College Girl – Patricia Weitz

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Christie

There’s a scene in Patricia Weitz’s debut novel College Girl, when the protagonist, 20-year-old college senior Natalie Bloom cuts off all her hair. I don’t know if the scene was inspired by J.J. Abram’s character, Felicity, but it was the first thing I thought of when I read it.

Natalie makes the decision to cut off her hair after she loses her virginity.

…I wanted my reflection to be as ugly as I felt, but it wasn’t and it angered me. I was vile. Base. Life was traveling in a direction I had never wanted it to go in. I hd to stop it. I had to regain control. It scared me where this slippery slope might lead.

I am probably not the demographic for Weitz’s novel or Abraham’s show (which I love college and have watched straight through on more than one occasion.) Still, Natalie Bloom’s story resonated on so many levels for me. It shot me straight back to my university days; not the rose-coloured view I have now, but the awkward, muddled, feeling-my-way experiences I actually lived.

Natalie is the youngest of six; she has five older brothers, one of whom killed himself when she was just ten. On top of navigating her final year of college, it seems like the residual grief over her brother’s suicide is just now catching up to her. She has questions, but the answers are not forthcoming. Her older brothers mostly make fun of her; her father is a taciturn man; her mother, kind but flustered by talk of feelings.

Her family life definitely contributes to Natalie’s personality. She has difficulty articulating what she wants and people tend to walk over her. At school, she rooms with Faith, a “twenty-five-year-old college senior who looked like an eighties chick straight out of a Poison video.” The only person she is nominally friendly with is Linda who “liked everyone […] because she took it for granted that people were generally nice.”

Then Natalie meets Patrick Dunne. He figures larger-than-life in Natalie’s fantasies, but the reality of him is far less appetizing. This tentative first-relationship pushes Natalie firmly away from the shores of adolescence. It was frustrating to watch Patrick capitalize on her insecurities from this vantage point, but it also reminded me so much of my own experiences in my early 20s. I wanted to be liked, but I didn’t always know whose attention was sincere. I never trusted my own instincts.

I would certainly recommend this book to any young woman in her early 20s, but I also enjoyed this book. If nothing else, it made me happy that that part of my life is but a distant memory.

Where All Light Tends to Go – David Joy

Posted on June 9, 2020 by Christie

alllight I was invested in Jacob McNeely, the narrator of David Joy’s novel Where All Light Tends to Go, by the end of the first chapter. The eighteen-year-old high school drop out has climbed to the top of the water tower to smoke a joint and watch what should have been his graduating class leave the school. From his perch, he can see Maggie, the girl he has loved for as long as he can remember.

…Maggie was different. Even early on I remember being amazed by her. She’d always been something slippery that I never could seem to grasp, something buried deep in her that never let anything outside of herself decide what she would become. I’d always loved that about her. I’d always loved her.

Jacob knows that once Maggie breaks free of their backwater Appalachia town, she’ll make something magnificent of her life. He also knows that his fate is set. His mother is addicted to crack; his father makes his living selling it. All Jacob has ever known is a life of violence and hardship.

The senior McNeely is a scary dude. He’s got eyes everywhere in town, including with the police. He’d kicked Jacob’s mother out years before, but kept her in a shack on his property, a house that “was truly unfit for any sort of long-term living.” Jacob visits her sometimes, mostly when he “just needed a place to kill a few hours and a safe spot to dodge the law while [he] got stoned.”

When Jacob’s father instructs him to murder an informant, and Jacob botches the job, it sets in motion a violent chain of events. His father thinks he’s soft and it is perhaps only the fact that Jacob is his son that he doesn’t kill him.

The only light in the darkness is Maggie, and Jacob wonders if perhaps there might not be a way to escape the only life he’s ever known. Maggie is going to leave and maybe he can go with her.

I could not put this book down. It is a chilling and violent and yet there is something tender about Jacob. It is this tenderness that causes him to push Maggie away, but it is that same softness that allows him to see a glimmer of the life he might have if only he were able to crawl out from under the rock of his father. I literally read the last 50 pages with my heart in my throat.

