Unread books

I have this annoying habit where I buy books and then don't read them. Some of the time I don't even want the book in question, I just pick it up because it's on offer, or I need to complete an offer (Waterstone's 3 for 2, anyone?), so I just buy the book for the sake of it. And it sits there on my shelf, looking longingly at me every time I'm looking for a new book to read, saying "pick me! Pick me!" like we're on some sort of school sports team and I'm the captain. Anyway. I buy the books and they take up space on my shelves and I don't really want them but am never able to give them to charity or anything because I've not read them yet and I'd feel too cruel.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've put together a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days, and one of the items on that list is to read all the unread books on my shelf. I'm going to make a list of them here so I can keep track, and maybe you guys can recommend what I should read first? Or second, or third, or... twenty-fifth? Ha. I don't know how many there are, but let's get started:

• Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
• Persuasion - Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
• Babel Tower - A.S. Byatt
• Women - Charles Bukowski (half read, never finished)
• Life of Pi - Yann Martel (started, never finished)
• The Periodic Table - Primo Levi
• Complete Short Fiction - Oscar Wilde
• One Flew over the Cukoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
• Paradise Lost - John Milton
• The Divine Comedy - Dante (read 'Inferno', but not the other two parts)
• Marley and Me - John Grogan
• Just Kids - Patti Smith
• A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
• Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
• Modern Baptists - James Wilcox
• SCOOP - Evelyn Waugh
• Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman - E.W. Hornung
• The Diary of a Nobody - George and Weedon Grossmith
• Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
• Mapp and Lucia - E.F Benson
• Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
• The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (started but never finished)
• Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
• Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie
• Treasure Island - Daniel Defoe
• Robinson Crusoe - Robert Louis Stevenson
• Ulysses - James Joyce
• The Long Song - Andrea Levy
• Songs of the Humpback Whale - Jodi Picoult

Then there's a large selection of poetry books that I dip in and out of occasionally, so I won't list them. So in total I own 33 books (excluding poetry collections) that I've never read. Oops. At least they'll contribute to my reading goals etc...

Wow. Now I've made this list I feel bad about even considering buying new books. I would say I won't buy any more until I've read everything on this list, but I shouldn't make promises I won't keep!

Reading in Review

Gosh. Welcome to May, everyone! A third of the year has been and gone, and it seems like as good a time as ever for me to take a quick look back at what I've read so far this year. If you've not already seen, I keep a list of (new) books I've read here. My goal for the year is 50 new books (not counting re-reads or things I don't finish).

Despite an awful April, when I only read two books, my year's total so far is 19. A pretty good start, but not as good as last year (or so my trusty notebook tells me). Between January and April last year I read 25 books, but that was also when I was taking a class on Shakespeare, so that includes seven of his plays.

Some general thoughts, then. This year has seen my love for Margaret Atwood's writing grow; I've read a couple of her novels this year and they've been some of my favourites. I also absolutely LOVED the HUNGER GAMES trilogy that I read at the beginning of March. And I was thrilled to read the conclusion of the EARTH'S CHILDREN series (The Land of Painted Caves) at the end of March. I read a handful of the Orange Prize longlisted books - favourites include THE SEAS and REPEAT IT TODAY WITH TEARS, which was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful (and disturbing) that it made me cry.

I was just trying to think of what has been my least favourite book I've read this year. I was underwhelmed by ANIMAL FARM, but I'm glad I read it because now I don't have to just pretend. Other than that, THE FIVE PEOPLE THAT YOU MEET IN HEAVEN didn't please me as much as the other books I've read. It was very different, and a great idea, but I didn't fall in love with it the way I've fallen in love with most of the other books on that list.

All in all, I'd say I've had a pretty good book-year so far. And all this talk about books is making me want to go and read something. I'm not sure what, though, because I'm running out of books. (Ha. That's a lie. But I'm running out of books I want to read.)

So I'm off to sit in front of my bookshelves for a while until I figure something out.

Ciao!

So many books, so little time...

Well, I had a really busy weekend and didn't have time to post here for a few days - it was my housemate's 21st birthday, and my boyfriend was visiting for a few days. But you don't really want to hear about my weekend, do you. (In a nutshell: I ate lots of junk food and got pretty drunk. Standard party stuff, really...)

So instead, I thought I'd show you some of the exciting new additions to my TBR list.

From top to bottom:
The Seas - Samantha Hunt
Repeat it today with tears - Anne Peile
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Babel Tower - A.S Byatt





The best thing about these? I didn't have to buy any of them. I got The Seas from my boyfriend as part of my birthday present, my mum got me this copy of P&P (no, I don't know how I've got to 21 years of age without reading it yet), I was given Babel Tower by my aunt, who got it from someone who was getting rid of a load of their books, and I got Repeat it today with tears from the awesome people at Serpent's Tail, the publishers, after they ran a book giveaway on Twitter.

So there we go. Tomorrow I'll hopefully be able to get my hands on a copy of The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel, which will most likely be fast-tracked to the top of my list. At the minute though, I'm about 100 pages from the end of The Seas, which is pretty good except the narrator scares me a little...

Happy Monday, everyone!

5 Books I Never Wanted To End

In my daily trawl around the internet, I came across The Next Best Book Club - a very interesting-looking book blog. Their most recent post is where I, uh, acquired the idea for this post from.

