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:
Drive by Daniel Pink
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
The Last Summer by Ann Brashares
And the Mountain Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby
The Phillip K Dick Reader
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama edited by XJ Kennedy
Autumn Bends the Rebel Tree by Carolyn Guy
On my digital list are:
Crystal Blue by John H Cunningham
The Garden on Sunset by Martin Turnbull
Sentence of a Marriage by Shayne Parkinson
The Unimaginable by Dina Silver
The Judas Chronicles by Aiden James
Ascension Day by John Matthews
The Lake by AnnaLisa Grant
Mona Lise Eyes by MD Grayson
Under the Boardwalk by Barbara Cool Lee
Desecration by JF Penn
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
What She Saw by Sheila Lowe
Harbored Secrets by Marie F Martin
The Mystery of Jessica Benson by CK Lawrence
Hushabye by Celina Grace
Terminal Value by Thomas Waite
Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin
Key to Lawrence by Lind and Gary Cargill
The Ragtime Kid by Larry Karp
The Memory Lights by KM Weiland
The Fiction Desk Vol 1 by various authors
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Aurthur Conan Doyle
The Long Roll by Kary Johnston
Covenant by Beverly Lewis
Imhotep by Jerry Dubs
Miramont’s Ghost by Elizabeth Hall
Contents Under Pressure by Edna Buchanan
Under an English Heaven by Alice K Boatright
You Know Who I Am by Diane Patterson
The Privateersman by Andrew Wareham
Fallen Palm by Wayne Stinnett
Irreparable Harm by Melissa F Miller
Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel by Michal Hartstein
Hooked by Nir Eyal
Mickey Outside by David Lender
The Girl on the Mountain by Carol Ervin
Wreckage by Emily Bleeker
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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