toptentuesday – Page 135 – What Cathy Read Next…

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Books That Make Me Smile. I don’t know about you but pretty much all books make me smile, especially when they’re heading in the direction of my bookshelves. However, here are ten reasons a book is likely to provoke a happy reaction. Links from the book title will take you to my review.

A book with a lovely cover, especially if it features flora and fauna, like The Familiars by Stacey Halls
A book with an intriguing title such as On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
If a book I loved is nominated for a literary prize, for example Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield (longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2020)
A book with a happy ending – spoiler alert – such as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Reaching the end of the first book in a new series and knowing there are more to come, such as The Englishman (Raglan #1) by David Gilman
The arrival of a follow-up to a book or series I’ve enjoyed, such as The Mathematical Bridge (Nighthawk #2) by Jim Kelly
A book set in a place I’ve been to such as The Secret Life of Alfred Nightingale by Rebecca Stonehill (set on Crete)
A book that evokes happy memories, like A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A book that was an unexpected gift like Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life by Samantha Ellis (a present from my husband)
A book bought by a reader based on one of my reviews. Too many to mention I hope!

What books have brought a smile to your face?

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

This week’s topic is Authors I’ve Read The Most Books By. Regular followers of this blog will have no trouble guessing the author I’ll be featuring. Yes, it’s John Buchan. You can find out more about my Buchan of the Month reading project here. Although most well-known as the author of the adventure story The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan wrote many other books in a variety of genres – novels, short stories, poetry and biographies.

Here are ten facts about his life and works, followed by ten of my personal favourites from his many books.

He was a correspondent for The Times on the Western Front in 1915
He was appointed Director of Intelligence in the Ministry of Information in 1918
His Oxfordshire country home, Elsfield, was in earlier times visited by Dr. Samuel Johnson
He was created Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield in 1935
He was appointed Governor-General of Canada the same year
In the above capacity, he signed Canada’s declaration of war on Germany
He was a friend of T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) who visited Elsfield
Buchan is reported to have remarked that Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of The Thirty-Nine Steps was an improvement on his book
His sister, Anna, was the novelist O. Douglas
Buchan’s memoir Memory Hold-The-Door was a favourite book of US President, John F Kennedy