Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. She has a linkup on her page for everyone participating this week. This week’s topic is the Top Ten Things That Make Me Pick Up A Book.

1. Fantastic cover.

The cover really is the first thing I notice, if I’m just browsing books. If the description doesn’t support a gorgeous cover, then I’ll set it down again, but I’ve read many books because the cover caught my eye and then I read the description.

2. Cities as characters

One of my favorite tropes. It shows up in stories like Six of Crows, The Gutter Prayer, and City of Brass. Where the city itself has such atmosphere that it really is a character on its own.

3. Hints of polyamory

There just aren’t enough books – especially fiction books – on polyamory, so whenever I see a description that even hints at it, I have to check to see if it actually has polyamory in it. Sometimes that works out terribly, like Odd One Out, and sometimes it surprises me, like That Inevitable Victorian Thing.

4. Non-western-european mythology

YES. Asian mythology, African mythology, Native American mythology – give me all the OTHER inspirations for religions and plots! Western European is so overplayed. I’m tired of it. Give me the stuff we don’t see often enough.

5. Fairy-Tale Retellings

I have a total weak spot for Fairy Tale Retellings. Whether it’s stories that are barely reskinned tales, or stories that are only very loosely inspired by old fairy tales, I love them. And I have too many to link to!

6. Autistic author or character

I’m always trying to understand my husband’s brain, and books by autistic authors help SO MUCH.

7. GLBT content

As an ally, I try to promote books with good representation. And I know reading and reviewing them helps. Plus I just enjoy them! 90% of my friends are some flavor of LGBT, so I’m very familiar with a lot of the concepts already.

8. Personal Recommendation

If a person I know recommends a book to me specifically, I will almost always pick it up.

9. Dragons

I’ll always at least pick up and look at a book with dragons on the cover or title. I may not wind up reading it, but it will always spark my interest!

10. Disability/Chronic Illness rep

As someone with a chronic illness, and as someone with a lot of friends with disabilities and chronic illnesses, I always take a look at books with rep.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and she has a linky on her page for everyone participating this week. I can’t wait to see what everyone did for this week, as it’s an “audio freebie.” Anything to do with audio – audio books, music, etc. I don’t listen to audio books – I can’t pay attention to them – but I do listen to a lot of music. So I’m doing ten songs inspired by books, or that remind me, personally, of books. (Usually because they featured heavily in the soundtrack of a movie adaptation or something.)

We’re going to start with songs inspired by books. Some are obvious, some less so.

Elton John’s Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road was obviously inspired by The Wizard of Oz. It’s also just a lovely song.

Katy Perry’s Firework was actually inspired by Kerouac’s On The Road! There was apparently a passage referring to people that are buzzing and fizzing and full of life and like fireworks.

Another one I just discovered was It’s All Coming Back To Me Now (recorded by Celine Dion and later by Meatloaf) was inspired by Wuthering Heights. I haven’t actually read Wuthering Heights. But I love that song, so maybe I should!

Phil Collins’ Take Me Home was inspired by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, another one I never would have guessed.

Muse’s Resistance (the entire album!) was actually inspired by 1984 – specifically, about how loving who you want to love is an act of resistance on its own, which is a very GLBT+ theme.

S. J. Tucker is a favorite artist of mine, and she has several songs inspired by books, but the most well-known book she was inspired by is probably Peter Pan, which inspired her Wendy Trilogy.

Branching into songs that simply remind me of books, the first one is Regina Spektor’s The Call, which always reminds me of The Chronicles of Narnia, I think because it was on the Prince Caspian soundtrack. It always makes me think of the Pevensies leaving Narnia but promising they’ll come back if called. I just love the song in general.

I don’t know that I could write this without including Misty Mountains and I See Fire from The Hobbit! Both songs are absolutely excellent, whether they’re the originals, or Peter Hollens’ covers, which I’m linking here because more people need to follow Peter (And Tim Foust). They’re both awesome.

