Top Ten Best Books I've Read So Far in 2015

I've had a great reading year and it's only half over. I've already read 68 books. Of the 68, twelve were five star reads and thirty-eight were four star reads.

Here are eleven memorable, mostly-new-ish books from my reading this year (so far) that you may have missed:

Three novels: 

The Promise by Ann Weisgarber

Dept. of Speculations by Jenny Offill

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

Four nonfiction books:

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris

The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician's First Year by Matt McCarthy

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

 Four book-ish nonfiction books:

By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life

How to Be a Heroine or What I've Learned from Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience

One not-very-new-ish novel (but a fantastic read):

True Grit by Charles Portis

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Sunday Salon: My Week in Books

What I Finished Last Week I picked up You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day by Mo Willems at a library sale last week. You know Mo Willems, right? The amazing children's picture book author, he of Pigeon fame and Knuffle Bunny fame, universally adored by children of all sizes and ages (even those of us who are 58). If you know who he is, then you know why I couldn't possibly pass up this book for a buck. I read the blurb on the back, telling You Can Never Find a Rickshaw is a compilation of cartoons Willems drew during a round-the-world trip he took in 1990. He made one cartoon a day, each a drawing to help him recall the quirkiest thing that happened that day. Here are a couple of cartoons from the book I thought you'd like: But here was the most amazing thing about this little $1 buy: Autographed! God Went to Beauty School is a mesmerizing book of little...well, let's call them poems for lack of a better word...little poems about God visiting in our world. It's by Cynthia Rylant, who, if you are a children's literature fan, you know is one of our living great writers of children's stories. I loved these little poems. Carrie's War by Nina Bawden is the story of Carrie and her little brother Nick during World War II. The children were sent to live in the country, away from the bombings in London, for their own safety. I'd bet you $55 million dollars you could not show me a children's story with characters more real and more human. The children are placed with an absurdly cheap shopkeeper and his mousy sister for the war's duration, and they are very unhappy there, suffering from the shopkeeper's frugality and the sister's inability to stand up to her brother. Nevertheless, Carrie and Nick gradually form a relationship with the two, and come to see the underlying reasons for the miserly ways of the shopkeeper and the fearfulness of the sister, as they grow to know the household of an estranged sibling of the two. Very complex characters, and that's the great strength of this story.

What Arrived Last Week   Two audiobooks! I've already up to CD 5 In the Kingdom of Ice, and I'm fascinated with the detail in this epic polar adventure.

What are you reading today?!

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week. 

 It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.

Shibumi

Shibumi:

Objects and experiences that exhibit in paradox and all at once the best of everything and nothing. 

Elegant simplicity. 

Effortless effectiveness. 

Understated elegance. 

Beautiful imperfection.

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words

that we’ve encountered in our reading.

If you want to play along, grab the button,

write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky at Bermuda Onion!

Happy Birthday, Top Ten! My Top Ten Favorite Top Ten Topics from the Past Five Years!

Happy birthday, Top Ten Tuesday! Five years of Top Ten Tuesdays! Congratulations!

This is my 219th Top Ten Tuesday post. That seems pretty amazing to me. Top Ten is one of my favorite memes. The prompt each week gets me to thinking about my reading in a new way. I love the process of writing each post, and I love to read through the posts of others linked each week to the Top Ten prompt.

Here, then, are My Top Ten Favorite Top Ten Topics from the Past Five Years:

Top Ten Books I've Never Read

My first Top Ten Tuesday. August 2010.

Ironically, I've now read all of the books on this list.

Top Ten Words I Love

September 2010.

Czechoslovakia. And J'aime. And zephyr.

I love reading the list of words other people love.

Top Ten Books I'll Never Read

October 2010.

No vampires for me.

Or books on quantum mechanics.

(Nearly) Ten Unfortunate Character Names

November 2010.

Yes, it's my name, but it's still unfortunate.

Top Ten Characters I'd Name My Children After

February 2011.

Is Babar not a lovely name?

Top Ten Books I Hated, Loathed, and Otherwise Abhored

November 2011.

Oh how I loathed A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Don't hate me.

Top Ten Books I'd Hand to Someone Who Says They Don't Like to Read

February 2012.

Discworld would work for lots of book-haters, I think.

Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books

September 2010, May 2012, and April 2015.

I love quotes so much I've listed my favorites several times.

Top Ten Places I've Visited Because of Books

October 2014.

I'd like to do another version of this one...

"Top Ten Book Places I'd Like to Visit"

Top Ten Favorite Authors I Have Met

May 2015.

Have I ever met some great authors?!

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Hike

Buscher State Park. Outside Smithville, Texas. A cloudy day in April, 2015.

A 3.5 mile hike. With a stylin' backpack.

The bridge was a great photo op.

Some of the signs were a little confusing.

Some seemed unnecessary. 

Saw a little wildlife. Water moccasin on the log.

A selfie to mark our finish.

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.

What I Hope to Read This Summer

Summer time is reading time.

I've got high hopes for reading at least some of these books in my ten weeks of summer. I've read a little in each of these:

Far From the Madding Crowd

The Glass Bead Game

As I Lay Dying

Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

Here's my complete current TBR, if I need more:

The Eight                              Raw Shark Texts

Amy and Isabelle                       Jellicoe Road

The Professor and the Madman             Before I Fall

You Know When the Men Are Gone         Strange Pilgrims

Queen of the Tambourine             Two Old Women

Home Cooking                    Between Meals

Lila (reread)                    Courage for Beginners

Perdido Street Station              The Masters of Go

ZAMM (reread)                  The Sound of the Mountain

The Tin Drum                              One Crazy Summer

First-Time Around the World                        Rain Reign

The Night Circus                     Appointment in Samarra

The Heat of the Day                Waiting for Snow in Havana

Out of My Mind                               Beloved

City of Dreaming Books        The Lost Art of Mixing

Have you read any of these? Are there any I should read first? I'd love to hear what you think.

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Paris in July 2015: Buttons

Paris in July 2015 will be coming in a few weeks.

In the meantime, Thyme for Tea has announced a contest

to design a button for Paris in July 2015.

Here are some buttons I made today. 

Do you like any of these?

Which one should be my entry in the contest?