None of Jacob’s experience is my experience. I don’t know anyone who lives the way he lives, and yet that universal yearning for something better is something anyone can relate to. I can’t remember the last time I wanted to reach through the pages and just yank a character to safety. Jacob joins a list of other characters I will never forget including My Absolute Darling‘s Turtle and Our Daily Bread‘s Albert Erskine.

Highly recommended.

Follow Me Down – Sherri Smith

Posted on June 6, 2020 by Christie

When Mia’s twin brother Lucas goes missing after being linked to the death of one of his follow students, Mia has no choice but to return to her small North Dakota hometown. Sherri Smith’s debut novel Follow Me Down plumbs the depths of sibling ties, and uncovers the slimy underbelly of a town that seems to be filled with dark secrets and duplicitous characters.

Mia isn’t exactly living her best life in Chicago when the Wayoata Police Chief calls her asking if she’s heard from her brother. (She hasn’t.) She works the night shift at a corner pharmacy, lives alone and is generally a prickly character. Lucas was always the golden child.

Lucas was already showing signs of how annoyingly good-looking he was going to be.[…] Blond, startling blue eyes, and movie star bone structure. […] As an adult, I’d actually witnessed women going slack-jawed over him, like, unable to speak for a few seconds as they took him in.

Mia is convinced that her brother is innocent of any wrongdoing; he just doesn’t have it in him to hurt anyone. He is a beloved English teacher and hockey coach at the local high school. The local police, including her childhood friend Garrett Burke, seem to have their sights set on Lucas, though, and Mia is sure that she has to a) find her brother and b) prove his innocence.

To say Follow Me Down is jam packed is an understatement. Mia ignores Garrett and turns over every rock possible trying to figure out what might have happened, not only to her brother but to the teenager he is accused of killing. The rumour mill is working overtime, and people in the community seem to think that Lucas and Joanna Wilkes were having an affair. Mia’s amateur investigation seems to stir up a hornet’s nest. A black truck keeps following her and trying to run her off the road; someone seems to be sneaking into her brother’s apartment and taking things; there are more shady characters than you can shake a stick at.

The whole time Mia is sleuthing, she’s self-medicating from her own personal stash of prescription meds. On more than one occasion, I wondered whether she was a reliable narrator. I can’t say that I warmed to her, really.

Still, by about the half-way mark there was no turning away from this story. I needed to know what happened to Lucas, and even if Mia didn’t exactly endear herself to me, I was still invested in her quest for answers.

A solid read.

I just can’t seem to quit you

Posted on June 4, 2020 by Christie

Since March 13th, which is when life as we knew it came to a halt in these parts, I have read 18 books, and I have started and abandoned many others. That got me thinking about why some books haven’t captured my interest during this crazy period in time. I hesitate just to toss them in the “give away” pile because perhaps under different circumstances, I might actually be able to read and enjoy them. This was something I thought about when I considered adding them to my Book Graveyard. When I think about the books that I have flown through, they all seem to have something in common: fast-paced, with great writing. These are books I just couldn’t put down and were totally diverting, which is what I needed so that I didn’t stress about other things, mainly my job.

Of the novels I have read since the beginning of quarantine, The Roanoke Girls has been Roanoke my favourite. Even if I had read it during a different period in my life, I would have loved this story about a girl who discovers a dark secret about her family’s history. It had all the things I love in a book.

I also loved Lisa Jewell’s novel The Family Upstairs. In my experience, Jewell has always been a dependable writer. She’s someone I turn to when I am having a bit of a slump because I know I will enjoy her clever plots and excellent writing. This novel, about the impact one family has on another, delivered on all counts.

Then, there are the books that I’ve started, but just abandoned. Before I consign them to the Book Graveyard, though, I do a little research to see if I should give them another crack. I mean, there has to be a reason I bought them in the first place, right?

Here’s a look at some of the titles I have started and abandoned since the beginning of quarantine. I am not quite ready to break up with them just yet.

tutor First up is Peter Abraham’s novel The Tutor.

From the jacket: Master of psychological suspense Peter Abrahams returns with an ingenious take of an ordinary family that unknowingly invites the agent of their destruction into their own home.

Goodreads rating: almost 4 stars.

