This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share some of our favorite words.

I love wordy topics like this. One year, Karen gave me the protection of the word “woah” for Christmas, because I was adamant that it was different from “whoa” or “wow.”

Anyway, here are ten of my favorites at the moment:

1. zephyr
2. quixotic
3. hitherto
4. rickety
5. effervescent
6. aplomb
7. quirky
8. antepenultimate
9. dazzle
10. susurrous

What are some of your favorite words? Share them in the comments!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is to share ten of our favorite bookstores.

I’m lucky enough to live in D.C., where we have a ton of great indie bookshops, so I thought I’d share my favorites of those with you:

1. Politics and Prose: With three locations around the city and daily author visits, this is the first place I’d recommend visiting, particularly their original and largest location (which boasts a cafe). They have a great kids’ room, the broadest nonfiction section of any store in D.C., and a music section. Plus, they have a whole room dedicated to remainders, and who can resist that?
2. Bridge Street Books: This narrow townhouse bookstore in Georgetown often gets overlooked, but it’s our oldest indie (42!) and now a nonprofit. If you’re looking for philosophy or poetry, I’d definitely stop here first.
3. East City Bookshop: Recently expanded, East City takes pride in its calling as a neighborhood bookstore for the residents of Capitol Hill. They’ve got a vibrant book club scene, great pre-order opportunities, and a well-stocked kids’ book section. Plus, they celebrate the dogs of the neighborhood in a nook next to the door.
4. Capitol Hill Books: If you were going to imagine a used bookstore, what would you envision? Lots of space, with books alluringly arranged to catch your eye? If so, Capitol Hill Books is not for you. If, however, you said, books jammed onto every surface of the three floors of a townhouse imaginable, including the restroom windowsill (although no longer the stairs), with curmudgeonly owners, its own music album, and the sharpest-fingered Twitter account in the District, this is the place for you. (Since the start of the pandemic, they also sell a selection of new books and offer mystery book bundles, but I think they’ve put their monthly patio happy hours on hiatus.)
5. Loyalty Bookstore: I loved this neighborhood bookstore under its original owner (as Upshur Street Books) and I love it even more in its current iteration, with its Black- and Queer-owned identity front and center. I haven’t visited their Silver Spring, Maryland, location yet, but I understand it has an even broader selection than its Petworth shop. Plus, if you want anti-goliath bookstore swag, they’ve got you covered.
6. Second Story Books: Dupont Circle’s used bookshop is known for their corner location, antiques, window displays, and the trolleys of used books they put out on nice days to lure customers in. If you were looking for recent ARCs being sold on the not-so-down-low, this is where I’d send you. Also, I once spent a pleasant rainy afternoon alphabetizing their middle grade and YA shelves without anyone asking what I was doing, which means you’ll be free to browse as long as you’d like.
7. Solid State Books: Another of our community bookshops, Solid State is now integral to the H Street, N.E., neighborhood and its residents. This is a shop I’d send you to particularly if you were looking for kids books or literary gifts and the only one accessible by streetcar. Plus, they have a cafe, so you can buy a book and a drink and spend the afternoon reading away without having to venture further afield if you don’t want to.
8. MahoganyBooks: Black family-owned, this bookstore currently sports two locations (its original in Anacostia and now at National Harbor for the tourists) and will soon open a spot at National Airport for travelers. This is a small, but mighty community shop, with a robust calendar of author events and a knowledgeable staff. I visited on my birthday the year they opened, and they hand-sold me a book of poetry and then, when the author (Elizabeth Acevedo, before she was so well known) stopped in before I’d left the building, asked her to sign my copy for me.
9. Sankofa Video, Books & Cafe: Sankofa is the oldest of D.C.’s Black-owned bookstores and it is a pillar of lower Georgia Avenue. Its cafe does brisk business on weekends and if you’re on the hunt for books by Black authors or on Black history or culture, I’d tell you to start here.
10. Kramers: This is probably the indie bookstore best known by tourists to D.C., which, along with its pandemic-reduced hours, is the only reason my neighborhood shop falls at the bottom of my list. You’ll always find the hottest books here, and their window displays draw folks in. Plus, their bar and restaurant are packed on weekends. I am sad that they got rid of their pint glasses, which had a book-themed version of the D.C. flag on them, and which I perennially included in literary-themed packages, but they will deliver books locally within the hour, which is good for those who live more than four blocks away. (They also offer haircuts, which just seems weird.)

And, no, these aren’t the only bookshops in D.C. We’ve got at least nine more that I can think of off the top of my head, and I might be missing a couple.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share books with interesting use of typography on the cover. Here are ten such books I’ve judged by their covers and would like to read:

1. 
   Attack of the Black Rectangles by A.S. King
2. 
   The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood
3. 
   Hummingbird by Natalie Lloyd
4. 
   Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
5. 
   Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug
6. 
   This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
7. 
   The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
8. 
   Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi
9. 
   The Wax Pack by Brad Balukjian
10. 
    You Go First by Erin Entrada Kelly

How about you? Do you like when typography is front and center in a book jacket, or would you prefer a more illustrated cover?

It’s that time of the year: the Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asking what we hope we’ll be reading in the upcoming season:

1. Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (a non-Veronica Speedwell title!)
2. A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
3. GennaRose Nethercott’s Thistlefoot
4. Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet
5. The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling
6. Jenna Evans Welch’s Spells for Lost Things
7. This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
8. Sisterhood of Sleuths by Jennifer Chambliss Bertram
9. These Precious Days by Ann Pratchett
10. Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to reading this fall?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is Books with Geographical Terms in the Title. Here are ten I’ve enjoyed:

1. Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (Gog and Magog!)
2. When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin
3.  Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright
4. River Secrets by Shannon Hale
5. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros
6. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
7. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa
8. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
9. Where the Moon Meets the Mountain by Grace Lin
10. Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery

I also want to acknowledge that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books also popped into mind for this list, but I haven’t read them in a long time. While they definitely did contribute to this New England-raised girl’s childhood understanding of the middle of the country, I recognize they featured a number of very negative images of interactions with the Native Americans who lived on and were displaced from the land the characters were “settling.” Before I’d include them on a list that implies an endorsement or hand them to a young reader, I’d want to re-read them to see whether that’s still the case.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share ten books we loved so much when we borrowed them that we had to get our own copy. I wasn’t sure I’d get to ten, but it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected:

1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Maryanne Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
3. The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
4. The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak
5. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
7. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
8. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
9. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
10. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

How about you? Do you buy books that you’ve borrowed if you love them? Or are you an avowed non-re-reader?