Books – My Ever-growing Problem
I have a problem: I love books. Nothing excites me more than dissolving into a fantasy land, falling in love with characters, and becoming fully engulfed in another world. The problem is that it’s very, very hard for me to do that successfully.
I’ve had a year full of book starting, worse than I’ve had for a long time. It got so bad I stopped marking books on GoodReads as “Currently Reading” because I knew there was a good chance I wouldn’t be reading it the next week. The only book I’ve managed to stick with for months has been Irish Country Doctor, but I’ve been reading it very slowly, soaking in rural Ireland.
The other problem amongst all this lack of reading is that my favorite form of therapy is bookstore browsing. It was encouraged in me at a young age, and I still love it. Nothing makes me feel more at peace than browsing bookstore shelves and reading back covers. I’ve tried to convert this means of catharsis to libraries, but it’s never worked since I rarely only take three weeks to read a book. Sometimes I can leave the bookstore without buying anything, but other times I really just want to leave with a book. As a result, I have a shelf full of unread books.
As the year comes to a close, I’m setting a resolve. There are very few books coming out in 2014 that I absolutely must get my hands on. This means that 2014 is a perfect year to catch up on my bookshelf. As such, I’m going to try and rank the top ten unread books on my shelf I want to read next year.
- Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal – Female spy in WWII from a debut author.
- Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson – A world I know, an author I love, and one of his shortest books to boot.
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – A trade paperback I discovered while perusing. I’ve heard nothing by good things and I do have a soft spot for a book she wrote about dalmatians.
- The Stepsister Scheme by Jim Hines – Fairy tale princesses turned assassins with a healthy dose of humor. Started some time ago; now it’s time to finish.
- The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope – I find the film(s) captivating, and it’s a short little classic.
- Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear – Another debut, female private investigator, post-WWI. Don’t read enough 20s-set stuff.
- Changeless by Gail Carriger – Another familiar world and another author I really enjoy; unimpressed by her foray into YA, time to go back to adult.
- Secret Society Girl by Diana Peterfreund – A long-standing recommendation from Sarah that interested me, but didn’t pull me in when I first started. Try again.
- Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta – I love boarding school stories, and I got this in a book swap about three years ago.
- Cinder by Marissa Meyer – I was really excited about this book but never picked it up.
Wish me luck, all! Here’s a really successful reading year, unlike this one. Ugh.
You know what the problem is? You don’t have a hands free commute. I read so much more now that I’m not driving places. And if you didn’t like SSG the first go, don’t worry about it. It’s probably not your style, given everything else on the list! But CINDER is so much fun. I read the second one earlier this year and loved it a lot too. It’s one of the few I’ve continued on the series for.
That’s a good point. My big reading time used to be on the bus and between classes, two time periods I don’t get in a day anymore. And even when commuting to HB I was listening to audiobooks. That is putting a dampener on my reading.
I do still want to give SSG another try. I didn’t dislike it the first time I tried, just didn’t stick with it, for no other reason than I like to start books and then start another book. Cinder I do really need to pull off the shelf.