Review says: “An insidious tutor affects the lives of a dysfunctional family, in this sharply written psychological suspense.” – from Kirkus

My thoughts: Although I have read a couple other books by Abrahams, (Reality Check, End of Story ), I just couldn’t settle into this novel about a family with every problem under the sun (professional disappointments, failed academic aspirations, troubled teen) and the tutor they hire to help them out. I think I got about 50 or so pages in, but then I just put it to the side. The reason I keep hesitating about tossing it is that I have enjoyed Abrahams in the past, and it is generally well-reviewed by readers.

Strange Fits of Passion – Anita Shreve

From the jacket: Set in the early 1970s, this powerful portrait of truth and deception centers around two New Tork City journalists, Maureen and Harold English. Everyone believes the couple has a happy, stable marriage, and despite strange events, no one suspects domestic abuse could plague their seemingly perfect life together.

Goodreads rating: almost four stars

Review says: “As in her acclaimed Eden Close (1989), Shreve here picks up the loose threads of long-ago murder to weave a gripping and articulate story that has much to say about love and spite and domestic tragedy.” – from Kirkus

My thoughts: I am a big fan of Anita Shreve (Body Surfing, Testimony ) and I think the reason that I didn’t immediately groove to this novel (I only got as far as page 17) is because I knew that it was going to require some effort on my part. Some books need your undivided attention, and I expect that this is going to be one of them. I wasn’t prepared to buckle down at the time, so I put it aside. I will get to again it eventually.

The Longings of Wayward Girls – Karen Brown

From the jacket: It’s an idyllic New England summer, and Sadie is a precocious only child on the edge of adolescence. It seems like July and August will pass lazily by, just as they have every year before. But one day, Sadie and her best friend play a seemingly harmless prank on a neighbourhood girl. Soon after, that same little girl disappears from a backyard barbecue – and she is never seen again.

Goodreads rating: three and a half stars

Review says: “Even with flaws, Brown’s complex and haunting piece is better than average.” – from Kirkus

My thoughts: This is actually my second attempt to read this book and I am not quite certain why I have never managed to get very far in either time. It sounds like a book that would totally be my jam, but for some reason I just never get far enough in to be invested. Perhaps third time’s the charm because I am not ready to give it away just yet.

Broken As Things Are – Martha Witt broken

From the jacket: From the day that Morgan-Lee is born, her extraordinarily beautiful and withdrawn older brother, Ginx, is obsessed by her. […] Morgan-Lee is the only person who is able to understand and engage Ginx. Sharing a secret language, they escape together into a make-believe world.

Goodreads rating: three and a half stars

Review say: “Follows old trails, yet everything you come upon seems absolutely new. A real wonder.” – from Kirkus

My thoughts: I got to page 39 before I set this book aside. It wasn’t because I wasn’t enjoying it, although it was definitely an odd book. Sometimes, because of its rhythms, I think you need to read a book straight through. For whatever reason, I didn’t do that with this one and I sort of lost momentum. I will definitely give this one another go at some point.

The Fates Will Find Their Way – Hannah Pittard

From the jacket: Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighborhood boys she’s left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence.

Goodreads rating: three and a half stars

Review says: “A melancholy coming-of-age debut novel in the spirit of The Virgin Suicides.” – from Kirkus

My thoughts: I got 70 pages into this one, and that’s generally the point of no return for me, so I can only assume that I was just having a hard time staying focused. It’s definitely well-written, and it’s definitely a book I will return to.

What reasons do you have for abandoning a book? I’d love to hear what books you’ve set aside, but intend to get to at some point.

Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders – Julianna Baggott (although my copy is called The Seventh Book of Wonders)

seventh

From the jacket: A tale of long-lost love, motherhood, and family secrets that spans an entire century, this is Baggott’s most enchanting novel yet.

Goodreads rating: almost four stars

Review says: “Moments of heartbreak balance moments of hilarity in Baggott’s ambitious portrait of a family created from equal parts secrecy and love.” – from Kirkus

My thoughts: I made it to page 44, but I just couldn’t seem to fall into the book’s rhythms. The NY Times named it one of 2015’s Notable Books, and while I am not normally swayed by these sorts of accolades, I do think it will be worth getting back to at some point.

