Down the TBR hole #1

Down the TBR Hole meme by Lia at Lost in a Story! I actually saw this meme over on One Bookish Girl‘s blog and thought it looks fun 🙂

Most of you probably know this feeling. Your Goodreads TBR pile keeps growing and growing and it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. You keep adding, but you add more than you actually read. And then when you’re scrolling through your list, you realize that you have no idea what half the books are about and why you added them. Well, that’s going to change!

Here’s the instructions:

  • Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.
  • Order on ascending date added.
  • Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
  • Read the synopses of the books.
  • Decide: keep it or should it go?

This is really interesting as it makes me go right back to the first 5 books I added to my TBR list which I STILL haven’t read – and they’re from years and years ago, when I first got a Goodreads account!

And OH MY I have 1836 books on my ‘to read’ list! That’s ridiculous!

The first 5 to stay or go are…

The Firm John Grisham

Date added: June 17, 2012
[Synopsis]

Mitch McDeere is young, intelligent and ambitious. When he gets a job with the law firm of Bendini, Lambert, & Locke it seems to be the path to money and power. But soon Mitch finds that the firm is listening to all his phone calls, and the FBI wants to speak to him. Money and power has a price, and it could be Mitch’s life.

Judgement: Stay! I do still want to read this, though I have no idea when I’ll get around to it. And I am a fan of all the John Grisham books I’ve read so far.
 


The Statistical Probability of Love at First SightJennifer E. Smith

Date added: June 17, 2012
[Synopsis]

Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?
Today should be one of the worst days of seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan’s life. Having missed her flight, she’s stuck at JFK airport and late to her father’s second wedding, which is taking place in London and involves a soon-to-be stepmother Hadley’s never even met. Then she meets the perfect boy in the airport’s cramped waiting area. His name is Oliver, he’s British, and he’s sitting in her row.
A long night on the plane passes in the blink of an eye, and Hadley and Oliver lose track of each other in the airport chaos upon arrival. Can fate intervene to bring them together once more?
Quirks of timing play out in this romantic and cinematic novel about family connections, second chances, and first loves. Set over a twenty-four-hour-period, Hadley and Oliver’s story will make you believe that true love finds you when you’re least expecting it.

Judgement: Go! I forgot I’d got this on my TBR list to be honest and I’m not too bothered about it…


Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Date added: June 17, 2012
[Synopsis]

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life, and for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

Judgement: Stay! I have seen the film and enjoyed it but heard the book is better (as is usually the case) so I do want to read this at some point…


The Paris Wife – Paula McLain

Date added: June 17, 2012
[Synopsis]

A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.
Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill-prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.
A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wifeis all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.

Judgement: Stay! It does sound interesting and I’d like to get around to reading it some day…


Girl with a Pearl Earring –  Tracy Chevalier

Date added: you guessed it – 17 June 2012!
[Synopsis]

With precisely 35 canvases to his credit, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer represents one of the great enigmas of 17th-century art. The meager facts of his biography have been gleaned from a handful of legal documents. Yet Vermeer’s extraordinary paintings of domestic life, with their subtle play of light and texture, have come to define the Dutch golden age. His portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has exerted a particular fascination for centuries – and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier’s second novel of the same title.
Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer’s prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel’s quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant–and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model.

Judgement: Go! I doubt I’ll ever actually get around to reading this, to be honest.


My Goodreads ‘To Read’ list now stands at… *drum roll* 1834! 

What’s your Goodreads ‘To Read’ shelf looking like? Better or worse (hopefully not!) than mine?

 

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21 comments

  1. I really like this meme, it’s nice to do a clean up on the TBR from time to time. I have been debating Girl with a Pearl Earring for a while, but every time I don’t take it out and tell myself I will remove it next time I do a cleanup if I haven’t read it by then… but I never do. Oh, well…

    • A lot of people have said that about this post, glad I can make people feel better hah! ???? meanwhile I’m going to slowly drown under all these TBR books! Thanks for your comment ???? x

  2. Good idea. I would agree with all but maybe the girl with the pearl earring, which I loved. Still, if you haven’t gotten to it by now….

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