Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s topic is “cozy wintry reads.” She has a whole list of links to other blogs participating, so go find your next book to curl up with!

Winter is actually my favorite season, so this was a fun list to come up with.

First, a few I’ve already read and written about:

Spinning Silver is a wonderful fairytale loosely based on Rumpelstiltskin and an amalgamation of other stories, and has a wintry, icy theme running throughout it. Girls Made of Snow and Glass is another fairytale retelling, but it’s about the relationship between the “evil” queen and her stepdaughter, and it is absolutely LOVELY. The Wolves of Winter is a dystopia written after climate change has thrown the world into disarray, and the main character is living in a place of near-endless winter.

A duology and a trilogy, the third of which is due out in January:

The Crown’s Game and The Crown’s Fate are a duology about two magicians fighting for the position of the Tsar’s Sorcerer, and they are heartbreaking and gorgeous. The first one made me ugly cry, the second one began the healing process. These two books are just beautiful.

The Bear and the Nightingale, The Girl in the Tower, and The Winter of the Witch are ALSO based on Russia, and are also lovely, though not quite as emotional as the duology was. (That’s probably a good thing, The Crown’s Game BROKE me.)

Last, we have a standalone and a duology that I have read but the reviews are going live over the next couple of weeks.

Wintersong and Shadowsong are basically Labyrinth fanfiction. I enjoyed them, and they do introduce some new ideas, but there are also DEFINITELY recognizable elements from the old Jim Henson movie. (Which I loved, so that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.) It was interesting to see the movie deconstructed and put back together in an entirely new way, though.

The last book I have for you is Krampus, the Yule Lord, by Brom. How do I sum up this book? It’s Appalachia Gothic, with cops in cahoots with the local criminals, a bit of domestic violence, and weird things happening in the woods. And it’s ancient gods with grudges, with Krampus locked in an eternal fight with Santa Claus. Whatever it is, it’s great.

What are you reading this Christmas?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s theme is Platonic Relationships in Books! This is a little difficult, as I enjoy a thread of romance in my books. Some of these relationships are between main characters, but most of them are between a main character and a side character.

First, the sisters in Grace and Fury and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. In both books, the sisterhood is STRONG and the girls will do anything for each other.

There’s two platonic relationships in Darius the Great is Not Okay that I found really interesting – the one between Darius and Sohrab, that the book spends most of its time exploring, and the one between Darius and his father, which affects everything in the book.

Nils and Mare in Of Fire and Stars are heartbreaking.

The girls in Girls of Paper and Fire form a sisterhood of sorts, but the friendship between Lei-zhi and her maid, Lill, is super cute. I loved this book, and my review will be up soon!

The friendships in What If It’s Us are SUCH an important part of the book, and they’re so important to the characters. There’s another tight-knit group of friends in Queens of Geek, though two of them wind up pairing off so it’s not entirely platonic. Another small group of friends forms the heart of Goodbye, Paris, and they help the main character heal from the major blow she’s dealt.

The other two books in my read-but-not-reviewed-yet stack also have fantastic platonic relationships in them. In Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, one of my favorite relationships was between the main character and her male best friend. And the main character in The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy is asexual and possibly aromantic – all of her relationships are platonic, and it’s great to see that kind of representation in young adult historical fiction! And of course, there’s her relationship with her brother Monty, from The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. The two siblings are just amazing.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. She has a list on her page of everyone participating, so go check that out for more bookish goodies! I only got to seven items before getting sick, so here’s what I’ve got!

The first two things are things I’ve actually asked for for Christmas this year. Storiarts has an amazing collection of scarves, gloves, tote bags, and pillows printed with excerpts from literature. I really want their scarf and writer’s gloves printed with e.e. cummings’ “I carry your heart” poem. They have so many items with so many different classics to choose from. If you have a favorite piece of classic lit, they probably have something with it printed on it!

This skirt is absolutely adorable. There’s also a dress in the same print!

I want this print for my future reading nook.

I’m also a big fan of enamel pins, and these three are perfect to go with the Hufflepuff pin, introvert turtle pin, and feminist pin that are already on my bag. I Like Big Books / It’s Not Hoarding If It’s Books / Books Are My Happy Place

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s topic is Bookstores or Libraries I’ve Always Wanted to Visit. She has a link-up on her page where you can visit everyone participating this week! I’m going to try to focus on bookstores and libraries that I could realistically visit.

So first on my list is probably The Library of Congress. Despite living in Maryland for six years now, I still have not made it there. I’ve been to several other tourist attractions in DC, but just haven’t managed this one. I should probably plan an excursion to go do so! Maybe sometime this winter, when it’s not tourist season.

