I felt a little bad about going on my last book shopping spree at a chain store instead of my local indie, so I decided to even out the score. Plus, it's Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 29th. Not that I ever need an excuse to visit a bookstore...Changing Hands really is a fabulous place to buy books. The Tempe location has a fun, quirky vibe. It's packed with new and used tomes as well as bookish extras and specialty items like fancy soaps, kitchen accessories, notebooks/journals, jewelry, etc. Other perks include a trade desk, where you can trade in books you no longer need for store credit. They also have a frequent buyer program that gives you one stamp for every $10 you spend; when you reach 10 stamps, you get a $10 off credit. During your birthday month, you also get $10 off your purchases. All of these things make it an enjoyable place to spend my book money! It's actually a good thing that's it a 20-minute drive away. If it were closer, I'd definitely be there more often.

Today, I traded in a stack of books and earned about $56 in credit. I also had a full punch card, which gave me $10. Five of the eight books in the stack above are new and three are hardcovers, so the actual retail price of all eight (at least at Changing Hands) was $133.10. I paid $76.60 (including tax). Not too shabby. My husband actually spent more and he only bought three used books and one (very expensive) chocolate candy bar. Both of our purchases earned me more stamps, so now I have another full card to use next time I'm in the store. Yay!

Here's what I got:

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell—I've never heard of Bythell, but apparently, he's the owner of the second largest secondhand bookstore in Scotland. He's written several books about his experiences as a bookseller and they're supposed to be hilarious. I believe this one is his first book, which was published in 2017.

The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura—This non-fiction book has been on my TBR list since it came out a few years ago. It's about Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, two American women who received M.D.s in the 1800s. Elizabeth was the first ever to do so. Sounds fascinating!

The Book Woman's Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson—I'm not even a little bit alone in my love for The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. This is the sequel, which stars the daughter of the titular book woman.

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom—Grissom was kind enough to send me a review copy of her new novel, Crow Mary, and I can't wait to read it. In the meantime, I want to re-read The Kitchen House, which I loved, and then read its sequel, Glory Over Everything. The Kitchen House is about a young white girl who is orphaned while sailing from Ireland to America. She becomes an indentured servant at a Southern plantation, where she becomes part of the servants' family, despite their differing skin colors. When she upsets the order of things, however, life as she knows it changes forever.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen—This memoir was on clearance and I've been wanting to read it, so I grabbed it. It's the story of Rhoda's journey back home to the insular Mennonite family and culture she left behind. The book's supposed to be both hilarious and touching. I'm in!

Lone Women by Victor LaVelle—I probably don't need to tell you what this one's about since it's been getting all kinds of buzz in the book blogosphere. It sounds unique and compelling. The novel concerns a Black woman who leaves California to homestead in Montana in 1915. Not only does she have to eke out a life on the brutal prairie, but she also has a dark secret. One that makes the people around her disappear. How will she fare in her attempt at a new life?

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris—When my husband saw this book, he added it to my to-buy stack, saying, "This sounds like your kind of book!" Ha ha. He knows me so well.

Ashton Hall by Lauren Belfer—Ashton Hall is my favorite kind of novel, one in which a modern-day woman enters a mysterious old house and becomes obsessed with unearthing all its secrets. I'm always up for this kind of story.

What do you think of my haul? Have you read any of these? Which should I read first? 

Edited to add: I'm having trouble commenting on some of your WordPress-hosted blogs. When I try to leave a comment, I get a "Not Acceptable!An appropriate representation of the requested resource could not be found on this server. This error was generated by Mod_Security" error. I'm not sure what this means or how to fix it. So, just know if you have a WP blog and you don't see a comment from me, I got this error when I tried. I'm commenting on everyone's blogs this week; bummer that some of you will never see them. Boo hoo.

It's been a rough week already and it's barely Wednesday, but I didn't want to miss Top Ten Tuesday even if I'm late to the party. TTT makes me happy—I need happy this week! I'm stumped on the prompt, though. My brain and memory aren't up for much right now, so I'm going to forgo the official topic—Top Ten Unlikable Characters You Can't Help But Love—and do a simpler one. 

