Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Spring 2022 TBR

This is my first time participating in Top Ten Tuesday, and I’m looking forward to sharing bookish interests with other bloggers.

Here are some books I’m planning to read in the upcoming months and my reasons for including them. However, I expect this list to extend through spring into summer, at least, so if a summer reading list pops up on the next round of topics, I’ll probably have to do some copying and pasting.

1. Billy Summers by Stephen King

King’s latest ticks several of my favorite fiction categories:

• Life Stories in Literature
• assumed identity
• Big Books (500+ pages)

2. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I was eager to read this novel when it came out because I loved Towles’s first book, Rules of Civility. So I promptly bought it and placed it on my TBR shelf . . . where it still sits, next to the author’s latest, The Lincoln Highway. 

3. Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

From Goodreads: “Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names, can shape relationships and history.” This book was released on February 1, 2022.

4. Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

This is another book on my TBR shelf. At least I know that it hasn’t been there since the book was first released, since I have the paperback edition. This novel won multiple awards: Barry Award for Best Novel (2021), Anthony Award for Best Hardcover Novel (2021), Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller (2020).

5. The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

This novel deals with one of my favorite literary tropes, time travel. It was published on February 22, 2022. It must have come out under the radar, as I was the first person to request it from my local library. It has just come in, and I’ll be picking it up tomorrow.

6. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Seriously, am I the only person in all bookdom who STILL has not read this book, which won all the awards? This is another hardcover book that has been sitting on my TBR shelf since its publication in August 2018. I am determined to read it this spring.

7. In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing by Elena Ferrante

With a blog called Notes in the Margin, how could I not preorder this book by Elena Ferrante, author of the Neapolitan Novels? From Goodreads: “Here, in these four crisp essays, Ferrante offers a rare look at the origins of her literary powers. She writes about her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer.” It’s due for publication today (March 15, 2022).

8. Normal People by Sally Rooney

Another book that I’ve been meaning to read ever since it was published (in 2018, like Where the Crawdads Sing). It should prove fertile ground for discussion under the topic Life Stories in Literature.

9. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I read this book back in college, more than 50 years ago, and have been meaning to reread it for some time now. It fits into another of my favorite categories of fiction, Literature & Psychology.

10. The Power of Regret by Daniel H. Pink

Not too long ago I read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (which I have yet to review here), a fictional look at understanding one’s life. One of the themes that novel treats is regret, so I bought this nonfiction work when it came out on February 1, 2022, as a companion piece.

© 2022 by Mary Daniels Brown