Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Top Ten Tuesday: Long-Term Reading Failures


Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is ten books that have been on my to-be-read list the longest. I don’t own any of these books, but I swear I’ll read them someday.




Long-Term Reading Failures





Added to my list in 2013:








Son – Lois Lowry

They called her Water Claire. When she washed up on their shore, no one knew that she came from a society where emotions and colors didn’t exist. That she had become a Vessel at age thirteen. That she had carried a Product at age fourteen. That it had been stolen from her body. Claire had a son. But what became of him she never knew. What was his name? Was he even alive? She was supposed to forget him, but that was impossible. Now Claire will stop at nothing to find her child, even if it means making an unimaginable sacrifice.






Added to my list in 2015:








Transcendence – Shay Savage

Ehd’s a caveman living on his own in a harsh wilderness. He’s strong and intelligent, but completely alone. When he finds a beautiful young woman in his pit trap, it’s obvious to him that she is meant to be his mate. He doesn’t know where she came from; she’s wearing some pretty odd clothing, and she makes a lot of noises with her mouth that give him a headache. Still, he’s determined to fulfill his purpose in life – provide for her, protect her, and put a baby in her. 
Elizabeth doesn’t know where she is or exactly how she got there. She’s confused and distressed by her predicament, and there’s a caveman hauling her back to his cavehome. She’s not at all interested in Ehd’s primitive advances, and she just can’t seem to get him to listen. No matter what she tries, getting her point across to this primitive, but beautiful, man is a constant–and often hilarious–struggle. 
With only each other for company, they must rely on one another to fight the dangers of the wild and prepare for the winter months. As they struggle to coexist, theirs becomes a love story that transcends language and time.







In A Handful Of Dust – Mindy McGinnis

Lucy’s life by the pond has always been full. She has water and friends, laughter and the love of her adoptive mother, Lynn, who has made sure that Lucy’s childhood was very different from her own. Yet it seems Lucy’s future is settled already—a house, a man, children, and a water source—and anything beyond their life by the pond is beyond reach. 
When disease burns through their community, the once life-saving water of the pond might be the source of what’s killing them now. Rumors of desalinization plants in California have lingered in Lynn’s mind, and the prospect of a “normal” life for Lucy sets the two of them on an epic journey west to face new dangers: hunger, mountains, deserts, betrayal, and the perils of a world so vast that Lucy fears she could be lost forever, only to disappear in a handful of dust.







The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale – Art Spiegelman

By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival—and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents.







Michael Martone – Michael Martone

Michael Martone is its own appendix, comprising fifty "contributors’ notes," each of which identifies in exorbitant biographical detail the author of the other forty-nine. It is full of fanciful anecdotes and preposterous reminiscences. Michael Martone's self-inventions include the multiple deaths of himself and all his family members, his Kafkaesque rebirth as a giant insect, and his stints as circus performer, assembly-line worker, photographer, and movie extra. Expect no autobiographical consistency here.







Brown Girl Dreaming – Jacqueline Woodson

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world.







Horrorsțr РGrady Hendrix

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking. 
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.







The Black Project – Gareth Brookes

Getting yourself a girlfriend is easy, according to Richard. All you need is papier mache, string, soft material, a balloon, some old fashioned bellows, and a good pair of scissors. The difficult bit is keeping her secret. Set in an English suburb in the early 1990s, this is the story of Richard's all-consuming passion for creating 'girls' from household objects. But as his hobby begins to flourish, his real life friendships and family relationships deteriorate.







The Elephant Vanishes: Stories – Haruki Murakami

When a man’s favorite elephant vanishes, the balance of his whole life is subtly upset; a couple’s midnight hunger pangs drive them to hold up a McDonald’s; a woman finds she is irresistible to a small green monster that burrows through her front garden; an insomniac wife wakes up to a twilight world of semi-consciousness in which anything seems possible—even death. In every one of the stories that make up The Elephant Vanishes, Murakami makes a determined assault on the normal.







Our Endless Numbered Days – Claire Fuller

Peggy Hillcoat is eight years old when her survivalist father, James, takes her from their home in London to a remote hut in the woods and tells her that the rest of the world has been destroyed. Deep in the wilderness, Peggy and James make a life for themselves. They repair the hut, bathe in water from the river, hunt and gather food in the summers and almost starve in the harsh winters. They mark their days only by the sun and the seasons. 
When Peggy finds a pair of boots in the forest and begins a search for their owner, she unwittingly begins to unravel the series of events that brought her to the woods and, in doing so, discovers the strength she needs to go back to the home and mother she thought she’d lost.