And the last spot on my list has to go to #1 Crush by Garbage. It was on the soundtrack to Romeo + Juliet, the movie that took Romeo and Juliet, set it in modern times, but kept that Shakespearean language and cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet. I’m honestly torn on the movie itself, but the song? The song is ABSOLUTELY Romeo & Juliet.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl; she has a linky on her page with links to everyone’s Top Tens, go see what everyone else is reading this spring!

This week’s topic is the top ten books on my Spring To-Be-Read list. I have 15 books out currently from the library, and those of course are very high on my list to be read. But given that it’s spring, and I have some research to do, I have a few others that are also high on my list.

So first I have a giant new release, that I strongly doubt I’ll be able to renew, so I need to get cracking on it: The Priory of the Orange Tree. It’s an over 800-page fantasy with politics, strong women, and dragons. What’s not to love? Other fantasies this spring, also new releases, are The Gutter Prayer and Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which is around 600 pages, so also a pretty big book.

For The Year of the Asian Reading Challenge, I have Here and Now and Then and The Weight of our Sky. I also have Endless Water, Starless Sky, the sequel to Bright Smoke, Cold Fire, a Romeo and Juliet re-imagining by one of my favorite authors in that genre.

Lastly, I have The Suburban Micro-Farm, and three more gardening books that I own – The Quarter Acre Farm, The Edible Front Yard, and The Backyard Homestead. Since I moved and now have nearly half an acre to work with, I need to do some research!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. She has a linky on her page with everyone’s posts this week, go find other unappreciated great books! This week’s topic is “Books I Loved with Fewer than 2,000 Ratings on Goodreads” so I’m going to go through my Read list on Goodreads and see what I can find!

So the very first one I see is A Spark of White Fire, with only 288 ratings on Goodreads? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Oh my god, that book was incredible. It ripped my heart out. It’s only been out since September, so maybe people just haven’t discovered it yet? Wow. JUST GO READ IT PEOPLE.

How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? has 1511 ratings, coming in much closer to the 2k mark, so I’m guessing that’s largely because it’s also new. (BUT FANTASTIC.)

Blanca & Roja also came out recently (October) and has 1229 ratings, so I’m sure that number will go up.

The Brilliant Death only has 774 ratings? WAT. Get on that, people. It is a fantastic, genderfluid political fantasy book with a touch of romance. It’s great.

Give the Dark My Love is one of my lady necromancer books, and at 1351 ratings, more people need to read it!

Alright, I know The Good Demon was a little polarizing, but I personally LOVED the southern gothic feel. It was lyrical and mesmerizing, and only has 480 ratings. If you don’t mind a little suspenseful horror, it’s really a beautiful novel.

HOW DOES UNBROKEN ONLY HAVE 336 RATINGS?! HOW?! This anthology spotlights teenagers living with chronic illnesses, mental illnesses, and disabilities of all kinds. It is an amazing piece of representation and I adore it. I thought it had made a big splash in YA circles, but apparently not as big as I thought.

Alright, all seven of those are fairly recent releases, let’s get challenging for the last three and see if I can find some older books…

Alright, so first we have The Wrong Stars (and its sequel, The Dreaming Stars) at 1766 and 366 ratings, respectively. This is a pair of science fiction novels with a fascinating premise and amazing representation, with a bisexual and demisexual woman as part of its core couple. (The other half is also bi.)

Next up we have Jackalope Wives and Other Stories by T. Kingfisher, also known as Ursula Vernon, at 539 ratings. I didn’t actually write up a review for this book, but I have read it, and really enjoyed it. The author writes magical stories that bring to mind the Wild West and wilderness, where you can only depend on yourself and maybe the hermit up in the mountains. She also has a hilarious Twitter.

Okay, for a really old one, let’s point out The Harrad Experiment. It’s a fiction book that portrays polyamory in a very positive light, and those are rather rare, because fiction thrives on conflict. It first came out in 1966. I have not actually hunted down more of Robert H. Rimmer’s books to see if more of his books feature polyamory, but I adore this one. And it only has 363 ratings on Goodreads.

