Down the TBR Hole #8

Down the TBR Hole was originally created over at Lost in a Story.

Most of you probably know this feeling, you’re 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!

It works like this:

  • Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
  • Order on ascending date added.
  • Take the first 5 (or 10, if you’re feeling adventurous) books
  • Read the synopses of the books
  • Decide: keep it or should it go?
  • Keep track of where you left off so you can pick up there next week!

My to-read shelf: 1055 titles (Why, yes, that is more than I started with last week. At some point, this will start to shrink, right?)

Antarctica: Life on the Ice by Susan Fox Rogers (Ed.)

Published: September 28, 2007
On TBR Since: March 9, 2012

Like I’m going to get rid of an Antarctic essay collection.

Stay or Go? Stay

No Horizon Is So Far: Two Women And Their Extraordinary Journey Across Antarctica by Liv Arnesen and Ann Bancroft
No Horizon Is So Far: Two Women And Their Extraordinary Journey Across Antarctica

Published: September 1, 2003
On TBR Since: March 9, 2012

Arnesen and Bancroft were the first women to cross Antarctica on foot. Antarctic adventure memoir. I need to read this book.

Stay or Go? Stay

Penguins and Golden Calves: Icons and Idols in Antarctica and Other Unexpected Places by Madeleine L’Engle

Published: 1996
On TBR Since: March 10, 2012

I’m just gonna take this from the GoodReads summary: “Despite protests and warnings from friends and family, author Madeleine L’Engle, at the age of seventy-four, embarked on a rafting trip to Antarctica.”

Stay or Go? Stay

Yarn: Remembering the Way Home by Kyoko Mori
Published: 2009
On TBR Since: March 10, 2012

Knitting memoir. I was definitely on-brand putting things on my TBR that particular day.

Stay or Go? Stay

Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature by Brian Switek

Published: 2010
On TBR Since: March 10, 2012

I’ll probably come back to this one someday, but for now, it goes.

Stay or Go? Go

The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, edited by by Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee

Published: March 1, 2011
On TBR Since: March 10, 2012

A collection of essays on “the future of books” that is now seven years old.

Stay or Go? Go

The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time by David L. Ulin

Published: June 1, 2010
On TBR Since: March 10, 2012

I’m just not feeling this one anymore. Too many other things I’m more interested in reading.

Stay or Go? Go

Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard by Jack Lynch

Published: June 12, 2007
On TBR Since: March 10, 2012

The “Annotated” podcast episode on “Saving Shakespeare” has reignited my interest in this one.

Stay or Go? Stay

On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica by Gretchen Legler

Published: October 25, 2005
On TBR Since: March 10, 2012

Antarctic memoir. That’s all.

Stay or Go? Stay

Runners on Running: The Best Nonfiction of Distance Running by Rich Elliott (Ed.)

Published: November 5, 2010
On TBR Since: March 10, 2012

Another one that I might come back to one day, but today is not that day.

Stay or Go? Go

Four out, six stay in.  New to-read shelf: 1051 titles. Until I add more books in, like, 10 minutes.