Every year, Jana of That Artsy Reader Girl, generously keeps up the tradition of Secret Santa started at the now defunct The Broke and the Bookish, where she sends your info to someone and sends you an entirely different person’s info. There are different levels for participation and I’m sure it takes a lot of energy to get everyone squared away, and that’s all before people start having challenges (such as anyone sending to or from Canada this holiday season). So, every year she runs it, I and the hundreds of other people who look forward to this annual tradition are terribly grateful to her.

This year, my package arrived early (mine snuck out at the deadline and arrived, like the real Santa, on Christmas Eve). I always admire the folks who wait. And sometimes I let the box sit a couple days to get closer to Christmas, but I never make it all the way to the holiday. I’m too excited and impatient!

Kathleen, my Santa, hails from Delaware and put together a fanciful package full of books and other delights. First is a list of places I might want to visit in her home state (and nearby Pennsylvania), and since we’re just a couple hours away and since Delaware is home to my favorite beaches in the area, we will be checking them off. She also tucked in a couple rolls of pretty washi tape and a pen from her work, which, coincidentally and unbeknownst to her, is also the name of the neighborhood where I live in D.C.

Because she knew we’d recently acquired kittens, she included this delightful ornament, which I put well out of reach of the felines (although, to be fair, Coal has challenged my understanding of what that means).

Kathleen made this ornament for me. It includes quotes from The Princess Bride, one of my favorite movies and a terrific book. It is also out of reach of the cats, because I think they would love to find their way inside to take all those quotation scrolls and squirrel them away under furniture.

There is tea and a single person teapot with a cherry blossom motif (it’s required with D.C. citizenship to love cherry blossoms), perfect for putting on a tray within reach as you read on the couch. Kathleen included some delicious spicy holiday jam, a local product filled with berries and jalapeño, and which has been giving my morning toast that extra something something to help start winter mornings.

And finally, the books. She gave me the first of the manga adaptations of Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, which I’m very excited to see how they put that together. She also gave me Evie Woods’ The Lost Bookshop, which looks so good. And finally, she gave me Elin Hildebrand’s Winter in Paradise. I’ve read the first two books in Hildebrand’s Winter Street series, and this is the first in a newer wintry series set in the Caribbean instead of Nantucket. I love a beach read when it’s cold outside!

Kathleen, thank you so much. I love everything and am looking forward to hours of reading and drinking tea this winter! Happy #TBTBSanta!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the ten books coming out in the first six months of the year that we’re looking forward to most. Here are mine:

1. Back After This by Linda Holmes
2. Deanna Raybourn’s Kills Well with Others
3. Vanya and the Wild Hunt by Sangu Mandanna
4. Sonali Dev’s There’s Something about Mira
5. Fun for the Whole Family by Jennifer E. Smith
6. Grace Lin’s The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon
7. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
8. The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict
9. Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
10. José Andrés’ Change the Recipe

How about you? Are there books coming out between now and July that you’re particularly excited to get your hands on?

I love the seasonal Top Ten Tuesday topics That Artsy Reader Girl posts, and, in a true surprise, I find from the last time around that I’ve finished five of the ten titles I included (and started three others). Sometimes I don’t get to any of them.

So here’s hoping that I actually get to a majority of the books I’m including today of the top ten titles on my to-be-read list for this winter:

1. The Rivals by Jane Pek
2. Back After This by Linda Holmes
3. Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance
4. Jasper Fforde’s Red Side Story
5. The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
6. Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune
7. Aliya and the Infinite City by Laila Rifaat
8. A Winter in New York by Josie Silver
9. Reynard the Fox by Anne Louise Avery
10. 1000 Words by Jami Attenberg

It helps that I own five of these books already and that several are by favorite authors. No excuses about the library holds list being too long!

How about you? What are you hoping to read this winter?

I just looked back at my summer tbr list and found I’ve finished none of the books I’d listed. Sigh.

Will that stop me from listing ten more books I hope to read this fall as part of That Artsy Reader Girl’s seasonal Top Ten Tuesday? No, no it will not:

1. Erin Sterling’s The Wedding Witch
2. A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle Jensen
3. Holmes, Marple, and Poe by James Patterson and Brian Sitts
4. Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders
5. Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi
6. The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright
7. Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year
8. The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez
9. The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
10. How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

What’s on your TBR for this fall? Mysteries? Fantastical tales? Classic lit to be read as the evenings fall earlier?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the debuts we enjoyed — those first published works by authors that completely wowed us. Here are ten of mine:

1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
2. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
3. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
4. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
5. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
6. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
7. Me: Moth by Amber McBride
8. Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt
9. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
10. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

How about you? What debut novels have you loved?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share the books we’re most looking forward to that come out between July and December. Other than Rainbow’s and Maehrer’s books, I’ve not included any I listed last week, but I did have to cheat and expand the list to 11:

1. Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance
2. Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
3. Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune
4. The Frindle Files by Andrew Clements
5. S.J. Bennett’s A Death in Diamonds
6. A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sanju Mandanna
7. The Witching Wind by Natalie Lloyd
8. Naomi Novik’s Buried Deep and Other Stories
9. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
10. The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
11. Erin Sterling’s The Wedding Witch

How about you? What’s coming out during the second half of 2024 that you can’t wait to get your hands on?