The Risen – Ron Rash

From the jacket: While swimming in a secluded creek on a hot Sunday in 1969, sixteen-year-old Eugene and his older brother, Bill, meet Ligeia, a free-spirited redhead from Daytona Beach banished to their small North Carolina town. {…} But when Ligeia vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, the growing rift between the two brothers becomes immutable.

Goodreads rating: almost four stars

Review says: “The novel hits its share of false or clumsy notes, but it’s not ruined by them thanks to Rash’s sure evocation of the time and place and the complexity and poignancy of his portrait of his protagonist.” -from Kirkus

My thoughts: I actually almost hit the 100 page mark and could probably easily finish it – except it’s been a few weeks and in order to give the book its due, I would probably have to start again. I think this book would totally be my jam, if I could just commit to it.

Deep Winter – Samuel W. Gailey

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Christie

deepwinter-3 My son actually purchased this Samuel W. Gailey’s novel Deep Winter because he liked the cover. In my experience, this isn’t generally a great way to choose a book, but when he was doing a purge this book ended up off his bookshelf and on mine because I thought it sounded good.

This is the story of Danny Bedford, a man who, when he was a kid, suffered brain-damage after a near drowning that cost him the lives of both his parents. Since then he has been raised by an abusive uncle and now lives a solitary life over the laundromat where he works. His only friend is a waitress named Mindy.

Danny lives in Wyalusing, a backwater town in Eastern Pennsylvania. When the novel opens, Danny has trekked the three miles out to Mindy’s trailer to deliver a carved bird he’s made for her birthday. He comes across a scene of horror: Mindy is dead.

Her body sprawled out on the trailer floor next to Danny like a discarded rag doll. He knelt beside her with his hands folded and clenched together in his lap, like he was praying at her bedside. Blood soaked into the faded carpet from an open wound on the back of her head, and a few pieces of jagged glass were still stuck in her scalp.

Because Danny intellectually impaired, it’s easy to pin Mindy’s death on him, and that’s exactly what happens. What follows is the story of that death, and the malevolent tendrils that reach out into the community because of it. The story is told from multiple points of view, which probably helps things move along.

Gailey’s novel is populated by a relatively unpleasant cast of characters, most notably Sokowski, the Deputy, and his side-kick, Carl. In fact, the villains are so awful they’re almost caricatures. It takes place in the dead of winter, during a storm, and is almost relentlessly grim.

Gailey has written for film and TV and that’s how Deep Winter reads. There’s not a lot of literary bells and whistles, here. That’s not a criticism, really, although I didn’t love the book. It’s a straightforward, nuance-free crime thriller and I doubt you’d have any trouble turning the pages.

Another Brooklyn – Jacqueline Woodson

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Christie

When August returns to Brooklyn after the death of her father, she is catapulted back in time to her childhood and it is these memories which fuel Jacqueline Woodson’s novel Another Brooklyn.

Twenty years have passed since my childhood. This morning, we buried my father. My brother and I stood shoulder to shoulder at the grave-site, willows weeping down around us, nearly bare-branched against the snow.

Riding the subway, she spots an old friend, Sylvia, and it reminds her of when they (along with Gigi and Angela) “were four girls together, amazingly beautiful and terrifyingly alone.”

Woodson’s novel is an elliptical, poetic examination of what it is to be a young, black woman growing up in the 70s. I also came of age in the 70s, and I suppose in that regard I have something in common with August. Not only does August find herself in an unfamiliar world, one that she watches from a window for the first few months she lives there, but she is also grappling with a missing mother, the shifting landscape of friendships, poverty, and her own growing awareness of the power of her body.

But as she says “This is memory.”

Another Brooklyn isn’t really a novel with a plot. That doesn’t mean that nothing happens. It’s just that the story unfurls like a long, dreamy reminiscence. August remembers her childhood in Tennessee; she remembers the trio of girls she befriends before they were hers.

They called to each other across the yard. They linked arms and laughed. They curled into each other to whisper when the teacher’s back was turned. Before I knew their names, I knew the tiny bones at the back of their necks, the tender curve of their hairlines.

