Random Friday: Spring 2020 Reads

Want to participate in Random Fridays? Just do the following:

• Include the above image in your post and link back to my blog.
• Blog about this week's topic (or a variant of it).
• Add the link to your Random Friday post at the bottom of this one.

I am so excited for spring and all the books it will bring! :)

1. Verona Comics by Jennifer Dugan

2. Time of Our Lives by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka

3. Four Days of You and Me by Miranda Kenneally

4. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

5. The Map of Stars by Laura Ruby

6. Murder with Clotted Cream by Karen Rose Smith

7. Parachutes by Kelly Yang

8. The Jewel Thief by Jeannie Mobley

What spring 2020 releases are you looking forward to, and what else are you planning to read this spring?

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Top Ten Tuesday: Spring 2020 TBR List

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Twice this week I'll be sharing the various spring releases I'm looking forward to, and some other books I hope to read.


1. Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know by Samira Ahmed


2. The Empire of Dreams by Rae Carson


3. The Silence of Bones by June Hur


4. Ways to Make Sunshine by Renée Watson


5. Running by Natalia Sylvester


6. By the Book by Amanda Sellet


7. Summer at Meadow Wood by Amy Rebecca Tan


8. The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor


9. Igniting Darkness by Robin LaFevers


10. The Boundless by Anna Bright


Share your Top Ten Tuesday post link, and I'll try to return the read and comment! :)

The 13 Best Authors to Read if You Prefer Standalones

I love a good series, but sometimes I'm just tired of them and need a story that wraps up in one volume. Book lovers have actually dubbed this series fatigue. I also love rereading standalones because it can help break a reading slump faster if I don't have to dread a long series. So if you prefer one-and-done books, here are the authors you should check out.

1. Kasie West

One of the queens of contemporary romance. A couple of her books cross over with each other, and she has one duology, but she mostly writes standalones, to my joy.

My faves: P.S. I Like You and On the Fence

2. Stacey Lee

Stacey writes the very best historical fiction, and she also has one contemporary/fabulism novel.

My favorite: can't pick just one

3. Margaret Rogerson

Often fantasy=series, but not in Margaret's case. She's written two excellent standalone fantasy novels, and I have no doubt more will be coming soon.

My favorite: Sorcery of Thorns

4. Lamar Giles

For mystery/thrillers, Lamar has you covered. He's also been in a few anthologies, wrote a middle grade book last year, and published his first YA contemporary this year.

My favorite: Overturned

5. Emma Mills

I can't write one of these lists and pass up mentioning my favorite author who writes great contemporary standalones.

The one I literally recommend to everyone: Foolish Hearts

My second favorite: Lucky Caller

6. Jenn Bennett

Jenn has written a bunch of contemporary YA (one with Macmillan, three with Simon & Schuster, plus one more coming in May) AND she had a standalone historical fantasy last fall.

My favorite: Serious Moonlight (no surprise, since I mention it in, like, every other post where I talk about pie)

7. Anna-Marie McLemore

All of Anna-Marie's books are rich magical realism with stories that are wholly contained within 300 pages (give or take a few pages).

The one I like most: Wild Beauty

8. Lauren Miller

Although only two of them exist, Lauren wrote some fun science fiction thrillers about six years ago. Definitely worth a read!

Which one I prefer: probably Parallel

9. Morgan Matson

Morgan's another contemporary queen, with five books under her belt so far. (She also has a couple contemporary series under a pen name - Katie Finn. My favorite, Broken Hearts & Revenge, is a quick binge of a trilogy.)

My favorite: Since You've Been Gone

10. Renée Watson

Renée has written three excellent YA titles, co-authored another one, and written a great middle grade too.

My favorite: Piecing Me Together

11. Kate Messner

Speaking of middle grade, Kate Messner has a BUNCH of standalones, and I binge-read a lot of them when I was interning at Bloomsbury. 

The ones I recommend the most: All the Answers and Breakout.

12. Sandhya Menon

Sandhya is a rising contemporary romance star. Technically, three of her five books are companions to each other, with secondary characters from previous titles getting the spotlight in later books. But you don't have to binge them like a series (unless you're enjoying them that much) and you could technically could read one without reading the others.

My favorite: From Twinkle, with Love

13. Ruta Sepetys

If you want more historical fiction - especially that is the stories we don't hear often - Ruta's your gal. She's very passionate and does her research.

The one I recommend the most: Out of the Easy

If you have any other standalone author recommendations, I'm all ears!

How I Keep My Reading Organized

Every reader is different. Some just read whatever they want and don't have a defined TBR list. Some use just Goodreads or a physical list (or just consider their TBR shelf/stack the list). Others use Goodreads, a spreadsheet, and a reading planner to organize their reading habits.