My husband and I are spending Thanksgiving Weekend in Philadelphia this year, as there’s a concert Friday night we have tickets to, and I’ve never been to Philly. I think I’ll try to convince him we should stop off at the Baldwin Book Barn on the way home, because it looks amazing.

Another local bookstore I haven’t made it to yet is Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffeehouse. They’re a local co-op specializing in radical literature, so they have a lot of books on civil rights, socialism, feminism, racism, class structure and the like. The cafe serves vegetarian and vegan responsibly sourced food. They’re one of the sponsors of the Baltimore Book Festival every year, and their stage is always full of important topics around racism and civil rights.

Speaking of sponsors of the Book Festival, The Ivy Bookshop is another store in Baltimore. They’re the main sponsor of the Book Festival, and had satellite tables at every stage selling the books of the authors presenting at each stage. They have an event calendar with lots of author events, so I’ll be keeping an eye on that to see if anything relevant to my interests pops up. I’ve never been to their actual shop. They actually have an event Halloween evening with two authors I met at the Book Festival, and one of them is Sam Miller. I wanted to buy Blackfish City and get it autographed at the Festival, but they were sold out by the time I went to get it. Sam said he’d sign a copy for me someday, so this might be my chance!

The Braddock Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh was the first Carnegie library in the United States, and the building looks amazing. I actually visit Pittsburgh once a year, but Sunday would be the only day available to visit the library, and it’s closed on Sundays. Finding time during the rest of the weekend would be exceedingly difficult, sadly. It doesn’t surprise me that the building is beautiful, though, since the entire town of Pittsburgh is awesome.

My husband and I have talked a lot about visiting Toronto, and I’ve just discovered Bakka Phoenix Books, in Toronto, which specializes in science fiction and fantasy. That would definitely be one of our destinations!

Middle East Books and More is a bookstore in DC specializing in, obviously, Middle Eastern books. They also have pottery, food, oils, toys, DVDs, and other things related to the Middle East. They look fascinating!

I’m going to cheat on these last three and list places I’ve already BEEN but want to go to again.

First, a place I definitely WILL go to again, probably multiple times. The Book Thing of Baltimore is three large rooms full of free books. Donated books are put out on the shelves as fast as they can process them and make room on the shelves, which are always pretty full! There’s a pile of boxes in a corner for people to put their finds in, presumably from the stacks of boxes of donated books in their backroom. The place is only open on weekends, because it’s run by all volunteer labor. It’s amazing, and I always leave with a full box of books. The Book Thing was actually destroyed by a fire a few years ago, but it’s back up and running now, and one of my favorite places in Baltimore.

The last two are both back home in Oregon, one in Portland and one in my hometown of Eugene.

In Portland, of course, is Powell’s. Powell’s is the largest independent bookstore, taking up an entire city block, and has at least three floors of books. It really is an experience.

Less well-known is Smith Family Books in Eugene. The location I usually went to was on the second floor of a building down by campus, across a hall from my friendly local game store, Emerald City Comics. Smith Family Books was two floors of mostly used books, with a few new ones mixed in. Shelves double-stacked with novels, stacks on the floor, corners over-running with books – Smith Family Books was one of my favorite places to idle away an afternoon. They have a second location that I’ve also been to, but the one down by campus was my favorite.

I can’t wait to see where everyone else wants to go! Have you been to any of these locations?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s topic is the longest books I’ve ever read. I typically read books between 400 and 600 pages, so I tend towards the long end of the spectrum anyway, but when I start creeping towards 1000, that’s notable, even for me.

Knocking out 4 spots are books #2 through #5 of the Song of Ice and Fire. A Clash of Kings clocks in at 768 pages, A Feast For Crows is 753 pages, and A Storm of Swords is 973 pages, making it the third longest book I’ve ever read. The second longest book I’ve read is #5 in the series, A Dance with Dragons, clocking in 1056 pages!

The rest of these I’ll list in order of size. The longest book I’ve ever read – I think – is actually one long poetry book, Gooberz, by Linda Goodman, back when I was going through my astrology phase. It was 1081 pages! Inheritance by Christopher Paolini is the fourth-longest book I’ve read, at 849 pages. Power, Faith, and Fantasy by Michael B. Oren, on American’s involvement in the middle east, is 832 pages.

From here we drop back into the 700s, with Orcs by Stan Nicholls (769 pages), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (759 pages), and Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook, at 752 pages.

I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything longer than these, but it is possible. There are several I’ve read in the lower 700s that only barely didn’t make the cut.

Update, after checking other people’s Top Tens: I should have included Patrick Rothfuss’s The Wise Man’s Fear! There also seems to be a lot of variance in actual page counts on some of these books. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix seems to actually be longer than Deathly Hallows, by some counts. So that should have been on here too! Whoops.