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Taming the Ever-Growing To-Be-Read Pile

wendy

It’s time to do some spring cleaning around here, and by that I mean that it’s time to whittle down my stack of books that are waiting to be read.

I guess I’m pretty bad about downloading books to my Kindle or picking up handfuls of used books and then eschewing them in favor of a book recommended by a friend, a shiny new title that I come across in a book review, or a dive into a genre or subject that intrigues me. And thus my stack of digital and paper books gathers figurative or literal dust.

Sidenote: the bad thing about an e-reader is that it’s really too easy to amass a giant pile of books to read and then ignore that pile.

So I’ve put myself on a “no seconds until I clean my plate” plan. With exceptions for the new titles that are already on their way to me from my local library, I’m going to make myself finish what’s already on my plate before I can go for helpings of any other books.

To that end, I imagine I’ll be fairly ruthless as I wade through my piles of titles. Those that don’t pull me in with character, setting, language, or plot pretty quickly will likely be cast aside in the name of expediency and in not wasting my time on stories I don’t connect with.

As you’ll see from my lists below (titles are in random order), I have my work cut out for me. 🙂

My list of physical books:

  1. Drive by Daniel Pink

  2. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

  3. Old Yeller by Fred Gipson

  4. Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell

  5. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

  6. The Last Summer by Ann Brashares

  7. And the Mountain Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

  8. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

  9. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby

  10. The Phillip K Dick Reader

  11. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

  12. Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons

  13. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama edited by XJ Kennedy

  14. Autumn Bends the Rebel Tree by Carolyn Guy

On my digital list are:

  1. Crystal Blue by John H Cunningham

  2. The Garden on Sunset by Martin Turnbull

  3. Sentence of a Marriage by Shayne Parkinson

  4. The Unimaginable by Dina Silver

  5. The Judas Chronicles by Aiden James

  6. Ascension Day by John Matthews

  7. The Lake by AnnaLisa Grant

  8. Mona Lise Eyes by MD Grayson

  9. Under the Boardwalk by Barbara Cool Lee

  10. Desecration by JF Penn

  11. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

  12. What She Saw by Sheila Lowe

  13. Harbored Secrets by Marie F Martin

  14. The Mystery of Jessica Benson by CK Lawrence

  15. Hushabye by Celina Grace

  16. Terminal Value by Thomas Waite

  17. Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin

  18. Key to Lawrence by Lind and Gary Cargill

  19. The Ragtime Kid by Larry Karp

  20. The Memory Lights by KM Weiland

  21. The Fiction Desk Vol 1 by various authors

  22. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Aurthur Conan Doyle

  23. The Long Roll by Kary Johnston

  24. Covenant by Beverly Lewis

  25. Imhotep by Jerry Dubs

  26. Miramont’s Ghost by Elizabeth Hall

  27. Contents Under Pressure by Edna Buchanan

  28. Under an English Heaven by Alice K Boatright

  29. You Know Who I Am by Diane Patterson

  30. The Privateersman by Andrew Wareham

  31. Fallen Palm by Wayne Stinnett

  32. Irreparable Harm by Melissa F Miller

  33. Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel by Michal Hartstein

  34. Hooked by Nir Eyal

  35. Mickey Outside by David Lender

  36. The Girl on the Mountain by Carol Ervin

  37. Wreckage by Emily Bleeker

  38. The Dead Key by DM Pulley

UPDATE: Since drafting this post a few days ago, I’ve eliminated a few books from the list already:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was quick and bittersweet but inspiring little volume. I finally officially gave up on Sweetwater Creek, a nice but somewhat vanilla story that I set down halfway read back in November to read some stories set in Hawaii for a then-upcoming trip and never picked back up again. I’m currently reading Drive, which I should finish in a day or two.

What should I choose next? 🙂

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