Top Ten Tuesday: Things that Make Me Instantly Want to Read a Book

"Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly bookish shareable hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl!

So, about a week ago, I was seized by a sudden, desperate, nervous-system-zapping urge to read something. 

Not just anything, though... after all, I had plenty of books on my own shelves already - hundreds of them, even! - holed up in the same room in which I spend most of my waking hours. What I desperately needed, instead, was a library book.

It makes perfect sense to me; I mean, I haven't been back to check out my local branch in several months now, with how busy my Spring has been. And I am very much still in a Buying Ban. So, I set about righting this wrong in several stages. 

First off, I downloaded six books on audio through the Libby app, access granted through my library card, and stored for easy reading on my iPhone. 

Next, I placed about fifteen holds on books stored throughout the library system, with express orders to be shipped to my local branch, so that I could pick them up (squeeze them, hold 'em close to me, reluctantly let them go at the culmination of their agreed check-out period) at my leisure.

Some of these were, of course, ready within the day. After all, I had been cheerfully informed when the holds were placed that some were already available at a "preferred location." (I mean, for me, the preferred location might be found at the edge of my coffee table next to my bed, spawned through some kind of science fiction beam technology, but then I'd miss out on several perfectly lovely conversations about what great weather we've been having with the local library team.)

So, whereas the week before, I had been suffering through some kind of withdrawal, now things are quite different. This week, I am fully cognizant of rapidly approaching due dates, of a personal track record of reading so far this year that amounts to less than what I managed to check out in one day, and a colossal amount of books that do not belong to me, being stored in my room, very, very close to books that very much do belong to me, who are now starting to feel a little neglected.

That's what made this kind of "Top Ten Tuesday" topic so funny to consider. What are some kinds of things that make me instantly want to read a book? Hmm. Well, let's peruse some of the impulsively selected subject matter in the mountainous range that are currently ringing my reading nook, like some kind of summoning circle... 

1. Recommendations from Regan at Peruse Project on YouTube

Okay, so we've all got different definitions for what an "influencer" is, and the role that they play in our social media lives, correct? Well, Regan, from Peruse Project, has genuinely influenced me more times than I can count, when it comes to feeling inspired to pick up a new (or old, for that matter) Fantasy novel. 

It's because of her that I found In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan, for the first time, and it changed not only my life for the better, but plenty of others I've foisted it on since; numerous titles on my shelves, like Babel, by R. F. Kuang, and The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison, I haven't even read yet, but selected due to her high praise. I mean, I have three books from the Warrior Bards series by Juliet Marillier sitting on my shelves, simply because she said she really enjoyed a completely different series by the same author! 

2. Books About Cooking... Home Cooking, or Culinary School, or Groceries, Literally Whatever.

It may sound like a joke, but something that occupies maybe four to five hours out of every day I spend on this earth, is mentally designing meal plans, grocery lists, food illustrations, and cookbook rankings in my head. Sometimes, when I'm having a hard time sleeping at night, I'll plan out entire dinner parties - we're talking multiple courses here - or I'll rewrite recipes I've attempted recently that didn't turn out up to par. I have a complete notebook full of personally collected recipes, filled cover to cover... and when I finished it, I immediately started a new one. Three of the longest Word docs on my computer include a manuscript for a cookbook, a collection of fantasy grocery lists - with prices included - of budgeted meal plans, and short personal essays on the topic of food writing. 

And you ask me why I'm not dating anyone. Like, who has the time? 

3. Books About Books and Authors and Writing

Similarly to how much I love reading about Food, I also love reading about Books. These two subject matters alone account for maybe fifteen to twenty books a piece occupying my TBR shelves. And it makes sense... after all, I spend a goodly amount of time each day both Cooking and Writing, so. It's always important to keep that mental whetstone handy, right? 

I'm always into a good deep-dive into the sociocultural context of an author's life and livelihood while writing: Romantic Outlaws, by Charlotte Gordon, was a fave from the past couple of years, and followed the lives and connections of literary icons Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, as well as how their relationships with others impacted the kinds of writing they produced. 

My TBR shelves boast the likes of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster, or The Diary of a Bookseller, by Shaun Bythell, and various works from Didion, Hornby, and Plath, all on reading and writing, while Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, by Marjula Martin, details some of the financials of what a life in literature looks like. 

4. Buzzy Celebrity Memoirs

It's been a while since I read a whole lot of these in a row... maybe back in 2020, when I was determined to listen to every audiobook available from the cast of Queer Eye? (A challenge I'm still clearly intent on pursuing, being that one of those books I checked out in my recent mad fit was Jonathan Van Ness' Love That Story.) 