She remembers the “kind of poverty we lived in.” She remembers the music they listened to, the summer the lights went out in New York and Jerome, the boy who, when she was nine “Looked up at my window and winked at me from where he and his friends were playing in the streets.”

This is a beautiful coming-of-age novel, that is very specific but feels universal.

Rules of Attraction – Simone Elkeles

Posted on May 26, 2020 by Christie

I read the first novel in Simone Elkeles Perfect Chemistry trilogy, Perfect Chemistry seven rules years ago. (Yikes!!!) Since then, I have recommended the book countless times to students looking for a romantic, fast-paced story. I have never had a single student tell me they didn’t like it. It’s a great book and even boys enjoy the story of Alex and Brittany. And if they like that book, well, Alex has two brothers and they each get their own novel. I hadn’t read either of the follow -ups, so I grabbed Rules of Attraction to bring home to read during this strange time of quarantine.

At the end of Perfect Chemistry, Alex and Brittany had left Chicago and gone off to college in Colorado. Carlos, 18, has now been sent to live in Colorado to get him away from the gangs in Mexico, where his mother and younger brother Luis still live. Carlos is the proverbial “angry young man”. The decision to go to America was not his

Mi’ama didn’t ask if I wanted to leave Mexico and move to Colorado to live with my brother Alex for my senior year of high school. She made the decision to send me back to America “for my own good” – her words, not mine.

So, he’s pissed off at the world: At his brother who left gang life when he fell in love with Brittany, at the system which seems against him, at the world, and at Kiara, the daughter of the professor with whom he lives as a condition of getting caught with drugs soon after he starts school.

Kiara, also a senior, is a good girl. (Of course, that’s the way these stories go. :-)) She’s recently been text-dumped and she’s feeling a little raw. She knows Alex because he works as a mechanic (to help pay for college) and he’s been helping her refurbish her car. When he asks her to show Carlos around school, she happily agrees. Carlos, however, isn’t interested in being shown anything.

I don’t need a damn peer guide because (1) it’s obvious from the way Alex greeted Kiara a few minutes ago that he knows her, and (2) the girl is not hot; she has her hair up in a ponytail, is wearing leather hiking boots and three-quarter stretch pants with an Under Armour logo peeking out the bottom, and is covered from neck to knee by an oversized T-shirt with the word MOUNTAINEER written on it, and (3) I don’t need a babysitter, especially one my brother arranged.

Of course, readers know that Kiara and Carlos will end up together, that she will bring out the hidden softness in him, that he will fall in love with her inherent goodness, that they’ll overcome the obstacles chucked in their path.

Teen readers will eat it up.

The House at Midnight – Lucie Whitehouse

Posted on May 23, 2020 by Christie

housemidnight Lucie Whitehouse’s debut novel The House at Midnight tells the story of Joanna and her close-knit circle of friends who spend weekends at Stoneborough Manor in Oxfordshire. Her dearest friend, Lucas, has recently inherited Stoneborough from his Uncle Patrick, a well-known art dealer. On their first visit there, Joanna observes that the house is “Three storeys high, [and] it reared up out of the night as if it were facing the darkness down.” The house gives Joanna a “pang of anxiety.” She wonders “How could it not change things between us.”

Whitehouse’s story works on a variety of different levels. First of all, the house is, at least to Joanna, menacing. To her, it feels like a malevolent entity, intent on causing harm. Despite the fact that she and her friends Martha (an American ex-pat and Jo’s roommate), Rachel and her new boyfriend Greg, Michael, Danny and, of course, Lucas, gather here to drink and dance and try, in some ways, to recapture the headiness of their college days, there is something about the house that unsettles her.

I had the sudden sense that there were eyes on me…My skin prickled. The sound of my voice played in my ear. I took a breath and forced myself to stand still for a moment and look into the unlit corners away from the lamps and up above my head to the landings. I half expected to see someone there, leaning over the banisters watching me. There was nothing. And yet there was. It seemed to me that there was something lurking, something that was not benevolent.

Then there’s Lucas. Joanna meets him during her first week at college and the two form a strong bond. For a minute it seemed like their friendship might morph into something more romantic, but the moment passed. Now, ten years later, Jo is wondering whether she and Lucas might have a chance.

