This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share finished series that we wish had more books. Here are mine:

1. The Rajes by Sonali Dev

(I was so crushed when I learned there’d only be four books.)

2. Nursery Crime by Jasper Fforde
3. Tillerman Cycle by Cynthia Voigt

(I loved this series as a kid and would have read dozens more stories about the Tillerman family.)

4. The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott

(I believe there is now a collection of short stories about the other immortals that Scott originally published in an e-format.)

5. The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
6. The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
7. Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
8. Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu
9. The Brown Sisters by Talia Hibbert

(I know they’d have to change the title of the series, but I want a book about their grandmother.)

10. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

How about you? Are there book series that you’d love for the author to write just one more story for?

My camera app has stopped working, and while this is annoying, it’s fine, as long as I find another app that does work before heading to New York on Friday. And I suppose even then it’ll be okay as long as Rudi or Eri take photos and share them with me.

In the meantime, let me share what I’ve been reading. I made some more progress with S.J. Bennett’s All the Queen’s Men on audio. I’d love to finish it tomorrow before we leave, so I can move onto my next audio option, but if I don’t, I’ll probably finish it on the train.

I did finish the first volume of Hikaru Nakamura’s Saint Young Men, a manga in which Jesus Christ and Buddha decide to take a year off after all the work at the millennium and spend a year living in a small apartment in Tokyo. It’s a thoughtful, but funny take on two divine immortals who also form a comedy act, have a blog, and have to live on a budget and not piss off their landlady. They have to deal with animals that want to sacrifice themselves when their cupboards are bare, celestial beings that would really like them to return home to heaven already, and inadvertently performing miracles, like Jesus accidentally turning the water at the bath house into wine because he found a pun funny. To help with in-jokes that aren’t obvious to an English-speaking audience, each of the 15 chapters is followed by an afterword with translations, context, and additional documentation.

Bout of Books has rolled around again. This is the final version of 2022 and the 35th iteration of the readalong.

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, August 15, and runs through Sunday, August 21, in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For all Bout of Books 35 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

During the readathon, I’d like to finish a couple books I have on the go so I can return them to the library. Today I read several chapters in Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas and listened to a chapter in All the Queen’s Men by S.J. Bennett.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share ten books we love that are more than a decade old. No problem! Here are mine, in no particular order:

1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
2. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg (1985)
3. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle (1989)
4. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild (1936)
5. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (2001)
6. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (1908)
7. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (2011)
8. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008)
9. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2007)
10. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)

On a side note, looking at this in Goodreads, I discovered the only years during the 20th century are:

1901, 1907, 1910 (although I may have read Kilmeny of the Orchard as a tween), 1914, 1916, 1924, and 1942 (although I think I read all the Moffats books as a kid). Just seven books could make the century complete, and included in those years are Baum, Wodehouse, and Christie publications. Hmmm…

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share ten books with titles we find hilarious.

Hilarious is an awfully tall order. Let’s say the titles of these ten books I’ve read made me chuckle:

1. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
2. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
3. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe
4. The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton
5. Evans Above by Rhys Bowen
6. Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living by Bailey White
7. The Big Over-Easy by Jasper Fforde
8. The Frog Who Croaked by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
9. I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter
10. Come Hell or Highball by Maia Chance

How about you? Are there book titles that have left you in stitches?

My shawl remains closer to start than to finish. In fact, I haven’t touched it other than to move it from place to place in a week, which probably means it’s time to put it aside and look at finishing some other pieces.

Also closer to start than finish is Linda Holmes’ Flying Solo, but only because I’ve only had it a few days. I’m enjoying it quite a bit so far, and appreciated that it’s the same town where part of her earlier novel is set.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share books that are set someplace we’d like to go. Here are my list of ten:

1. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexico)
2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (PEI, Canada)
3. Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch (Tuscany, Italy)
4. The Hamish Macbeth series by M.C. Beaton (Scotland)
5. Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern (Ireland)
6. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (Sweden)
7. Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley (Australia)
8. Saint Young Men by Hikaru Nakamura (Japan)
9. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan (Singapore)
10. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Channel Islands)

How about you? Are there books you’d recommend set in places you’d like to visit someday?