Top Ten Tuesday: Winter 2025-26 TBR

Hello and welcome to another Top Ten Tuesday! Today we’re talking about our Winter TBRs. The last TBR I did was in the winter of 2023! I didn’t do well on those.

Just because I haven’t done a TBR lately doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading. Last week I finished my 2025 Goodreads goal of 80 books. I do a lot of reading at work. Sometimes I’m scrambling to find something to read (because I haven’t been making these TBRs, probably).

So, as I did with previous TBRs, I have a TBR lottery. I saw it many years ago and thought it was a fun idea. Three of the books on this TBR were here before I drew the remaining seven books (because they were must-reads for now). The other seven were chosen randomly from a pool of 44 books. Three of the books that were chosen for this season’s TBR were oddly chosen from books I added from last week’s Top Ten Tuesday books I’ve seen. I guess that’s how random number generation works.

So without any further ado, here are the books on my Winter 2025 TBR!

1. Eclipse (Twilight #3) – Stephanie Meyer. I’ve read these books before, but this year I went to the Twilight Forever museum in Forks. I had never seen the movies before, but after I got home my husband and I watched them together (they were just okay, IMO). I started reading the books again. I finished the first two books, but have taken a break to read Cassandra Clare’s Better in Black.

If you were curious, the Twilight Forever museum is one room and takes about 15 minutes to go through, tops. It is mostly movie memorabilia. If you’re in Western Washington, it might be worth the trip. If you live halfway across the world, you’ll probably want to plan some other stuff on your trip, unless you’re a really big fan of Twilight.

2. Carve the Mark – Veronica Roth. I only put the first book here, but I plan to read both books in the duology. It’s been a while since I read the books, but thinking of the snowy scenes made me want to reread it.

3. Realm Breaker – Victoria Aveyard. I just recently finished Aveyard’s Red Queen series, Broken Throne, and I have never read this series. I started this yesterday at work. Technically it’s not winter yet, and I try not to start my seasonal TBRs until the exact date, but I did borrow this from the library so I’ll need to return it.

So far it’s pretty good.

These three books were ones I chose before I did the random drawing. The following are books chosen through the TBR lottery:

4. Daughter of Smoke & Bone – Laini Taylor. This book has been on my TBR lottery list for almost the longest time (it was #4 on the list; the lowest numbered books have been there the longest). I’ve read the Strange the Dreamer duology and one of her short stories; this will be the first book I’ve read from her in a while.

5. Scythe – Neal Shusterman. This book was very hyped up when it came out. I haven’t read any books by this author yet, although he’s pretty well-known. But then again, I just realized in the past week I’ve never read anything by Colleen Hoover either, and she’s also a very prolific author. I’ve always loved dystopian fiction, but it’s not as popular now as it was over a decade ago. It’ll be nice to get the chance to read this.

I thought I bought this on Kindle back when it was out originally, but I guess I didn’t. I’m sure my library has a copy.

6. Opal (Lux #3) – Jennifer L. Armentrout. I read the second book in this series two years ago. There are five books in this series. I liked the series so far, but people say so many books, so little time for a reason. This is a story about Katy and Daemon, who happens to be an alien.

7. Midnight in the Snow – Karen Swan. I just added this to my TBR last week. It’s winter, and this is set in the Austrian Alps. I’ve never been to Austria or the Alps, but it does sound like an exciting place to visit. Although I love going on vacation, books are a lot cheaper than a trip to Europe.

Colorado gets a lot of snow, so this will be fun for reading on a snowy week.

8. The Queen’s Assassin – Melissa de la Cruz. I got to meet Melissa de la Cruz (and have this book signed) a few days before everything got shut down for the pandemic. That was a good day. I took my son to a bakery, then we went to the Lego Store, then we went to Tattered Cover–Marie Lu and Astrid Scholte were also there, and I got to sit in the first row. So it’ll be fun to get the chance to read this.

9. Snowed in at the Cat Café – Rachel Rowlands. What’s more fun than a cat café? In the winter! As I write this, I’m currently wearing one of my cat shirts (I’ve subscribed to the Cat Lady Box off and on for a couple of years so I have lots of them). Even though my son’s cat hasn’t been very well-behaved today, I love cats. So this should be a lot of fun.

Sadly, my library doesn’t have a copy, but I’ve applied to get it through interlibrary loan.

10. Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer. In 1996 there was a storm that killed several people on Mount Everest. When I first read about this book, I thought I remembered this disaster, but it was a different disaster I remember because the one I’m thinking about happened a couple years ago, not when I was in college.

Everest is 29,000 feet tall. I live at 6,000 feet, and when I went to Pike’s Peak (a little over 14,000 feet) this summer, I could definitely feel the difference. I can imagine how much harder it was for my friends who went with me, who live in Phoenix. And it would even be any worse for people going up to the top of Everest. I will stay down here (relatively speaking, 6,000 feet is still over a mile up) and experience Everest via books.

So here are the ten books on my winter TBR for 2025 (running into 2026). I’m looking forward to reading them!

Did you do a Winter TBR? What books on your TBR are you most looking forward to reading?