Top Ten Tuesday for January 22, 2019!!

    Here are previous Smoke & Mirrors Top Ten Tuesday posts.

This meme was created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by that site 
until January 2018 when That Artsy Reader Girl took on the hosting duties!

Today's theme is Books I Meant to Read in 2018!

And trust me, there are MANY!

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

by Ruth Emmie Lang

A very good friend graciously loaned this book to me 

at the beginning of 2018 

and I am appalled to realize I have yet to read it. 

I intend to change that this year 

and hope to get it read next month, 

in February 2019!

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

I have wanted to read this book for several years, 
ever since two of my best friends and I 
sat and watched it in a theater 3 times in a row! 
(And, no, no one ever chased us out or made us pay more...)


I hope I will enjoy it 
since I already own 
the second book in the series, 
The Girl With No Shadow.


 And, of course, if I enjoy those two, 
then I must read the third installment 
in the series, 
Peaches for Father Francis.


And as of April 4, 2019,
the fourth installment, The Strawberry Thief, 
is due to be released! Bonus!!




Third on this list is Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver.

It has been about 5 years since 
I read a Kingsolver book 
and I am soooo looking forward 
to reading this one in 2019!

It will satisfy several prompts for reading challenges!


Fourth is Every Note Played by Lisa Genova.

Everyone in my book club adored Still Alice 
and I went on to read and love
Left Neglected and Love Anthony.
I also own but have yet to read Inside the O'Briens.

Fifth is The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin.

I loved Alice I Have Been and 
The Aviator's Wife (this links to my review).
And I have yet to read The Swans of Fifth Avenue or 
The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, 
which Ms. Benjamin claimed to be her personal favorite 
when I met her a few years ago!
She is one of my absolute favorite writers!
And she has another release scheduled for May 21, 2019:
Mistress of the Ritz!

Sixth is Lionboy by Zizou Corder

I purchased this book on a whim several years ago 
from a clearance rack at Books-A-Million. 
Then in the course of researching books for the 
"book written by two female authors" 
2019 Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge, 
I learn Zizou Corder is simply a pseudonym 
for a mother-daughter writing team! 
And it is the first of a trilogy... 
Now I am truly fascinated and anxious to finally read it!

Seventh, eighth, and ninth are Giovanni's Room, The Fire Next Time, 
and If Beale Street Could Talk, all written by James Baldwin.

I LOVED Go Tell It on the Mountain (links to my review)!
I want to read more classics this year. 
I already know I love this man's writing style, 
so these are definite reads for 2019!
Then I'll be anxious to see the movie adaptation for If Beale Street Could Talk!

The tenth book for this posting follows this theme 
with a reread of a classic, 
Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver. 

I first read this at the 'ripe old age' of 13 and I am CERTAIN
I didn't grasp much from it.
I trust my reading of it some 50 years later 
will prove to be much more enlightening and informative!

What's even more fun is that this year, all of these books (and more!) will fulfill prompts for both the 2019 Around the Year in 52 Books Reading Challenge
and the 2019 Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge.
I have created a page for each of these challenges which I update as I finish reading books 
and it is so much fun to see just how many prompts can be fulfilled with each book!
If I had the time, I would certainly prefer to read a separate book for each prompt, 
but I do not, so I will approach these challenges in this way...
I have listed each book already selected for each of the book clubs in which I participate 
and secondly, am trying to read as many from the current stock of books 
I already own as possible. 
Though I already know I will purchase more books in the year to come as well. 
But I am trying to complete blog posts for books I've read and then give them 
to my favorite used bookstore to be resold, 
hoping to decrease the total amount of books in my household throughout 2019. 
At least that is my goal!

What books did you intend to read last year but didn't manage to get to?

Happy reading!
--Lynn