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| The Reading Room |
So I stopped home today on my lunch, made myself something to eat and wandered into the reading room. I immediately began to feel overwhelmed. Within the room are four floor to ceiling bookcases double stacked with books. This doesn't eve count the ones hiding in the close or the built-ins in the great room.
"Hello, my name is Emily and I have a problem." My towering TBR is beginning to upset me. I've gotten to the point where it's just easier to stare at the shelves rather than pick something out. Also, I can't seem to stop adding too it! So, I've come up with a plan. I"m not sure how efficient it will be, or if it will even work but I'm going to give it a try. I'm going to read through my books layer by layer - shelf by shelf. Once I finish a layer on a shelf, I can either continue with the second layer or pick a whole new shelf. Maybe by going this way, I'll be able to finish all these books before I grow old and feeble and have no eye site left. Plus on top of it all, this eliminates standing in the center of the room, staring at titles trying to come up with something to read.
I spent most of my lunch hour staring at the shelves, deciding which one I wanted to start with. Did I want to read a shelf with more romance? Maybe one with lots of mystery and adventure? Oh, but what about the shelves chocked full of historical fiction? And then there's the shelves of chick lit that I was obsessed with years ago. So my solution was to stand in the middle of the room, close my eyes, and randomly point in any direction. Whatever shelf I pointed out was what I was going to read. Here's the winner:
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| The Shelf... |
- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford
- The Nazi Officer's Wife - Edith Hahn Baer
- Snow - Orphan Pamuk
- Hullabaloo and the Guava Orchard - Kiran Desai
- The Inheritance of Lose - Kiran Desai
- Pope Joan - Donna Woolfolk Cross
- Leonardo's Swans - Karen Essex
- Second Honeymoon - Joanne Trollope
- Lucrezia Borgia and the Mother of Poisons - Robert Gellis
- Night - Elie Wiesel
- Dawn - Elie Wiesel
- The Time of the Uprooted - Elie Wiesel
- The Dogs of Babel - Carolyn Parkhurst
- Lost and Found - Carolyn Parkhurst
- The Good Earth - Pearl S Buck
- Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
- Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
- My Cousin Rachael - Daphne Du Maurier
- Rebecca's Tale - Sally Beauman
- The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
- The Woman in Black - Susan Hill
- Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
- Julie and Julia - Julie Powell
- And Infamous Army - Georgette Heyer
- The Alchemist's Daughter - Katherine McMahon
- The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives - Sarah Strohmeyer
- Notting Hell - Rachel Johnson
Mating Rituals of the North American WASP - Lauren Lipton- The 6th Lamentation - William Broderick
- To Hold the Crown - Jean Plaidy
- Plum Wine - Angela Davis - Gardner
The Painted Veil - W. Somerset Maugham- The Book Borrower - Alice Mattison
- Trust - Katie Veitch
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg- Roses - Leila Meacham
3 comments:
I have the same problem and am always buying more books in a month than I read. A few years ago as I was struggling with what to read next I put together a spreadsheet of all my books and that's the order in which I read them . As new books come in I add them to the list, trying to mix them in amongst the old and the new and trying not to read too much about the same time period at once.
As for the books on your shelf, I've read a couple: Pope Joan (thought it was pretty good) and To Hold the Crown (didn't think it was one of Plaidy's better books) and The Thorn Birds (read it in high school and loved it). Hope you enjoy your new readiing plan!!
I like your idea. I put new books on top of the entertainment center in my living room. If I ever manage to clear it off, I can start on my shelves of TBR books too. Happy reading!
As much as I'd love to tell you what order to read them in (I'm just bossy that way, LOL), I won't. But I will tell you that you absolutely must move either Gone With the Wind or The Thorn Birds to a different shelf. Those are two of the greatest books ever written and you want to spread them out!! Also, don't try to read Roses directly after either of those two....you will just be disappointed. It's not that Roses isn't a good book, because it's okay, but it would just seem bad to you if you read them after either of the other two and you wouldn't get any enjoyment out of them. :)
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