The House at Midnight captures that fraught period post college when you might be wondering what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. Lucas is a lawyer; Danny is in advertising. Jo works as a junior writer for a small weekly newspaper. None of them is particularly satisfied with their lives.

Then comes the romantic entanglements, which in a small, close-knit group often seem almost incestuous. As the novel moves along, it draws and redraws lines in the romantic sand, and some of the shifts cause irreparable damage to the group.

There were moments in the novel whether I wondered if Jo was a reliable narrator. Could I trust what she was telling me? Were her feelings about the house the result of an over-active imagination or something else? I liked that I didn’t quite trust her.

This book is SO good. The house itself is a character, full of shadowy corners and dark secrets. There’s something claustrophobic about it and about these friends as they try to sort themselves out. Ultimately, the most sinister thing about the book is the length people will go to get what they want and the damage they are willing to cause in the name of love.

This is my second novel by Whitehouse. I read and loved Before We Met at the beginning of the year.

I can highly recommend both of these books.

The Lost Daughter – Lucy Ferriss

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Christie

The whole time I was reading Lucy Ferriss’s novel The Lost Daughter, I was trying to lostdaughter figure out whether I liked it — not the book, exactly, the whole family drama thing. Am I really interested in life’s ups and downs? Do I care about people’s children and marriages? Well, if every book was as good as this one, the answer would be yes.

When the novel opens high school seniors Brooke and Alex have taken refuge in a hotel where Brooke is about to give birth. It’s a harrowing beginning to their stories. Brooke was bound for Tufts in the fall, and Alex was going off to college on a soccer scholarship.

Fast forward fifteen years and Brooke is married to Sean. They have a six-year-old daughter called Meghan. Their marriage is solid, but Sean is pressing for another baby; in his big Irish Catholic clan, a single child is blasphemy. Brooke is reluctant; she has her reasons although it’s difficult for her to articulate them. Sean doesn’t understand Brook’s reticence and her

excuses bewildered him. His love for her harbored no doubts, and he had seen the joy she took in Meghan. Every time they talked about another pregnancy it went this way, but he loved her too much to stop.

Then Alex blows through town. He’d been living in Japan with his wife and young son, but his life has fallen apart. “I’d like to see you from time to time…If that’s okay. I’m not going to, you know, invade your life or anything,” Alex tells her. Their reunion causes a ripple effect and sets them both on a path from which there is no turning back.

There are no bad guys in The Lost Daughter. This is a novel that asks you to examine the choices people make, the consequences of those choices and how sometimes life throws you an unexpected curve ball. Ferriss’s characters seem like real people. Sean’s bewilderment over Brooke’s behaviour and his own disappointments make him a dynamic character, rather than just a foil against which Alex and Brooke’s story plays out. Brooke and Alex are equally authentic. It didn’t really matter whose part of the journey I was following, it was all compelling. That’s a credit to Ferriss’s writing. I’ve never read anything by her before this, but I would definitely like to read more of her work.

While The Lost Daughter is ultimately hopeful, it does recognize that “…life itself, in the end, [is] a tragic journey…”. This journey, however, is well worth taking.

Highly recommended.

Shopping My Shelves

Posted on May 18, 2020 by Christie

We’ve been sheltering in place since March 16, which means I have not been to a book store since…March 16. Typically, my son Connor and I hit Indigo about once a week. Occasionally, we simply browse – neither of us need to add anything to our TBR shelves, to be honest. More often than not, though, we simply can’t resist buying something. Since Covid 19 has made it impossible to hit the book store, I have been shopping my own shelves.

My TBR shelf is ridiculous. Some people buy shoes; I buy books. Marie Kondo would not approve. I love them. They are objects of beauty, which is why eReaders do not appeal to me. They are, as Stephen King says, “uniquely portable magic.” I love knowing that when I finish a book, I have dozens (okay, hundreds) more to choose from.

