This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is about our winter reading list. I’ve recently gone back to making quarterly TBR lists as a way to plan out my reading. My idea is that each of my quarterly TBR lists should include:
- a classic
- next in a series I’m reading
- ARCs
- a backlist book (published before 2021)
- a book I already own
- nonfiction
- a book over 500 pages
- a book for a challenge
- a book about another country or culture
- The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (a classic, a book over 500 pages, and a book for a challenge): I have time off coming this month, and what better way to use my time than with a big novel by George Eliot?
- How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson (nonfiction, book for a challenge): I was looking for a nonfiction read about an invention for the Nonfiction Reader challenge. This book is about six innovations that had lasting and unpredictable impacts on the world.
- The Storyteller by Dave Grohl (nonfiction): Grohl played in Nirvana, created The Foo Fighters, and he’s local (from Springfield VA). He’s always seemed like an interesting and genuine guy, so I’m curious about his memoir. It also seems like a perfect audiobook.
- Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (backlist, about another country): I loved The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane so I’ve been wanting to read this one for a while.
- The Burning God by R.F. Kuang (next in a series, backlist, over 500 pages): I start a lot of series that I never finish but I was just recommending this series to someone and realized how much I’d like to see it to the end.
- The Pilot’s Daughter by Meredith Jaegar (a book I own): I know nothing about this book but I got it in a book-of-the-month club for historical fiction. This is a historical mystery set in the 20s and the end of World War II, and it sounds like fun. Plus, if I don’t start actually reading the books I’m getting from this club I’m going to have to cancel it.
- Being Heumann by Judith Heumann (a book I own, nonfiction): Heumann is a disability rights activist who managed the office of special education at the U.S. Department of Education. She’s quite inspiring.
- The Puma Years by Laura Coleman (nonfiction, about another country): this is a book my book club will be reading in January, about a woman’s travels in the Amazon jungle. It sounds fascinating.
- Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy (ARC)
- Not the Witch You Wed by April Asher (ARC)
I also have a lot of books I want to read from the 2021 best-of lists, including Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William, Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World Where are You?, Mary Lawson’s A Town Called Solace, Dana Spiotta’s Wayward, Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence, and Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle. Those are all going on my TBR. But it’s always easier to read the “hot” new releases, so I’m trying to focus my TBR lists on other books.
That’s my winter TBR! Have you read any of these? What’s on your reading list this winter?
