. It’s an all-encompassing category (on Goodreads my shelf is “parallel timey type“) to just discuss messing with time. (Time travel is included here although it’s not top-tier like the other ones listed here.) Books that involve parallel universes or the multiverse are some of my favorites. I love when a character makes a decision between two things and the book splits into two different plots to see how the world works for them depending on their choice. Groundhog Day books where the person […]

Things Getting in the Way of Reading (aka My Other Hobbies!) Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. This is a fun one! I don’t spend a lot of time writing personal posts on here anymore because my blogging mojo has been pretty strictly around books, but here are some of the major things that take up my time! 1. Sports-watching (especially Panthers football) I’ve been a Panthers fan forever and I don’t have to tell you about that any more than I already have 😉 I love watching football during the season. I watch any and all games available to me on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday, but pay very close attention to the screen when it’s a Panthers game! We’ve also recently gotten into watching some playoff games for hockey and basketball. We watch March Madness when that’s happening too. Overall, just a big fan of watching sports on TV and sometimes in person. 2. Podcasts If there’s one thing that’s gotten in the way of audiobooks lately, it’s podcasts. I listen pretty regularly even though my commute doesn’t exist anymore! I prefer true crime but will sometimes listen to a wrestling or book-related podcast. I’ve written a lot of favorites […]

Books I Recommend the Most Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I feel like the first books that come to mind for this TTT are the books I recommend to “non-bookish people” or the people who don’t use bookstagram, blogs, or booktok. They’re the books I would tell my mom or coworker or friend to read – the more casual readers. This was basically from memory and my feeling in this moment… the first ten books I thought of when I saw the prompt!  

First 10 Books Randomly Grabbed from My Shelves (and My Thoughts / TBR Plans!) Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. This worked out pretty well because I actually have about 10 bookshelves to pick from (I have more at my dad’s house and randomly here but they’re mostly ARCs and super old copies I need to donate). There are 10 ~good~ shelves to pick from at least! I had Chris go to each shelf and randomly pick a book from each. Here are the results! I’ll Be There for You // This is a cute, random coffee table book about Friends. I have read it and it was pretty good, but obviously nothing to write home about! They All Fall Down // This book has survived a lot of unhauls and I really should get to reading it at some point haha. I don’t know why but it still calls to me! Lore Olympus // I picked this up last month and haven’t emotionally prepared to begin this series yet. Pride and Puppies // I bought this at the used bookstore recently – it’s like the 3rd or 4th book in a series that I’ve started but figured I may as well add it to my […]

Favorite Audiobook Narrators Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I don’t actually track this as much as other people do but luckily I’ve written some posts about this in the past to reference. I also went in and looked at some recent audiobooks that I really enjoyed, since the linked post is super old haha. Here are some favorites! Julia Whalen // Kicking off with everyone’s favorite! She’s narrated so many excellent books, including pretty much everything (?) by TJR. She’s narrated so many “classics” across multiple genres – everything from GONE GIRL to BEACH READ. If she’s narrating it, I’m listening to it. January LaVoy // Another favorite of the majority of us! She’s known to me from THE DIVINERS series but she’s also an auto-listen narrator for me. I noticed she also narrates a lot of books by Megan Goldin, who I also love. Tim Curry // Listening to A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS is such an excellent reading experience because of Tim Curry. He’s obviously a famous actor with an excellent voice, so he just totally brings these books to life. I would reread these every few years just so I could hear his voice if possible! Jim Dale // I don’t […]

Non-Book Freebie: Recent TV Shows Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I usually enjoy sharing personal things on the blog but it’s been a while since I have! I thought for this non-bookish freebie that I would share some shows that I’ve recently watched… and whether or not I’d recommend them! My husband and I have been really bad about finishing shows lately. We also haven’t even tuned in to the new season of TED LASSO yet! Currently Watching & Rewatching Community // This is one of my top favorite TV shows and we’re in the middle of rewatching! We wanted to prepare for the movie and refresh our memories on what happened. I definitely missed these characters and could see myself revisiting this way more often, like I do with Friends. Party Down // We watched this show during Covid and they announced a reboot soon after we finished. We’ve watched a few episodes of the new season and it’s good so far! Definitely fun callbacks and great characters. Hopefully we get back into it because we’re a few behind as of now. Reno 911 // Chris loves this show and I’ve never seen it so we’ve been watching it on and off. It’s […]

Covers with Animals on Them Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. Naturally I took the “covers with animals on them” approach instead of “animals in the book’s title” because I am a book cover girlie forever. I decided to share some recently read (and enjoyed!!) books with cute animals on the cover, as well as some on my TBR. Recently Read On My TBR  

Indie/Self-Published Books Kindle Unlimited Books on my TBR Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I really don’t read a lot of self-published books, I’m sorry to say! I haven’t had a ton of success with them in the past and usually have too many reading commitments to even dip my toe into that pool. It seems like a slippery slope with tons of romance and fantasy options! I know Kindle Unlimited has a good amount of self-published and indie books so I thought I would share some books on KU that are on my TBR. I don’t subscribe regularly but last year I got one month of KU to read a few books and am really glad I did. I can see myself doing that more often in the future, so this is a good place to track those things!

Books for People Who Liked Sara Shepard Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I feel like I’m REALLY bad at coming up with author or book comp titles so this was tough for me to pin down! I started to think about the author(s) that I used to love when I first got into reading more as a young adult, and Sara Shepard was the obvious choice. I used to love the Pretty Little Liars books and up until a few years ago, I religiously read every new release she wrote. (I still want to and try to, but I’m a few books behind). I thought it would be fun to recommend some books here for the people like me who loved PLL and Sara Shepard back in the day. Most of these are YA books and I tried to focus on titles that involve a group of girls in high school and/or boarding school, multi-book series, and rich people – I feel like those are the vibes I loved to read about back when I was reading PLL even though PLL didn’t necessarily have all those elements.  

TTT Rewind: Books I Liked More or Less Than I Thought I Would Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. This is so fun! There was a period of time where I was barely blogging and skipped a bunch of TTTs so I tried to go back and see if any of them looked good to rewind and do today. It ended up being too challenging to track down so I thought I would do a random number generator to pick which post to try. If it was something super specific I would just keep going until one struck my fancy, but this worked out really well on the first try! I got TTT #333: Top Ten Books I Liked More/Less Than I Thought I Would! I have Goodreads shelves up for the task so I went and looked at my “pleasant surprise” and “super disappointing” shelves to grab five of each. For kicks, here are the books I picked back when I first did this prompt in 2017. Liked More than Expected All of these books exceeded my expectations in one way or another! I wasn’t sure the hype would be worth it or they weren’t my usual topics to read about, and they […]