I am solidly in that last category. And, for funsies, I'm going to break down how I use each one.

Goodreads

I've used Goodreads the longest to track things. I joined in May 2013, which feels like EONS ago. I keep the standard read, currently reading, and want to read shelves, plus I have a DNF category. Then I have a bunch of sub-shelves. Everything from specific wishlists (ARCs, specific classics editions, hardcovers) to a favorites shelf, shelves for my ARCs and e-galleys to (currently) six specific TBR shelves. 

(Literally had to zoom out to fit all these shelves in one screenshot.)

I started breaking my TBR down a bit a few years ago (I want to say in 2015 or 2016) because I was adding so many unpublished books that it felt a tad overwhelming and like I wasn't really reducing the list any whenever I read a book. So I have to-read-released, three to-read-unreleased by year (2020, 2021, 2022 at the moment), to-read-unreleased-unknown (if it's a book that was announced but had no known pub date or has been pushed back so far that it's kind of up in the air), and one specifically for the classics I need to read.

I try to mark a book as currently reading as soon as I can, so the start/end dates are accurate. But occasionally I forget to mark one as finished, so that's where my next two tracking methods come in.


Spreadsheets

Yeah, there are technically multiple ones, if we consider I have one for current reading (with separate pages this year for new-to-me books and rereads) and one for my to-be-read lists. Even though I also have Goodreads to help manage all my TBRs. I like lists.

I've been doing reading spreadsheets since 2014 actually, but they've gotten more refined as time goes on. This year is the first time I'm doing separate pages for new reads and rereads. 

Here's a snippet of 2019's!

You can see I list title, author, length, rating, genre, publisher, and dates read. The two columns between are asking if it's a book for review and if it's a new-to-me book. The highlighted purple rows are a first-time reread for the year; the turquoise one is a second-time reread in 2019. The spreadsheet for 2020 looks a little different; the first page has no colors, but the rereads page does. Right now it's all solidly one color, as I've had no time to reread a book more than once yet, lol. But that could change come this summer. :)

Then my TBR spreadsheet has three pages: released, unreleased 2020, and released but not on GR shelf. That last one is a weird quirk of mine. I have a bunch of memoirs and cozy mysteries and other books I've found that I'm interested in, but I don't include them on my usual Goodreads TBR. Most of them are ones that have been hard to find at my library, so I'm not sure I'll be able to read them. Several I might read a few pages of, then DNF, so I figure they're not worth having on Goodreads. The columns are the same across this spreadsheet: title, author, pub date (month, date, and year for unreleased titles; just year for already published stuff that I add to my TBR), genre, publisher, and the date I added it to my TBR.

Finally, the one for all the books I own is extensive. It has multiple pages based on categories (YA, middle grade, classics, Christian fic, adult fic, ARCs, and some books that are in boxes in my closet). I use this to help me track if I actually want to keep a book (if I haven't read or reread it recently enough, it might not be worth saving shelf space for), a book's edition, and its format. This one is also sorted alphabetically by author's last name (how I shelve my books too), so it makes things easy to find


Owlcrate Planner

My most recent reading tracking device! I got one in my December 2018 box and decided to try it. I'm fully hooked now. 

It functions pretty much like my spreadsheets and Goodreads, except it's on paper, which is nice for when I'm traveling without my laptop. Also it gives me a place to occasionally write a short review of books I'm not actually reviewing for my blog, and it's kind of nice to have a loose monthly TBR (though I often read books outside of it, and don't always get to the ones I listed).


So how do YOU organize your reading?

Emma the Library Page's Recommendations

One of the best parts of my new job is that we have several columns and some tables with themed recommendations. Most are curated by our librarians, but we have one that's specifically staff recommendations. I've been an enthusiastic filler of that since my first week on the job. And I thought I'd share the titles I've put out for people to peruse. Of course I'm dependent on which books we have in-branch (some titles I love we don't have but another branch does), but this is still a pretty good idea of which books I recommend in general. I can't wait to keep adding to it!

In no particular order...


1. A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn


2. Bilal Cooks Daal by Aisha Saeed and Anoosha Syed


3. The Mother-Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick


4. The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes


5. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman


6. Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga


7. Voracious by Cara Nicoletti


8. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein


9. The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski


10. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson


11. This Side of Home by Renée Watson


12. Don't Touch by Rachel M. Wilson


13. The Wrath & the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh


14. Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee


15. The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord


16. The Fixer by Jennifer Lynn Barnes


17. Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson


18. Sadie by Courtney Summers


19. Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno


20. Illusive by Emily Lloyd-Jones


21. Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake


What are your go-to recommendations? If you could curate a whole display at a library, what would it be about and what would you feature?