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I'm such a nerd that I keep a Pinterest board for the books I want to read. Recently, I realized that there were nearly 700 books on my board. That's overwhelming. Do you know how many years it would take me to read 700 books? I don't even want to do the math.
So, I reread the synopsis of all 700 books on my board. I deleted the books that no longer interest me, and the giant books I knew I'd never be motivated enough to finish. I managed to cut my board down to 300 books. That's still too many, but it's better than 700!
Here are ten random books I "rediscovered" while ruthlessly culling my to-be-read list.
My Book Wish List
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Mythology Fiction
Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
Why I want to read it: It sounds like a very weird story, but I don't think I've ever seen a bad review of it. I want to know what the hype is about.
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Ask The Past: Pertinent And Impertinent Advice From Yesteryear by Elizabeth P. Archibald
History Nonfiction
Ask the Past is full of the wisdom of the ages—as well as the fad diets, zany pickup lines, and bacon Band-Aids of the ages. Drawn from centuries of antique texts by historian and bibliophile Elizabeth P. Archibald, Ask the Past offers a delightful array of advice both wise and weird.
Whether it's eighteenth-century bedbug advice (sprinkle bed with gunpowder and let smolder), budget fashion tips of the Middle Ages (save on the clothes, splurge on the purse) or a sixteenth-century primer on seduction (do not pass gas), Ask the Past is a wildly entertaining guide to life from the people who lived it first.
Why I want to read it: It sounds delightful. I love learning about history, especially if it's wise or weird.
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Meet The Newmans by Jennifer Niven
Adult Historical Fiction
For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb—literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and rock ‘n roll idol Shep may finally be in real trouble.
When Del—the creative motor behind the show—is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964. Can the Newmans hold it together to change television history? Or will they be canceled before they ever have the chance?
Why I want to read it: Reviewers say it's like a funny version of The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo. That description sounds way too good to pass up.
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Duma Key by Stephen King
Adult Horror
When Edgar Freemantle moves to the remote island of Duma Key to escape his past, he doesn't expect to find much there.
But Duma has been waiting for him. The shells beneath his house are whispering to him, and something in the view from his window urges him to discover a talent he never knew he had.
Edgar Freemantle begins to paint. And as he paints, the islands' secrets begin to stir. Secrets of children lost in the undertow, of a ghost ship riding the distant horizon, and a family's buried past reaching long hands into the present.
Why I want to read it: I'm on a lifelong mission to read every Stephen King book. This one doesn't get as much attention as King's other stuff, but it sounds good to me. Supernatural beach horror is a perfect summer read.
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The Woman In White by Wilke Collins
Classic Horror
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.
Why I want to read it: It's a classic that had a huge impact on the horror genre. I want to know what's so important about it.
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Trailed: One Woman's Quest To Solve The Shenandoah Murders by Kathryn Miles
True Crime
In May 1996, two skilled backcountry leaders, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, entered Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a week-long backcountry camping trip. The free-spirited and remarkable young couple had met and fallen in love the previous summer while working at a world-renowned outdoor program for women. During their final days in the park, they descended the narrow remnants of a trail and pitched their tent in a hidden spot. After the pair didn’t return home as planned, park rangers found a scene of horror at their campsite, their tent slashed open, their beloved dog missing, and both women dead in their sleeping bags. The unsolved murders of Winans and Williams continue to haunt all who had encountered them or knew their story.
When award-winning journalist and outdoors expert Kathryn Miles begins looking into the case, she discovers conflicting evidence, mismatched timelines, and details that just don’t add up. With unprecedented access to crucial crime-scene forensics and key witnesses—and with a growing sense of both mission and obsession—she begins to uncover the truth. An innocent man, Miles is convinced, has been under suspicion for decades, while the true culprit is a known serial killer, if only authorities would take a closer look.
Why I want to read it: I heard about this case when I was a child, and it traumatized me because my family camped a lot. It's something I think about whenever I camp alone. I didn't know the case was still unsolved. I want to know why, even though I'll probably traumatize myself all over again.
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Breakfast At Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Classic Literary Fiction
Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's. In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.
Why I want to read it: I've read almost all of Truman Capote's work. I somehow missed this one. He was awesome at creating memorable characters.
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Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein
Political Nonfiction
America is polarized by identity. Over the past fifty years in America, partisan identities have merged with racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities, attaining a weight that is breaking much in politics and tearing at the bonds that hold the country together. Political analyst Ezra Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the twentieth century and what that polarization did to the way people see the world and one another. He traces the feedback loops—between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions—driving the system toward crisis.
Why I want to read it: *Gestures vaguely at America.*
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Plagues And Peoples by William H. McNeill
History Nonfiction
Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact—political, demographic, ecological, and psychological—of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind.
Why I want to read it: It's a classic! This book is assigned reading in many college history classes. I took a lot of history classes, but I somehow never had it forced upon me.
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Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine K. Albright
History Nonfiction
The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright draws on her experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption.
Why I want to read it: *Gestures vaguely at everywhere.*
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Which book have you recently added to your wish list?
I hope you get to read them all soon.
ReplyDeleteI’m optimistic that life extension will be available before I die giving me the time to read all 4500 books on my TBR :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your #TTT