Tag: downtheTBRhole

This meme was created by Lia at Lost in a Story as a way to tackle the gargantuan To-Read shelves a lot of us – including me – have on Goodreads.  It’s a while since I did one of these but I think the fact that there are over 500 books on my To-Read shelf on Goodreads, although 304 of them are books I own that are waiting to be read (as if that makes it any better) means it’s long overdue.

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 every week until the entire list has been filtered (hmm, quite a few weeks then!)

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The ten who need to demonstrate their worth this time are:

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (added 20th May 2014)

A first-date dud, socially awkward and overly fond of quick-dry clothes, genetics professor Don Tillman has given up on love, until a chance encounter gives him an idea.

He will design a questionnaire – a sixteen-page, scientifically researched questionnaire – to uncover the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker or a late-arriver. Rosie is all these things. She is also fiery and intelligent, strangely beguiling, and looking for her biological father a search that a DNA expert might just be able to help her with.

The Rosie Project is a romantic comedy like no other. It is arrestingly endearing and entirely unconventional, and it will make you want to drink cocktails.

Verdict: Dump – I’m aware this book has a lot of fans and it sounds like a nice light read but I’m not sure I’m ever going to get around to reading it. 

Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey (added 8^th June 2014)

Meet Maud. Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn’t remember to drink it. She goes to the shops and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is unrecognisable – or her daughter Helen seems a total stranger.

But there’s one thing Maud is sure of: her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of it.

Because somewhere in Maud’s damaged mind lies the answer to an unsolved seventy-year-old mystery. One everyone has forgotten about.

Everyone, except Maud . . .

Verdict: Keep – I still like the sound of this one even if it does remind me of other books I’ve read in the meantime.  

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce (added 4th October 2014)

When Queenie Hennessy discovers that Harold Fry is walking the length of England to save her, and all she has to do is wait, she is shocked. Her note to him had explained she was dying from cancer. How can she wait?

A new volunteer at the hospice suggests that Queenie should write again; only this time she must tell Harold the truth. Composing this new message, the volunteer promises, will ensure Queenie hangs on. It will also atone for the secrets of the past. As the volunteer points out, ‘It isn’t Harold who is saving you. It is you, saving Harold Fry.’

This is that letter. A letter that was never sent.

Queenie thought her first letter would be the end of the story. She was wrong. It was just the beginning…

Verdict: Keep – Like thousands of others I really enjoyed The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and I’m a big Rachel Joyce fan so this one stays as well.

Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz (added 2nd September 2015)

James Bond is back where he belongs.

The story begins in the lethal world of Grand Prix and an attempt by the Russians to sabotage a race at Nürburgring, the most dangerous track in Europe. Bond is in the driving seat but events swiftly take an unexpected turn, pitching him into an entirely different race with implications that could change the world.

Anthony Horowitz recreates the golden age of Bond, packed with speed, danger, strong women and fiendish villains, in this brilliantly authentic adventure.

Verdict: Keep – Well, Anthony Horowitz can do very little wrong in my eyes and the fact it features previously unseen material written by Ian Fleming means it continues to earn its place in my TBR pile. This is going well isn’t it?

Nor Will He Sleep by David Ashton (added 29^th November 2015)

1887. The streets of Edinburgh seethe with anarchy as two gangs of students rival each other in wild exploits. After a pitched battle between them, an old woman is found savagely battered to death in Leith Harbour. Enter the Thieftaker – Inspector Jame McLevy. With Constable Mulholland at his side, he scours the low dives of the waterfront and then sees the tendrils of the case spread to more respectable nooks and crannies.

When the inspector encounters Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in the city to bury his deceased father, the two recognise each other as fellow travellers, observers of the dark side of human nature and both hopeless insomniacs.

Glimpses of the murderer indicate a slender, androgynous figure with a silver cane, which is used to lethal effect. A dancing killer non unlike Mr Edward Hyde.

Verdict: Keep – This is the fourth in the author’s Inspector Levy series. I’ve read the first two books, both of which I loved, so it would be a crime not to keep this one (and possibly add book three to my pile as well). Yes, I plead guilty to being a serial book hoarder.

The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel (added 3rd January 2016)

‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves.

Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?

Verdict: Keep – I cannot believe how long this book has been sitting on my bookshelf or that it was published over five years ago! The only excuse I can offer is that it’s a whopper (nearly 900 pages). It’s the final book in the trilogy and I’ve read the previous two so this is another one that has to stay. 

