The power of fiction, the beauty of words, and the God who made us to wield them for His glory.

Top Ten Tuesday – Autumn 2021 TBR

Happy Tuesday, reading friends, and welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl. It’s a new season, which is always a good reason to revisit the TBR, particularly upcoming releases that I’m looking forward to. And here in Australia, we’re two weeks into autumn already, and it’s starting to feel like it. I put on a light cardigan for the first time in months yesterday! Sounds like perfect weather to curl up and read in, doesn’t it? And I’m looking forward to doing just that with these books!

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Top Ten Tuesday – Books with Yellow Covers

Happy Tuesday, reading friends, and welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl. Apparently today is Mardi Gras, or would be if it weren’t for that C-word we didn’t even know existed until a little over twelve months ago. I’m all the way Down Under, so I have no idea whether Mardi Gras is going ahead, but in honour/memoriam of Mardi Gras, today’s TTT topic is Purple, Yellow, and/or Green Book Covers. It’s summer here in Australia and I’m wearing a yellow top, so that seems a perfectly reasonable reason to go with a yellow cover theme for today’s post. And so I give you my expertly curated selection of yellow-covered novels. (In other words, I scrolled through my Kindle library and picked the first ten yellow covers I came across. 😂)

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Top Ten Tuesday – Books Written Before I Was Born TBR

Happy Tuesday, reading friends, and welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is Books Written Before I Was Born, and I’ve decided to do a TBR take on the topic. For the purposes of this post, let’s just say I’m a child of the late-seventies and leave it at that. 😉 All of the books I’ve listed below were written well before that time anyway, so the precise year of my birth doesn’t matter.

As I’ve made it one of my goals to read more Shakespeare this year, I could have been boring and just listed ten of his plays, but I also have a long list of classics that I want to read (I often have a classic on the go at the same time as a modern novel), so it wasn’t too difficult to come up with my ten this week. And most of them are fairly well-known novels, so I’d love to know if you’ve read any of them!

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Top Ten Tuesday – New-To-Me Authors in 2020

Happy Tuesday, reading friends! It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday post, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s topic is New-To-Me Authors I Read in 2020. When I went back through my Goodreads list, I discovered I could actually do almost three lists this week—that’s how many new-to-me authors I read in 2020! So I’ve decided to give you a two-for-one deal today. I’m giving you a list of ten Christian fiction authors who were new to me in 2020 AND a list of general market authors who were new to me in 2020.

Some of these authors have been around for many years, and I decided to finally see what all the fuss was about, others are as new to everyone else as they are to me, and others are somewhere in between. I wonder whether I will manage as many new-to-me authors in 2021!

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Top Ten Tuesday – 2020 Releases I Still Need to Read

Happy Tuesday, reading friends! It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday post, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is Books I Meant to Read in 2020 but Didn’t Get To. Considering we moved out of our old home in December 2019, knocked it down and rebuilt over the first half of 2020 and moved into our beautiful new home in August of 2020, it was more a case of “Books I Wish I’d Had Time to Read but Knew There Was No Chance,” but why split hairs? The result is the same.

So, here are ten books I really wish I’d had time to fit into my reading schedule last year. I wonder how many of them I’ll manage to fit in to this year’s reading.

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Top Ten Tuesday – 2021 Bookish Resolutions

Happy Tuesday, reading friends! It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday post, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week we’re talking about our resolutions and goals for 2021. It’s a general topic, but I’ve chosen to give it a bookish slant as I have a few bookish resolutions I want to write down for my own record.

I only have five firm resolutions, but I figure maybe that’s for the best, as the more there are, the less likely I am to be able to meet them all! 😬

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Best of 2020 – Emoji Files, Part V: The LOL Awards

Greetings, reader friends! Today we reach the end of my annual Emoji Files celebrating my best reads of 2020. If you’ve missed my previous posts for 2020, make sure you check out The Swoony Awards, Got Me in the Feels, The WOW Awards, and Take Me Away.

The LOL Awards are, not surprisingly, for those books that have made me laugh this year. I’m always on a quest to find books that make me laugh, and for that reason, I’ve branched out a bit in my search for romantic comedy, which means there are some general market reads on this list that aren’t clean reads (Chateau of Happily Ever Afters by Jaimie Admans and Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn). 

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Best of 2020 – Emoji Files, Part IV: Take Me Away

Welcome back, reader friends! It’s time for Part IV of my annual Emoji Files celebrating my best reads of 2020. If you’ve missed my previous posts for 2020, make sure you check out The Swoony Awards, Got Me in the Feels, and The WOW Awards.

The Take Me Away Awards go to those books that were truly immersive reads, carrying me away to different times and places with authentic historical, sensory, and cultural details and introducing me to some fantastic and intriguing characters who inhabit those worlds. Through these stories I’ve travelled all over the world and beyond—an experience that has had extra significance in 2020!

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