Down The TBR Hole – Should they stay or should they go?

This meme was originally created by Lia at Lost in a Story as a way to tackle the gargantuan To-Read shelves a lot of us have on Goodreads.

The rules are simple:

1. Go to your Goodreads To-Read shelf.
2. Order on ascending date added.
3. Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
4. Read the synopses of the books
5. Decide: keep it or should it go?
6. Repeat until the entire list has been filtered

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It’s a while since I did one of these and I was curious to take a look at the books that are still sitting unread on my bookshelves or on my Kindle. Am I still as excited about reading them as I was when I acquired them?  My To-Read shelf on Goodreads now contains 248 books compared with 249 when I last undertook this exercise. Doesn’t sound like much progress does it but when I look back at the ten books included in my previous post (in July last year) it turns out I’ve read five of them. 

All the books I’m looking at here are books I own, either in physical or digital form. I have a separate ‘Wishlist’ shelf with 192 books on it.

All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy (added 6th March 2019)

“In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman.”

So begins the story of Myshkin and his mother Gayatri, who is driven to rebel against tradition and follow her artist’s instinct for freedom.

Freedom of a different kind is in the air across India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two strangers arrive in Gayatri’s town, opening up to her the vision of other possible lives.

What took Myshkin’s mother from India to Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly familiar universe? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between the anguish at home and a war-torn universe overtaken by patriotism.

Verdict: Keep – I still like the sound of this and it made the longlist of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2019 which is always a marker of quality as far as I’m concerned. 

Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce (added added 9th March 2019)

Alison has it a doting husband, beloved daughter and career on the up. But nothing is quite what it seems. Alison drinks too much and she’s having an affair with a colleague who likes to push boundaries. And it’s all getting too much.

Alison is representing a client who wants to plead guilty to stabbing her husband, but something about her story is amiss. However, if Alison saves this woman, she believes she can save herself.

But someone knows all of Alison’s secrets – and wants to make her pay for what she’s done…

Verdict: Keep – This book has appeared on two of my previous lists for the 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge and it’s on there again this year.  It’s got some good reviews and I’m in the mood for a pacy thriller.

Finding Dorothy: A Novel by Elizabeth Letts (added 27th March 2019)

Hollywood, 1938: As soon as she learns that MGM is adapting her late husband’s masterpiece for the screen, seventy-seven-year-old Maud Gage Baum sets about trying to finagle her way onto the set. Nineteen years after Frank’s passing, Maud is the only person who can help the producers stay true to the spirit of the book—because she’s the only one left who knows its secrets.

But the moment she hears Judy Garland rehearsing the first notes of “Over the Rainbow,” Maud recognizes the yearning that defined her own life story, from her youth as a suffragette’s daughter to her coming of age as one of the first women in the Ivy League, from her blossoming romance with Frank to the hardscrabble prairie years that inspired  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz .

Judy reminds Maud of a young girl she cared for and tried to help in South Dakota, a dreamer who never got her happy ending. Now, with the young actress under pressure from the studio as well as her ambitious stage mother, Maud resolves to protect her—the way she tried so hard to protect the real Dorothy.

Verdict: Keep – This is another book that has been on a previous 20 Books of Summer list and is on this year’s as well. Average rating on Goodreads is 4.17 too.

The Cross and the Curse by Matthew Harffy (added 9th May 2019)

AD 634, Anglo-Saxon Britain: warlords battle across Britain to become the first king of the English.

After a stunning victory against the native Waelisc, Beobrand returns a hero. His valor is rewarded with wealth and land by Oswald, king of Northumbria. He retires to his new estate with his bride only to find himself surrounded by enemies old and new.

With treachery and death on all sides, Beobrand fears he will lose all he holds dear. On a quest for revenge and redemption, he accepts the mantle of lord, leading his men into the darkest of nights and the bloodiest of battles.

Verdict: Keep – This is the second book in the author’s Bernicia Chronicles series. I’ve read the first book (The Serpent Sword) and several of the later books in the series and I’ve gradually added the missing ones to my shelves when I come across them in charity shops. At the risk of becoming repetitive, it was also on last year’s 20 Books of Summer list and it’s on this year’s again.  

Big Sky (Jackson Brodie #5) by Kate Atkinson (added 29th June 2019)

Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It’s picturesque, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes.

Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network—and back across the path of his old friend Reggie.

