This week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is books on our fall to-be-read list. Lots of these are new releases - others are just books we're hoping to get around to!




Starting off with the most obvious: I can't wait for Allegiant! I gobbled up Insurgent the day it came out so it feels like I've been waiting for this one for-ev-er. 




The Bone Season has been getting so much great buzz that I decided I had to check it out. It should come up on the library hold list for me in the next few weeks!




The last book I read that John Green recommended was pretty disappointing, so I'm a little on the fence about this one. I love the premise, though, so I'm thinking it'll be a great Halloween-time read.




The Lion Seeker comes out next month and is being touted by a great book club pick - so I'm hoping to plow through my ARC and see if it's worth recommending to my book club!



This is another we feel we've been waiting forever for. Unlike some books, this one is on all of our to-read lists. And we have it preordered, which rarely happens. Just about two weeks to go!




I've been kicking myself since BEA for not staying and getting a copy of this. I need to get my hands on a copy to check out, because it sounds fantastic.




This novel is based on the idea of waste - and opens with Thanksgiving day. It seems like the perfect read going into the holiday season.



This is the only book on the list that's not a recent release, but I swear I'm going to read it this fall. I love social histories of food and snapped this one up as quickly as I could, but it's sat on my shelf for more than a year. It needs to get read, because I'm sure I'll love it.


We picked up this one at BEA. I'm not sure if I would have picked it out otherwise, but now that I have it I'm excited to dig in. It sounds great.

This is a memoir of poverty and the issues that come with it. I feel like a lot of memoirs about poverty that receive a lot of attention are set outside the US - and this one is set in Mississippi, so I'm interested to see how it compares.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is books we would love to see made into a movie or TV show (set in a perfect world... in which movies don't butcher the books we love). We had fun with this one.

I have to start off the list with The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. I just feel like this would be awesome as a movie. I'm sure it's partly because it's fresh in my head, but I felt like I could see everything the way Gaiman described it, so I think it would translate to film well.

Two other worlds I got totally lost in and think would be great movies are Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins and This Song Will Save Your Life by Lelia Sales. These are both contemporary YA in fun settings (Paris and the underground club scene, respectively). Awesome teem movie material, in my opinion!

I'd also love to see When She Woke by Hillary Jordan turned into a movie. This is a sci-fi novel set in the not-so-distant future in which the US government tints skin of criminals as part of their punishment. It's really thought-provoking and would make an excellent film. Similarly, I think The Future of Us by Jay Asher would make a good movie. The book, set in the 80s, finds two teens logging into a computer to see their Facebook profiles of the future. I think it would do awesome in our Facebook-loving society.

To give the TV side of things some love, there are two fantasy series that would make good TV: Melissa de la Cruz's Blue Bloods and Charlaine Harris's Harper Connelly series (starting with Grave Sight). Blue Bloods is sort of Gossip Girl-meets-vampires. Perfect for TV. Harper Connelly is about a girl who, after being struck by lighting, can stand on the spot a person died and relive their final moments - making her a sought-after private investigator. Both would lend themselves well to a weekly series.

On a very different note, I also think Michael Pollan's Food Rules would be a great weekly series. The book outlines in very basic terms different rules to eat by - ie, "Don't eat anything your Grandmother wouldn't recognize as food". A weekly show could focus on one rule per show. I think Pollan's message is fantastic and adapting it for TV would help gt it to a wider audience.

Back to movies, I'm a sucker for historical movies so I'm throwing in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. This is another book that's super descriptive and I'd love to see it recreated on screen.

To round out the list, I'm going to pick something different: My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares.  This one I'm not picking because I love it and want to see it come to life. It was the first in a planned trilogy and ended in a huge cliffhanger. Three years later, it doesn't seem that Brashares is working on it so I'd love to see someone else make it into a movie (or movies) and give us an ending!

What movies would you love to see turned into a movie or tv show?

This week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is favorite secondary characters.

The first character I thought of when I started brainstorming the list was Tiny Cooper from Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Just because he's such a fabulous, fun character. Also amusing is Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.

Parents and parent-figures dominate the rest of my list. Mrs. Weasley from Harry Potter is probably my favorite literary parent ever. She's just a kick-ass Mom. Also kick-ass are Lola's Dads from from Lola and the Boy Next Door. While many YA books seem to ignore parents, Lola's Dads seem ever-present and a great, realistic pair of parents to a teenager. Another great parent from a YA book is Vera's Dad from Please Ignore Vera Dietz. Really, Vera's whole family is great, but her Dad's flow charts really added to the book for me!

Sister Evangeline from The Patron Saint of Liars and Joette from Finding Noel weren't parents, but their mothering presence added to both stories immensely. Uncle Eddie from Alice Bliss was another of these constant, steady presences that just seems comforting to the reader. (And, he reminded me of my brother which amused me to no end.)

Another character I found fascinating was Death from The Book Thief. I'm not sure if he really counts as a secondary character, as he was the narrator, but since he was a minor character in the actual story, I'm throwing him in. He was just such a different voice - seemingly gentle and brutal at the same time - that I couldn't not give him a nod on this list.

And on a completely fun note, I loved Bubba from the Sookie Stackhouse series. His presence is a hilarious tidbit in the story and he was a character I always looked forward to popping up in the story.

Who are your favorite secondary characters?

We're just about halfway through the year, perfect timing to talk about what we've been loving so far!

Here are our favorites, in no particular order: