This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is “April Showers” and I figured I’d share some drizzly titles from my TBR list:

1. Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell
2. Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison
3. Billy Collins’ The Rain in Portugal
4. Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin
5. Oh There You Are I Can’t See You Is it Raining? by Laura Broadbent
6. Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain
7. When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head
8. Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell
9. Salt & Storm by Kendall Kulper
10. Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve

Do you have any rainy titles to add to my list? Or would you recommend I quickly hop on any of these titles because they’re just too good to continue to wait?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share movies and/or tv shows that would have been great books (and, in many of my examples, series):

1. The Librarians — A crew of really smart folks bopping magically around the world in an effort to keep magic out of the hands of the public? Yes, please!
2. Chuck — Young guy languishing in an electronics superstore with his slacker BFF gets sent a computer program that puts national secrets in his brain. Rather than just taking him out, the CIA and NSA agree to have handlers to utilize him for spy missions. It has Janet Evanovich-like vibes all over it.
3. Almost Paradise — An ex-undercover-DEA agent moves to the Philippines, intending to run a hotel gift shop while collecting his medical disability payouts in paradise. But almost immediately, he gets caught up in an international drug smuggling incident and befriends a couple of local detectives. He helps with their cases; they give him rides places and a sense of purpose.
4. Ted Lasso — This feel-good comedy is just begging to be a novel, or maybe an interconnected series, à la Jasmine Guillory, that focuses on each of the main characters.
5. Abbott Elementary — I think this one would be a standalone romance novel, but I do wonder if it would lose some of the charm of the entourage.
6. Parks and Recreation — Interestingly, I feel like this one could solidly hold its own as a standalone comedic work, despite the stable cast of regulars.
7. New Girl — Begging to have started as a modern Millennial romance.
8. This Beautiful Fantastic — This charming, underseen romance would be delightful as a book.
9. Miss Scarlet and the Duke — In a mystery book series, a titular character would have to be written out because an actor wanted more out of his career.
10. Sports Night — This could have been a standalone novel.

How about you? Are there shows or movies you wish had been books first?

Happy Spring! It’s the quarterly Top Ten Tuesday week at That Artsy Reader Girl, where we share what’s on our TBR lists for the upcoming season. Here’s what’s on mine:

1. A Grave Robbery by Deanna Raybourn
2. The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr
3. Breanne Randall’s The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic
4. The Idea of You by Robinne Lee
5. An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin
6. The Stargazers by Harriet Evans
7. T.J. Klune’s Bookshops & Bonedust
8. Old Flames and New Fortunes by Sarah Hogle
9. The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
10. Leslye Penelope’s The Monsters We Defy

How about you? What’s on your to be read list for this spring?

Three beautiful things from my 50th-birthday week:

1. The weather in D.C. is lovely for February, so my pal Mario invites a small group out to play volleyball all afternoon.

2. Spring flowers are in full bloom in London, where I’m spending this week.

3. Friends of a friend of Rudi’s recommend we visit the Marylebone location of Daunt Books. I’d like to move in.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday post from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share our favorite reads that contain “love” in the title. Here are mine:

1. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
2. Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Shefffield
3. Beloved by Toni Morrison
4. The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough
5. My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins
6. Book Love by Debbie Tung
7. Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
8. Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern
9. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
10. Donuts and Other Proclamations of Love by Jared Reck

The History of Love was a five-star read, and the others all earned four. I recommend them all.

How about you? What “Love”-entitled books do you love?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is Top Ten Quick Reads/Books to Read When Time Is Short. Here are ten four+-star books that can be read in an afternoon (all of them well under 200 pages):

1. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
2. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
3. A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
4. If God Invented Baseball: Poems by E. Ethelbert Miller
5. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
6. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
7. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
8. March: Book One by John Lewis
9. Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood
10. For Every One by Jason Reynolds

How about you? Are there books you’d recommend grabbing if time is short and you just want to while away a few hours?