Verdict: Dump – Although I’m a fan of Kate Atkinson’s books, I haven’t read any of her Jackson Brodie series and I don’t think book five is the place to start. Cue anguished cries from Jackson Brodie fans…

Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott (added 8th July 2019) 

Over countless martini-soaked Manhattan lunches, they shared their deepest secrets and greatest fears. On exclusive yachts sailing the Mediterranean, on private jets streaming towards Jamaica, on Yucatán beaches in secluded bays, they gossiped about sex, power, money, love and fame. They never imagined he would betray them so absolutely.

Based on ten years of research comes a dazzling literary debut about the rise and self-destructive fall of Truman Capote and the beautiful, wealthy, vulnerable women he called his swans.

Verdict: Keep – ‘Martini-soaked Manhattan lunches’ – yes please. It’s on my 20 Books of Summer list as well.

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris (added 11th July 2019)

All civilisations think they are invulnerable. History warns us none is.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts – coins, fragments of glass, human bones – which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death?

As Fairfax is drawn more deeply into the isolated community, everything he believes – about himself, his faith and the history of his world – is tested to destruction.

Verdict: Keep – To my mind Robert Harris is incapable of writing a bad book. And you’re allowed to yawn, this is also on my 20 Books of Summer list. 

Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop (added 26th July 2019)

Athens 1941. After decades of political uncertainty, Greece is polarised between Right- and Left-wing views when the Germans invade.

Fifteen-year-old Themis comes from a family divided by these political differences. The Nazi occupation deepens the fault-lines between those she loves just as it reduces Greece to destitution. She watches friends die in the ensuing famine and is moved to commit acts of resistance.

In the civil war that follows the end of the occupation, Themis joins the Communist army, where she experiences the extremes of love and hatred and the paradoxes presented by a war in which Greek fights Greek.

Eventually imprisoned on the infamous islands of exile, Makronisos and then Trikeri, Themis encounters another prisoner whose life will entwine with her own in ways neither can foresee. And finds she must weigh her principles against her desire to escape and live.

As she looks back on her life, Themis realises how tightly the personal and political can become entangled. While some wounds heal, others deepen.

Verdict: Keep – I heard the author talk about this book at Henley Literary Festival in 2019 and she signed my copy. Gotta keep it for that reason alone… and it also sounds fabulous.

The Hiding Game by Naomi Wood (added 1st August 2019)

In 1922, Paul Beckermann arrives at the Bauhaus art school and is immediately seduced by both the charismatic teaching and his fellow students. Eccentric and alluring, the more time Paul spends with his new friends the closer they become, and the deeper he falls in love with the mesmerising Charlotte. But Paul is not the only one vying for her affections, and soon an insidious rivalry takes root.

As political tensions escalate in Germany, the Bauhaus finds itself under threat, and the group begins to disintegrate under the pressure of its own betrayals and love affairs. Decades later, in the wake of an unthinkable tragedy, Paul is haunted by a secret. When an old friend from the Bauhaus resurfaces, he must finally break his silence.

Verdict: Keep – This was on the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2020 which, as I’ve already said, I take as a big thumbs up for a book. And I’m pretty sure every time I’ve mentioned to another book blogger that I have a copy they’ve said they’re sure I’ll love it. 

The Infinite Air by Fiona Kidman (added 4th August 2019)

Jean Batten became an international icon in 1930s. A brave, beautiful woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn’t get enough of her.

In 1934, she broke Amy Johnson’s flight time between England and Australia by six days. The following year, she was the first woman to make the return flight. In 1936, she made the first ever direct flight between England and New Zealand and then the fastest ever trans-Tasman flight. Jean Batten stood for adventure, daring, exploration and glamour.

The Second World War ended Jean’s flying adventures. She suddenly slipped out of view, disappearing to the Caribbean with her mother and eventually dying in Majorca, buried in a pauper’s grave. Fiona Kidman’s enthralling novel delves into the life of this enigmatic woman. It is a fascinating exploration of early aviation, of fame, and of secrecy.

Verdict: Keep – I’m not quite sure how this book has turned up on this list because I only recently acquired a copy for my personal Backlist Burrow reading challenge. However, Goodreads doesn’t lie so I guess it must have been on my wishlist all that time. 

The Result – 9 kept, 1 dumped. This was always going to be tough because so many are on my list for the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge and, for that reason, I feel I should at least give them a chance. Would you have made different choices?