I don't have a ton of these stacked up on my shelves these days - they're a fun fling, perfect for vacations or audio or breaking out of a slump, not typically something I hang onto for a long time - but in the past I've really enjoyed Anna Kendrick's Scrappy Little Nobody, Rachel Bloom's I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are, as well as Sara Bareilles' Sounds Like Me. And, of course, if there was any book I hope you read last year, it was Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died, something I've recommended to all kinds of people, and has received naught but unilateral praise. 

5. Pretty Much Any Novella from Tor Publishing

If there's anything I've learned about myself as an adult and my financial practices, it's that while I consider myself to be a pretty darn frugal person, I'm also more than happy to pay $20 for the slimmest of hardcovers, provided that they have 1. a jaw-droppingly beautiful cover and 2. the words "Tor" or "Tor Dot Com" emblazoned on the lower portion of the spine. 

This line of thinking has only brought me success, with the Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire, the Murderbot series from Martha Wells, and the Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers. Truly, truly, nothing but net. Novellas are great because they can be easily consumed in one afternoon, but also occupy ever-increasing amounts of space in the back of your mind that creep into your daily thoughts on the lightest of footsteps and rewrite the ways you view reality. 

Plus, they're usually really pretty to have on your bookshelves. 

6. Swear Words in Titles

What can I say? I have a mug on my desk that says "I have the vocabulary of a well educated sailor," and it stores my scissors, which I like to think are just as cutting as my words. The dream may be to write for a living, but I promise you that I swear simply for the joy of it. I watched a lot of pirate movies in my childhood, and it's manifested itself in my adult life as a penchant for rum drinks and a fondness for a lot of strung-together, creatively-formatted expletives. 

Don't believe me? I literally picked up The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind by Jackson Ford last year based on this concept alone. Have I read it yet? No. Does it make me happy every time I look at it? Oh yeah. 

7. Things that Would Make My Professors Happy

Every time I pick up a Classic novel - be it Woolf, Wharton, or whatever - it's because I'm trying to subconsciously persuade the mental phantoms of my past educators from the English department to tell me how proud they are. Like that one popular internet post says, I will spend the rest of my life chasing the emotional high that getting an A+ in my AP English class gave me. Only for me, it's the 4.0-plus on every single midterm paper that I somehow managed to score sophomore year in college in my "Shakespeare Post 1603" class.

And you've even seen it here, plenty of times before, on this blog alone: for instance, you know that I spent part of January of this year rereading Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, and assembling my own vocab list, all of which I posted about here. Normal people don't do things like that... but recovering English majors absolutely do. 

8. Fave Fantasy Authors: Tamora Pierce, Holly Black, Victoria Schwab, and Naomi Novik, to name a few

I'm a loyal person. I may leave your texts on read for several days in a row, and I might begin our meetings by saying "Okay, so I swear I was going to respond to your email," and I have perhaps been known to go months without speaking to my high school best friend before we start shooting off flurries of messages about how much we've missed each other. But I'm a lost little duckling, and I'm following you, wherever you're headed, because I've imprinted and now I think you're what home looks like. 

The aforementioned Seanan McGuire, Martha Wells, and Becky Chambers all get their kudos here, within their various series, but also, I've read enough Holly Black to know I like her fairy world stories. I know Naomi Novik makes for a magical time. Tamora Pierce - let's be real here - is responsible for the topography of entire segments of gray matter currently stored in my skull. I hadn't even finished with A Darker Shade of Magic before I had already purchased the two subsequent books in the series from V. E. Schwab. 

9. Meta Humor and Genre Commentary

Okay, I know there are plenty of us out there, and I'm blaming growing up on things like British humor, the Shrek movies, one of the greatest comedies of all time, NBC's Community. If you're like me, and you know that a book makes fun of its roots and breaks the fourth wall as often as possible in a genre or setting that you love, it's probably already on its way to your shopping cart.

Seriously, is it such a surprise that John Scalzi's Redshirts, Delilah Dawson and Kevin Hearn's Kill the Farm Boy, Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids, or Jasper Fforde's complete Thursday Next series are all on my shelves? Obviously not. 

10. Things I Can Give My Brother

(Hi, buddy. I know you're reading this. Good luck in the rehearsal studio today; don't blow away in the high winds you've been getting in that blustery town of yours. Love you.) 

Let's be real, every purchase I've made within the Fantasy genre in the last five years has been informed by how much I love my brother, who is the kind of person who would rather eat gravel than cut out of a Branderson novel in the middle of a chapter. To distract him from the idea of convincing me to try the Mistborn series, I have to focus on continually shoveling recently-published Fantasy reads into his hands like feeding coal into a steam engine, hence why I have a year-round Notes section on my iPhone dedicated to what books to buy for his birthday.

 All told, if I'm buying something for myself, you can bet it's with the expectation that he might be picking up after me... and vice versa. 

What's in YOUR Top Ten? Let me know, in the comments below!