For an eleventh, because I absolutely loved this book, is Sean Grigsby’s Smoke Eaters. It has 312 ratings currently, and the sequel, Ash Kickers, is due out in July. He writes an amazing future world where firefighters fight dragons, and it is badass. (And I LOVE his covers.)

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. She has a linkup on her page with everyone who’s participating, if you want more fantastic couples! This week’s topic is “Favorite Couples.” Since we had “Favorite Platonic Relationships” not too long ago, I stuck with your typical romantic definition of couple.

First off, we have Teo and Cielo (nb/nb) from The Brilliant Death. Both shapeshifting witches who play with gender and together make an amazing couple.

Two of the couples from Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom make this list – Kaz/Inej (m/f) and Jasper/Wylan (m/m). Love them both. I love how devoted the entire group is to each other, but especially Kaz with Inej.

Percy and Monty (m/m) from The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue are an amazing, smartass pair that I love.

The romance between Vika Andreyeva and Nikolai Karimov (f/m) of The Crown’s Game and The Crown’s Fate tore my heart out.

The central couple from The Wrong Stars and The Dreaming Stars, Captain Callie Machedo and Elena, are precious and I love them. They’re also both bisexual women, with Callie being demisexual.

In Starless, we have a nonbinary bodyguard falling in love with their charge, the princess. (nb/f) I love how the princess is understanding of her bodyguard’s confusion about their gender, and doesn’t judge how her bodyguard chooses to present.

Another favorite couple is Anna and Charles from Patricia Briggs’ Alpha and Omega series. I love seeing how Anna’s confidence has developed through the series. (f/m)

I can’t write about my favorite literary couples without mentioning Benedict and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing. They are my favorite characters in my favorite Shakespeare play, and the banter between them and from them about each other is some of the best wordplay I have ever read.

I know that’s only nine, but I can’t think of a tenth that I love as much as these.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. She has a linkup on her blog to collect everyone who’s participating each week! This week’s topic is the ten most recent additions to my to-read list, so let me pull up Goodreads and see what I’ve added recently!

First up I have The Bones of Ruin by Sarah Raughley. I added it because I saw it on Twitter as one of those “this book was just bought by X publisher to be published some years from now” so there isn’t even a cover yet. It’s a fantasy set in Victorian England about a tightrope walker that cannot die. She’s drafted into some tournament thing and learns the “terrible truth” of what she really is, and it’s a POC author, and it just looks fantastic. It’s not due out until 2021, but with it on my To-Read list, I’ll  be notified of any ARC giveaways, and Goodreads will email me to remind me when it’s released.

After that is Nahoko Uehashi’s The Beast Player and Joan He’s Descendant of the Crane, both for the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge. (Descendant of the Crane I had my eye on previously, though. It looks lovely. And that cover is gorgeous.)

Next is Love Poems (for Married People) by John Kenney. It looks amusing. After that is A House of Rage and Sorrow, the sequel to A Spark of White Fire. No cover yet. Hannah Capin’s The Dead Queens Club, a high school version of King Henry and his wives, is up next. I’ve heard good things about it, and it seems appropriate since the Ren Faire I work at runs King Henry’s court as its plot. (Currently Catherine is out of favor and Anne Boleyn is winning the King’s eye – one of the people we play D&D with plays Anne’s father at Faire!)

A lot of these books aren’t out yet – that’s part of why I mark them as to-read on Goodreads, to take advantage of possible giveaways, and the notification when they come out reminds me they exist!

More 2019 releases are Erin Morganstern’s The Starless Sea, about a magic library, Mary Fan’s Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon, and No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell L. Moore. That last comes out the soonest, on February 19th!

My tenth book is actually an older book, released in 1989. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, by Maxine Hong Kingston, hits both the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge AND my 50 states goal (which I need to make a page for!), since it’s about growing up Chinese-American in California.