Any Human Heart by William Boyd (added 4th January 2016)

Through the intimate journals of Logan Mounstuart we travel from Uruguay to Oxford, on to Paris, the Bahamas, New York and West Africa, and meet his three wives, his family, his friends and colleagues, his rivals, enemies and lovers, including notables such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.

Verdict: Keep – This has many thousands of positive reviews and was nominated for numerous literary prizes so although it’s quite a chunky read on balance it stays – for now.

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (added 21st March 2016)

Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.

For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics – and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves – even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list – all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.

Verdict: Dump – Another book that has received many plaudits but the fantasy element makes me think the investment of time needed to read it (it’s 650 pages) is not going to be rewarded.

The Ashes of London (Marwood & Lovett #1) by Andrew Taylor  (added 4th April 2016)

A CITY IN FLAMES London, 1666. As the Great Fire consumes everything in its path, the body of a man is found in the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral – stabbed in the neck, thumbs tied behind his back.

A WOMAN ON THE RUN The son of a traitor, James Marwood is forced to hunt the killer through the city’s devastated streets. There he encounters a determined young woman, who will stop at nothing to secure her freedom.

A KILLER SEEKING REVENGE When a second murder victim is discovered in the Fleet Ditch, Marwood is drawn into the political and religious intrigue of Westminster – and across the path of a killer with nothing to lose …

Verdict: Keep – As regular followers of this blog will know I’m a huge historical crime fan and I love the time period and the setting of this book. Also I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing but it’s the first in what is now a five book series so if I enjoy it that means there are four subsequent books to look forward to. 

The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick (added 7th April 2016)

It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war – and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.

Verdict: Keep – Science fiction is not one of my regular reading choices, although I have read the author’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? However, since this is alternate history and therefore close enough to my favourite genre it’s a book I’m still keen to read. 

The Result – 8 kept, 2 dumped. Would you have made different choices? 

This meme was created by Lia at Lost in a Story as a way to tackle the gargantuan To-Read shelves a lot of us – including me – have on Goodreads.  It’s a while since I did one of these but I think the fact that my To-Read shelf on Goodreads now totals 1,116 books (although 321 of them are books I own copies of that are waiting to be read, as if that makes it any better) means it’s long overdue.

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 every week until the entire list has been filtered (hmm, quite a few weeks then!)

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The ten who need to demonstrate their worth this time are:

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West (added 2nd November 2013)

The lives of the talented Aubrey children have long been clouded by their father’s genius for instability, but his new job in the London suburbs promises, for a time at least, reprieve from scandal and the threat of ruin. Mrs. Aubrey, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, who encounter furious poltergeists, turn up hidden masterpieces, and come to the aid of a murderess, will find that they have adventure to spare.

Verdict: Keep – Apparently based on the author’s own childhood, this is one I’m still interested to read.

Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates  (added 25^th November 2013)

Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world’s changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.

Verdict: Dump – Despite the reputation of the author I’m no longer interested in this one, especially as I now realize it’s the first in a series.

The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates  (added 1st December 2013)

New Jersey, 1905: soon-to-be commander-in-chief Woodrow Wilson is president of Princeton University. On a nearby farm, Socialist author Upton Sinclair, enjoying the success of his novel The Jungle, has taken up residence with his family. This is a quiet, bookish community – elite, intellectual and indisputably privileged. But when a savage lynching in a nearby town is hushed up, a horrifying chain of events is initiated – until it becomes apparent that the families of Princeton have been beset by a powerful curse. The Devil has come to this little town and not a soul will be spared.

Verdict: Dump – Sorry Joyce, this one’s going as well as it’s book five in the series mentioned above. And, although I love the cover, it’s also nearly 700 pages long.

Ace, King, Knave by Maria McCann (added 1st December 2013)

Behind doors is another story. Behind doors you can do what you like.

Sophia – rational, demure, and hiding a ‘little weakness’ – has recently married the charismatic Mr Zedland. But Zedland has secrets of his own and Sophia comes to suspect that her marriage is not what it seems. In cramped rooms in Covent Garden, Betsy-Ann shuffles a pack of cards. A gambler, dealer in second-hand goods, and living with a grave robber, her life could not be more different to Sophia’s – but she too discovers that she has been lied to.

