Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Check out upcoming Top Ten themes on Jana’s blog!

This week’s theme is – bookish discoveries! Anything from new-to-you authors, to new local bookshops found, book clubs, new genres you realised you like…too much fun not to try and pick ten!

With absolutely NO attempt to try and put these in any kind of order…

Kila Writes’ Queer SF Masterlist

Originally on dreamwidth, the Queer SF Masterlist is a database established and maintained by Kila (who you can find on Bluesky here – she encourages people to DM her if they have new books for her to include!) It’s not meant to be a databse of every queer sff book ever, it’s more like a new releases calendar, with lists of what’s coming out when and what kind of representation each book has. She does a great job at keeping up with self-pubbed and indie stuff as well as trad releases, and I check back there regularly!

(And yes, I told her about a ton of upcoming releases when she was just getting started, because of course I did. In fact, I should really get her a list of 2026 stuff…)

Pagebound

Pagebound is a new alternative to Goodreads, and I’m completely in love with it. The founders have been very open about how much they were inspired by AO3, and imo it’s not just the functionality, it’s the energy of AO3 that they’ve taken and applied to not-fanfic-works. So much of what they’ve come up with is just freaking genius – like there being a kind of forum for each book where you can go to discuss it or shriek about it, or that you can see forum activity in your feed for every book in your library (and you can absolutely mute stuff from books you don’t want to be reminded you once read!) I am particularly happy about being able to make public lists that other users can’t mess with (though I do hope we eventually have collaborative ones, Goodreads-style, as well) and the fact that there’s no bloody algorithm making recommendations, users go to a book’s page and add suggested recs for fans of it.

Even something as simple as – when you rate a book, you have an option to add multiple ratings; overall, enjoyment, quality, characters, and plot. YES THANK YOU THAT IS SO FREAKING HELPFUL! That’s such a great, easy way for people who aren’t up to writing a full review to give genuinely helpful info to anyone else looking through reviews! As is the option to choose three emojis for the book; again, a great, easy way to encourage people to leave a ‘review’ more nuanced than rating it with some stars but no explanation.

Or how about the fact that we have currently reading, finished, tbr, and ‘interested’ shelves??? Why that feels revolutionary, I don’t know, but it does!

(If you want to be friends on Pagebound, my profile is here!)

CJ Cherryh

Last year was my third or maybe fourth attempt at reading CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner – and for whatever reason, this time I couldn’t put it down! I tore through fifteen of the Foreigner books – a sci fi of manners series following a human linguist/diplomat stationed among aliens – and set about acquiring everything else of hers I could get my paws on. She is one of those especially awe-inspiring storytellers who has written sci fi AND fantasy, and it will be a WHILE before I make it through her excitingly extensive backlist!

Calibre’s insert metadata as page at start of book function

One of the biggest frustrations of being an ebook-only reader is that you cannot just pick up an ebook and look at the back, or the inside flap, to check the blurb. I have give or take 5000 books on my Kindle, at least half of which I haven’t read. I’m very good at remembering covers, but even so: I often see a book as I’m scrolling through, and have no idea what it’s about. And no way to find out without leaving the Kindle, because the vast majority of ebooks don’t contain their own blurbs.

Some do. Mostly older ones, actually. But 99% of the time, I have to go find my phone or laptop if I want to re-familiarise myself with a book I don’t remember. This has pissed me off for years, because there’s no good reason an ereader can’t pull the blurb from the book’s metadata and show it to you on that device. Idiots just didn’t build in the functionality. (I would love to know if any non-Kindle ereaders can do this!)

And then by complete accident, I discovered that Calibre has a solution for that. Tick a little box, and it adds the ebook metadata into the book. GENIUS. Not perfect, but only because most publishers don’t embed the metadata into their ebook files, GODS GIVE ME STRENGTH. But as a Calibre function, it’s my new favourite thing! Now any book I’ve done that to, I just have to open up, and right there is the official publisher synopsis. WOO!

Foodie Nonfiction

I’ve always liked foodie fiction, and last year the partner and I hit on me reading him foodie nonfiction to get him to sleep. This worked on so many levels: the lack of plot made it much easier for me to resist staying up reading all night and tended to keep the writing rhythm pretty calm, which meant my reading aloud didn’t get exciting enough to keep my partner up. But the subject was interesting enough that I could tell him all about it on our daily walks (since he doesn’t remember a word of what I’m reading as he falls asleep, naturally enough). Not all of our reads were great, but most of them were! The three pictured here were my faves, and I’m always on the lookout for more, now! (So recs are very welcome, if you have any!)

Gaywyck is a Quartet Now!

By complete chance, I stumbled across a new edition of Gaywyck by Vincent Virga – originally published in 1980. You can find my review here, but the TL;DR version is that it’s the first gay Gothic novel/Gothic Romance, and I’ve loved it passionately for years. It’s one I have Google Alerts set up for, because waaaay back in the early 2000s there was a sequel – Vadriel Vail – and around 2012 or so Gaywyck got an ebook edition, but Vadriel Vail never appeared. There was supposed to be a third book, too, but I’m not sure that was ever published at all.

So I was FREAKING THRILLED when the publisher of the new Gaywyck edition, ReQueered Tales, assured me that not only were they publishing Vadriel Vail too (IT’S OUT FEB 3RD), but rather than a trilogy, it’s now a quartet! With books three and four scheduled for later 2026! MUCH EEEEEEE!

I still hate classics even when they’re queer

Last year I finally read Gilda Stories and Neveryóna, two queer SFF ‘classics’ that I’ve been getting recced for years. Alas, I despised them both – despised.

I have always had a terrible track record with classic literature, and apparently making it queer doesn’t change that. Now I know!

Wizard’s Tower Press

A tiny indie press I first heard about when KJ Charles reviewed the latest book from Chaz Brenchley, Of the Emperor’s Kindness. (My review is over here.) They publish SFF, with a special interest in diverse stuff and in bringing out of print works back into circulation, all of which sounds great to me. When I started exploring their catalogue, I found SO MANY books to be interested in – not least Wiz Duos 3, which ended up on my Best of 2025 list!

I’m so looking forward to trying more of their books!

I can still enjoy Horror

I was starting to wonder, because it seemed like it had been a while since I picked up a new-to-me horror book and didn’t DNF it. But nope, turns out I’m just picky! Last year I finally managed to read The Devourers by Indra Das, which was functionally a spiritual experience, honestly; Drew Huff’s Landlocked in Foreign Skin delighted me ENDLESSLY; and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones, is in fact as incredible as the hype says it is.

Every Book a Doorway gets recced!

Last year, when I was looking around for new book blogs to follow, I started to see Every Book a Doorway getting recommended on places like reddit, when people were asking for sff book blogs.

The QueerSFF subreddit even started using EBaD as a source for their monthly new releases post!

Yes it made me STUPIDLY happy and I still glow every time I think about it!

What bookish discoveries did you make last year?