As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Click on over there and give her some love! And if you want to join in the TTT fun, please do, even though it's not Tuesday.

Now that it's November, I'm really starting to think about the books I still want to read before 2022 is gone forever. My goal is to read 200 books this year; I'm at 153 now, so I've got some work to do. At the moment, I'm concentrating on reading for two book awards programs I'm helping to judge, but—of course—there are other titles I want to get to as well. So here are ten that I want to read before 2022 ends.

1. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir—Okay, this is one I need to read, not necessarily want to read, but still...Sci-fi has never been my favorite genre, but Weir's books are so popular that I couldn't not give them a chance. I started The Martian and gave up after a chapter or two. All that detail about every little thing put me right to sleep! My husband adored both The Martian and Project Hail Mary. My book club is reading the latter this month, so I'm finally going to brave it. Wish me luck!

2. A Song Called Home by Sara Zarr—I've enjoyed several of Zarr's YA books. This is her first novel for middle-graders. It concerns a girl named Lou who's satisfied with her life in the city, even if her dad drinks too much and her family has little in the way of material comforts. When her mom decides to move in with her boyfriend, leaving the city and her dad behind, Lou feels adrift. On her last night in her old home, she finds a guitar on her front porch. Although the giver has remained anonymous, she assumes it's from her dad and that learning how to play it will, somehow, keep him close to her despite the distance between them. Sounds like a sweet read.

3. Madwoman by Louisa Treger—I've talked about this historical novel before. It's based on the true story of Nellie Bly's terrifying but illuminating undercover infiltration of the famous mental asylum on New York's Blackwell's Island in 1887.

4. Ashton Hall by Lauren Belfer—This Gothic mystery is about a woman who is happy to escape her unraveling life in New York City to stay with an ill relative at a manor house in England. When her young, neurodivergent son discovers human remains in a forgotten wing, she becomes consumed with learning about the woman whose skeleton was hidden in mysterious Ashton Hall.

5. Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese—I'm #3 on the library waiting list for this buzzy novel. You probably already know that the story is a reimagining of the life of the woman who inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. It sounds intriguing.

6. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens—This classic novella actually fits this week's real TTT prompt about unlikable characters. It's one of my favorite books of all time. I re-read it every December to get me in the Christmas spirit.

7. Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family by Erika Hayasaki—I'm an adoptive mom, so I'm always interested in books like this one. It recounts the true story of a pair of identical twins who were born in Vietnam in 1998. The girls' biological mother could not take care of them. One was adopted and raised in a poor, rural village in Vietnam by her biological aunt. The other was adopted by a wealthy white family and raised in a prosperous Chicago household. When the American adoptive mother learned her daughter had a twin back in Vietnam, she reunited the sisters, who were teens at the time. Sounds like an incredible story.

8. No Strangers Here by Carlene O'Connor—I just heard about this series opener (probably from one of your blogs) and it sounds excellent. When the dead body of a bloke known as "The Dancing Man" is found murdered on a beach in southwest Ireland, Detective Inspector Cormac O'Brien gets the case. His investigation in the small town of Dingle leads him to the dead man's rumored lover. When Dimpna Wilde's mother comes under suspicion of murdering "The Dancing Man," Dimpna returns to the hometown she gladly left behind to clear her mother's name. 

9. Embers On the Wind by Lisa Williamson Rosenberg—This dual-timeline novel revolves around Whittaker House, an old Massachusetts home that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad. Inhabited by the ghosts of two women who died there while trying to escape slavery, it's now a posh vacation rental. The ghosts observe the modern-day holiday-makers, many of whom are Black women who are not as free as they appear. 

10. A Murder at Balmoral by Chris McGeorge—I'm not a person who cares for real-life drama, royal or otherwise, but this holiday murder mystery sounds like a fun caper. The royal family is gathered in Scotland for Christmas when the king dies from poisoning. Everyone in the dysfunctional clan is a suspect, but who actually did the dirty deed?

There you are, ten books I want to read before 2022 disappears. Which titles are you itching to read before the new year? Do you have any villains you love to hate? I'd truly love to know.