Have you read any of these? Which should I read, and which should I delete from the list? 








28 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed handful of dust. Just as much as the first book

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  2. Maus was good. I read it in school but don't remember it anymore. I think I have Horrorstor on my TBR too.

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  3. A Handful of Dust is super interesting but you have to be in the right mood for it.

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  4. I read Maus. It's not world-changing, but it's a decent read. It's certainly not difficult to get through.

    Michael Mmrtone seems fun.

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  5. In A Handful Of Dust is pretty good! I haven't read any of the others in your list. There are so many on my TBR, I wouldn't even know where to start. ☺

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  6. I only know a few of these. I actually saw Maus in my library and wondered if I should pick that up at some point.

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  7. Maus is the only one I've read. It's not a light book for sure. Easy to read page-count wise, but you might have to put it down a few times to digest it. Well worth the read, though!

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  8. I've heard really good things about Maus. I really want to try to read that one.

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  9. I've not read any of these and I also have a couple of Haruki Murakami books that have been on my TBR for a while. Murakami books are hit or miss for me so I've been hesitant to pick up the ones I haven't read yet, especially because they're huge.

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  10. I've wanted to read some McGinnis but it hasn't happened yet...

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  11. Haven't read them all, but Brown Girl Dreaming seems intriguing.
    Hope you'll read some or probably all of them this year! :D

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  12. I read Horrorstor, and thought it was over the top but totally amazing -- but it depends on your tolerance for horror and Ikea! LOL. I really liked Son. I read the quartet straight through about two years ago, and I liked the way Son wrapped up the story. Maus is a classic that everyone should read. Looks like you have some interesting books here!

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  13. OMG, how come I had never heard about this book by Murakami, my favorite Japanese author!
    Brown Girl Dreaming is excellent, I actually watched live online when she received her award for it. really great person

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  14. Yes to Maus and the McGinnis. Hard pass on the cave man erotica. I feel super guilty for how underwhelmed I was at Brown Girl Dreaming. Horrorstör, The Black Project, and Our Endless Numbered Days all sound really good and totally like your kind of thing.

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  15. My co-blogger was a fan of those Lois Lowry books. She read them in middle school. I had never read those books, but she is an author I read when I was a kid.

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  16. I couldn't read a holocaust book with mice cartoon characters...I get upset by bad things happening to animals so I think I'd avoid that one.

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  17. You've got me thinking about all my TBR books! I know they must have appealed to me at the time of adding to the list, but some I don't now recognise at all!

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  18. If you want a partner for Maus, please do let me know -- it's on my list for this year no matter what!

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  19. So many books yet not enough hours in the day! Hope you get through a few of these this year :)

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  20. I’ve yet to read anything by Mindy McGinnis despite seeing so many trusted friends rave about her writing. One of these days...

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  21. Mmmm...I think you should read Brown Girl Dreaming. It's one of the books I want to read too.

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  22. I don't know exactly why but The Giver really upset and disturbed me when I read it (especially the ending) and I never wanted to continue with the series. I do really want to read Horrorstor though. I forgot all about it until I saw it on this list! Thanks for stopping by my blog before!

    Lauren @ www.laurencarrollreadsandwrites.blogspot.co.uk

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  23. I really want to get to Maus soon, so many people rave about it. Good luck with your reading!

    Carmen`s Reading Corner

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  24. There are just too many books to keep up. lol I have a number of friends who loved the Shay Savage one.

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  25. I've had Mindy McGinnis' books on my TBR for a long time. I'll have to try to read her books this year. Great list and I hope you enjoy these books.

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  26. I vote for Brown Girl Dreaming! I also have a few Haruki Murakami languishing on my TBR. I keep putting off trying him for some reason!

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  27. I added “In A Handful Of Dust“ to my TBR after I readthe Female of the Species I hope to get to it!

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  28. I first read Maus in high school and have read it a few times since, although not in recent years. I hope you are able to get to it at some point. It's quite good. I really want to get to Brown Girl Dreaming this year. I keep pulling it off my shelf, but then I put it back. One of these days! Hopefully you will get to all of these at some point too.

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