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?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl is a seasonal favorite — the top ten books on my summer TBR list:

1. Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance
2. A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvia Cathrall
3. Nicola Yoon’s One of Our Kind
4. Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
5. How to Read a Book by Monica Wood
6. The Summer Pact by Emily Giffin
7. Kate Quinn’s The Briar Club
8. A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb
9. We Shall Be Monsters by Tara Sim
10. A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic by J. Penner

What books are you hoping to read this summer?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is Authors I’d Love a New Book From. Here are ten of mine:

1. Rainbow Rowell (This is cheating, because her next novel is due out in July, but still…)
2. Maia Chance (It looks like she has a thriller coming out this summer, but I was really hoping for one of her mysteries.)
3. Deanna Raybourn (I downed the latest Veronica Speedwell a few weeks ago and would be delighted with another in that series or another standalone.)
4. Sonali Dev (I haven’t read her latest, but know I’ll devour it quickly and then I’ll want more!)
5. Erin Morgenstern (I have, but haven’t read, The Starless Sea, but even that came out five years ago.)
6. Grace Lin (Her middle grade novels are exquisite.)
7. Carsten Henn (It looks like he has other books, but they don’t seem to have been translated.)
8. Michael Scott (I want him to write something new and then come to the U.S. to promote it, because he was such a great author to hear live.)
9. Chad Harbach (How has he never published another novel?!)
10. Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (A third series from them would be just great from my perspective!)

How about you? Are there authors you’d like to have send you a new manuscript right now?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the (petty) reasons we’ve lowered the rating or just failed to finish a book.

I will be honest. I start and fail to finish books all the time. The first few chapters aren’t great. (I rarely bother to enter those into Goodreads at all.) It’s in a bag I don’t pick up for three months. The book is overdue to the library. It’s just not the right fit for my mood, but is otherwise perfectly fine. Goodreads lists my currently reading total as 50 (and my “on-hiatus” tally as nearly 100) for these reasons and more. Probably maybe I’ll get back around to them.

These are not the books I’m talking about today. Today we’re talking about the books that lure me past page 50. That trick me into finishing them or that are so bad that I want people to know I could not bring myself to finish them.

Let’s look at why that might be:

1. It didn’t seem like it would have a sad ending and then it had a sad ending. Number one reason something gets one star from me on Goodreads. (Spoiler alert.)
2. I hate the main character. Number one reason I won’t finish a book after investing actual time in it.
3. Appallingly bad writing, but an interesting enough story idea that I wanted to know what happens (but then didn’t think the ending was done well).
4. A mystery where I know who does it before I even know what’s been done. (Sometimes, stories are told where you get the narrative from the perpetrator’s point of view as well as the detective. I don’t usually love those, but they are not my complaints here.)
5. Ridiculously conventional gender roles. (See, often, romances.)
6. There is no mystery in a mystery novel. (Like, what is this even?)
7. The author doesn’t know how to end the book.
8. A mystery where my solution is better than the author’s.
9. Nonfiction where the author is a pompous ass. (On rare occasion, also true in fiction.)
10. A romance where I don’t care if the couple ends up together or not.

How about you? What drives you bat-shit crazy about a book?

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?