As both women take steps to discover the truth, their lives come together through a dramatic series of events, taking the reader through the streets of 1760s London: a city wearing a genteel civility on its surface and rife with hypocrisy, oppression and violence lurking underneath.

Verdict: Dump – Goodness knows how I came across this one.  The period setting sounds interesting but not enough to convince me I want to read it. 

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (added 10^th December 2013)

Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote’s comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. The book that made Capote’s name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.

Verdict: Keep – I can’t believe I haven’t read this before now and I still want to. 

All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (added 10^th December 2013)

More than just a classic political novel, Warren’s tale of power and corruption in the Depression-era South is a sustained meditation on the unforeseen consequences of every human act, the vexing connectedness of all people and the possibility – it’s not much of one – of goodness in a sinful world. Willie Stark, Warren’s lightly disguised version of Huey Long, the one time Louisiana strongman/governor, begins as a genuine tribune of the people and ends as a murderous populist demagogue. Jack Burden is his press agent, who carries out the boss’s orders, first without objection, then in the face of his own increasingly troubled conscience. And the politics? For Warren, that’s simply the arena most likely to prove that man is a fallen creature. Which it does.

Verdict: Keep – I was on the fence about this one but in the end decided it should stay since, unfortunately, it still seems surprisingly relevant.

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (added 10th December 2013)

The Day of the Locust is a novel about Hollywood and its corrupting touch, about the American dream turned into a sun-drenched California nightmare. Nathanael West’s Hollywood is not the glamorous “home of the stars” but a seedy world of little people, some hopeful, some despairing, all twisted by their by their own desires – from the ironically romantic artist narrator, to a macho movie cowboy, a middle-aged innocent from America’s heartland, and the hard-as-nails call girl would-be-star whom they all lust after.

An unforgettable portrayal of a world that mocks the real and rewards the sham, turns its back on love to plunge into empty sex, and breeds a savage violence that is its own undoing, this novel stands as a classic indictment of all that is most extravagant and uncontrolled in American life.

Verdict: Dump – I’m not sure a story involving empty sex and savage violence appeals, even if it is set in Hollywood. 

Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw (added 27th December 2013)

Ariantes is a Sarmatian, a barbarian warrior-prince, uprooted from his home and customs and thrust into the honorless lands of the Romans. The victims of a wartime pact struck with the emperor Marcus Aurelius to ensure the future of Sarmatia, Ariantes and his troop of accomplished horsemen are sent to Hadrian’s Wall. Unsurprisingly, the Sarmatians hate Britain – an Island of Ghosts, filled with pale faces, stone walls, and an uneasy past.

Struggling to command his own people to defend a land they despise, Ariantes is accepted by all, but trusted by none. The Romans fear his barbarian background, and his own men fear his gradual Roman assimilation. When Ariantes uncovers a conspiracy sure to damage both his Roman benefactors and his beloved countrymen, as well as put him and the woman he loves in grave danger, he must make a difficult decision – one that will change his own life forever.

Verdict: Dump – As a historical fiction fan, the setting of Roman Britain is appealing but I’ve never heard of the author.

Harvest by Jim Crace (added 27th December 2013)

As late summer steals in and the final pearls of barley are gleaned, a village comes under threat. A trio of outsiders – two men and a dangerously magnetic woman – arrives on the woodland borders and puts up a make-shift camp. That same night, the local manor house is set on fire.

Over the course of seven days, Walter Thirsk sees his hamlet unmade: the harvest blackened by smoke and fear, the new arrivals cruelly punished, and his neighbours held captive on suspicion of witchcraft. But something even darker is at the heart of his story, and he will be the only man left to tell it…

Told in Jim Crace’s hypnotic prose, Harvest evokes the tragedy of land pillaged and communities scattered, as England’s fields are irrevocably enclosed. Timeless yet singular, mythical yet deeply personal, this beautiful novel of one man and his unnamed village speaks for a way of life lost for ever.

Verdict: Keep – A book nominated for both the Booker Prize and The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has got to stay really.  Plus it has some positive reviews from book bloggers whose opinion I rate.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (added 8th January 2014)

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa – a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants – life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.

With the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the “clerk class,” the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances’s life – or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.

Verdict: Keep – This is probably one of the few books by Sarah Waters I haven’t read so of course it’s staying.

The Result – 5 kept, 5 dumped.  Would you have made different choices?