Recently, Connor volunteered to colour block my TBR shelf. Although my read shelves are alphabetized so I can find books easily, and another shelf is organized by genre, colour blocking my TBR shelf kept both of us busy for a handful of hours. Browsing my TBR shelf isn’t anymore difficult this way, because I don’t really know what’s on it anyway. (That’s the problem of having a book-buying addiction, although it’s a good problem to have.)

bookshelves

I enjoy shopping my shelves. It’s kinda cool, when I stumble upon a book I’d forgotten that I owned, or something that’s been on my shelf forever. Or, when I come across a book that I don’t remember buying, read it and it turns out to be spectacularly good, which is the case with a book I recently read called The Roanoke Girls.

Today, I thought I would take you on a tour of some of the books on my TBR shelf.

First of all – let’s take a look at some of the books with buzz. I don’t automatically buy every single book that wins a prize or garners lots of praise or makes the NY Times best seller list. But I do buy some. These books are on my TBR shelf.

Of the books pictured, Olive Kitteridge has been on my shelf the longest. I don’t know why I haven’t read it because I have heard nothing about good things about it.

My TBR shelf also consists of books that I’ve started and, for some reason, stopped reading. I don’t want to call them DNFs just yet, so I stick them back on the shelf in the hopes that I will pick them up and enjoy them in the future. At one point in my reading life, I finished every book I started. That served me well in university, when I was often called upon to read something I didn’t necessarily want to read. Nowadays, I am easier on myself; if a book doesn’t float my boat, I give it 50-75 pages and then move on. These books, for whatever reason, I just can’t break up with.

So, a little about some of the books pictured above:

The JJ Abrams book S (middle right) was a birthday gift from Connor a few years ago. It’s a book that requires real focus because it’s a book filled with documents (see picture top right) and footnotes etc. I want to read it, but I know I need to read it straight through without distractions.

Hollywood Savage (top left) is by the author of one of my all-time, most-read novels Velocity I read another of her novels, Some Girls, and while I enjoyed it, I don’t think anything McCloy ever writes will usurp Velocity‘s place in my heart. I gave Hollywood Savage a go a while back, and I don’t think it’s going to be my cup of tea…but since I love McCloy, I am not going to give up on this one.

Shelter (bottom right) has the distinction of being on my TBR shelf since 1994. I have tried to read this book on more than one occasion. I am not sure why I keep trying other than I seem to recall there was some controversy surrounding the book, and I can’t resist a good book scandal. I can’t seem to give up on it.

The other books will remain on my TBR shelf because they are by local authors (Finding Woods), are by authors I have enjoyed before (The Secret Keeper), or have been approved by readers I respect (Foxlowe, Cruel Beautiful World).

shoppingreread Occasionally, a book that I have read before ends up on my TBR shelf. Usually, it’s a book that I read a long time ago, and that I remember really fondly and want to revisit. That happened with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which I reread last summer. Carolyn Slaughter’s novel Magdalene is another one of those novels I hope to reread one day. Actually, I wouldn’t mind re-reading several of Slaughter’s books as I LOVE her. This is my second copy of this book; I lent my original and never got it back. 😦 It’s very difficult to get any of Slaughter’s novels, but I have had pretty good luck with Abe Books or The Book Depository. I highly recommend The Banquet and The Story of the Weasel (also known as Relations).

Another book I would love to re-read is Peter Straub’s novel Shadowlands. I have been a shoppingreread1 long-time fan of Straub, although I don’t read him much anymore (even though I have several books on this shelf: see below.) I think the last book I read by him was Lost Boy, Lost Girl, which I recall not liking very much. His earlier stuff, though, is fantastic. Check out Ghost Story or If You Could See Me Now, both of which probably deserve a re-read.

I also tend to hoard books by authors I like, y’know, so I always have something dependable to grab. Some of those authors include Helen Dunmore (who sadly died in 2017), Andrew Pyper, Lisa Jewell, Thomas H. Cook, Stephen King to name but a few.

Finally, there are some books on my TBR shelf that are kind of embarrassing. These are books that I probably should have read way before now, for a variety of reasons: everyone and their dog has already read (and loved it), it’s been on my shelf a stupidly long time and I have no excuse or I was really excited to read it, but then didn’t and now it languishes with all the others. Le sigh. Here are but a handful in this category.

And just in case you think the books on my colour blocked TBR shelf are the only TBR books I own, you’d be wrong. In my world, you can never have too many books.

shoppingtoomany