The First Ten Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week we're randomly selecting some books from our own shelves to talk about! Here are ten that I randomly pointed to with my eyes closed :)

1. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
This book was instrumental in changing my own choices about food, which earned it a place in my personal library.

2. The Belgariad Volume One by David Eddings
My middle school paperbacks of the original series were battered and taking up a lot of space, so I got the new combined volumes, and I actually like them better for how they represent the story arcs within the series.

3. Greenglass House by Kate Milford
A friend who shares my love of The Mysterious Benedict Society recommended this series to me, and I liked them enough to buy the first two books for my kids to read.

4. Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber
Bolz-Weber speaks to my heart as a conflicted still-Christian, and I love having her uneasy combination of misanthropy, cussing, and deep faith on my bookshelf.

5. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume II by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I read through these two volumes in high school, and while Conan Doyle can't come near my love for Christie, I still appreciate these classic mysteries.

6. Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee
This book is in the small category of representations of asexuality I actually liked, and it's also just an excellent, engaging YA story with an authentically diverse cast of characters.

7. Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
This is actually my least favorite of Green's books, but I got the hardcovers of almost all of his books as they were released, so I have a good section of my bookshelf that's just John Green books. (Ironically, I don't have The Anthropocene Reviewed, which might be my favorite of his works, nor do I have his brother Hank Green's duology, which I liked better than any of John's books!)

8. The Whole Life Adoption Book by Jayne E. Schooler and Thomas C. Atwood
I think this is the only adoption book I chose to keep out of the slew of them I read for my two kids' adoptions. Whereas most books focus on the adoption process itself and/or dealing with kids healing from major trauma in the first few years after adoption, this was a comprehensive look at how adoption affects kids throughout their life (as the title implies), regardless of the type of adoption that brought them into your family.

9. The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin
This is another one I read and then saved for my kids' shelf. It's a cute chapter book based on the author's own experience in grade school. I tried it with my older one a few years ago and they weren't super keen on it, but I'm hanging onto it for now.

10. You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P! by Alex Gino
This is one of the few books on my bookshelf that I haven't read! I've loved several of Gino's other books and I was interested in the Deaf representation in this book after I started learning ASL, but I haven't yet picked it up.

Have you read any of these?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: The Time Machine, Atomic Habits, and Thy Queendom Come
Five years ago I was reading: Magician's Gambit and America's Public Schools
Ten years ago I was reading: American Gods and Basic Black