Well, here we are five months into 2009. Back in January I posted about my book-related goal for the year. Even though I haven’t been posting here, I have been slowly chipping away at my stash! I’ll be moving again in a few months, and I do NOT want to bring all my unread literary baggage along.
Until a month or so ago, the way I purged books was to read the back, decide if it still sounded appealing, and then keep it or donate it depending on the answer. I recently picked up one of these interesting sounding books and started reading, only to realize that although the premise sounded great, the writing just didn’t hold my attention. Inspired, I went through every one of my books, reading the first few pages. If I enjoyed reading it, it stayed; if not, into the donation box it went. I managed to cut my number of books in half!
I’m still plugging away. I started with the books I knew I wouldn’t want to keep, which has helped. Now I’m working on the advanced reader copies I have from work, so I can stay at least somewhat up to date on the new titles coming out! (Side note: if you haven’t read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins yet, do it soon…the sequel, Catching Fire, comes out in September and it is AWESOME!) The hardest part for me is not bringing new books home. I see so many great titles at work every day that I’m not always able to resist!
I just finished Thrity Umrigar’s newest novel, The Weight of Heaven. Definitely not good as a pick-me-up, but extremely well written. If you liked Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, I think you’d like The Weight of Heaven as well.
Currently I’m working on Thrity Umrigar’s memoir, First Darling of the Morning, and Steven Galloway’s novel The Cellist of Sarajevo. More as I get through them!