Have you ever read a book that you've enjoyed so much that you've wanted to be able to keep reading it forever? Well, I have. Here's my five:

1. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Wow. I don't know what to say about this book. But I haven't read another book that's had anywhere near the same effect on me. When I finished reading it I just sat there for a little while thinking "what's next?". As it was, I couldn't think of a suitable book to follow it that wouldn't pale in comparison, so the next day I picked it up and read it all over again. This is, I think, my favourite book ever. It broke my heart, and had particular resonance as a sometimes-friend recommended it to me after one of my school friends passed away, which is where the novel starts. Absolutely incredible.

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
I have friends at university who haven't read any of the Harry Potter series. I struggle with that idea, personally, because they're the series of our generation. They were the first books I'd stay up all night to finish, and I suppose they're what really got me hooked on reading. I could read this whole series again and again. While I didn't want the series to end, I'm glad they did, in a way, before they went downhill in quality and storyline... But yes, I really love these books.

3. Possession by A.S. Byatt
I have a little notebook in which I write down all the books I read. I started doing this in December 2009, so I could keep track. It has a little system: an asterisk if it's a book for university, one tick if I thought it was really great. A cross if I didn't like it. Possession was the first book that I had to give two ticks to, because I thought it was too good for just one. Like Norwegian Wood I didn't know what to read afterwards. It's been about a year since I last read it, though - time for a re-read?

4. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
If you've never read Margaret Atwood... you should. I've read a fair few of her novels, and this is, by far, my favourite. The Goodreads summary says that once you've read this, "nothing will ever look the same again". And they're right. All the science in the background of this novel seems a little too realistic. True, it's taken to the extreme, but you can't help thinking "what if...?". This book terrified me, but in a good way. I just wanted to keep reading, especially when Atwood just... leaves it at the end. (Though there is some resolution in its sort-of sequel, The Year of the Flood...)

5. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
Yes, I know this is the first book in Auel's Earth's Children series, but it is, in my opinion, the best by far. I loved the world of the Clan and Ayla's position within it - something that is missing from the rest of the series. I'm excited for the final book, The Land of Painted Caves, which is coming out at the end of the month, but I can't help feeling that it will never match up to the brilliance of the opening book of the series. I can't count how many times I've re-read this, but every time I notice something new. This is a wonderful, wonderful book. Everyone should read it. (Except you, Ollie. It's very long, it would probably take you ten years to read...)

Of course, I could've chosen many more than five books to enthuse about, but that would've been excessive, don't you think? What about you, then? Which books do you wish had never ended?

Book-haul

My name is Emily Smith, and I'm a bookaholic.

There, I said it.

After the Orange Prize for Fiction longlist was announced yesterday, I spent a lot of the afternoon thinking about books. I'll be honest - I didn't have much else to do. So it got to mid-afternoon and I started getting a bit twitchy and restless, so I decided to go into town. Except "town" for me (90% of the time) means "bookshop". And so I made my way down to the local bookshop, braving a bus full of small children which were having some sort of screaming contest, and picked up a nice selection to add to my TO READ pile.

From top to bottom:
The Swimmer - Roma Tearne
Grace Williams Says it Loud - Emma Henderson
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The Long Song - Andrea Levy.




*Note: I only bought the top 3 yesterday. They were on a 3 for 2 deal, so I got The Book Thief as well because I've heard a fair bit about it recently. I got The Long Song a couple of weeks ago in my last book-haul. I bought Room at the same time, and then a couple of days later bought all of The Hunger Games trilogy. That was a good week.

**Note: This is only the most recent additions to my TO READ pile. Lots of them are at home, rather than with me at university, which makes me sad. Other than these, I think I've only got two other books on my bookshelves here that I haven't read yet, which makes me feel slightly nervous.

I started reading The Swimmer last night. I'm about 80 pages in now, and am enjoying it so far. My initial impressions were that it's got a great cover, and that it could do with a slightly larger font size. I won't go into my thoughts on the novel itself just yet; that's something for another day. I'm off to do a bit more reading now, before some pre-birthday celebrations with my housemates, hooray!

Orange Prize for Fiction: Longlist announced

The Orange Prize for Fiction announced its longlist this morning. The Prize is now in its sixteenth year, and is the UK's only annual award for books written by women. The Prize exists to celebrate the work of talented, original women writers all over the world. This year's longlist of twenty books features writers from twelve different publishing imprints and, most excitingly, nine of the twenty books are debut novels.


The full longlist is as follows:

• Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (Canongate)
• Room by Emma Donoghue (Picador)
• The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi (Bloomsbury)
• Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty (Faber and Faber)
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Corsair)
• The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Bloomsbury)
• The London Train by Tessa Hadley (Jonathan Cape)
• Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson (Sceptre)
• The Seas by Samantha Hunt (Corsair)
• The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna (Faber and Faber)
• Great House by Nicole Krauss (Viking)
• The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone (Chatto & Windus)
• The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (Viking)
• Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile (Serpent's Tail)
• Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Chatto & Windus)
• The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin (Serpent's Tail)
• The Swimmer by Roma Tearne (Harper Press)
• Annabel by Kathleen Winter (Jonathan Cape)

Of these twenty titles, I've only read Room by Emma Donoghue, which I really enjoyed. The novel is narrated by a five year old boy, Jack, who has lived his entire life in a single room with his mother. This was something fresh and original, with an engaging and believable child narrator. If you haven't read it, I thoroughly recommend it.

With less than a month before the shortlist is announced on April 12th, I want to try and read a couple more from this list. I'm going to try and get through Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile, Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson, The Seas by Samantha Hunt, and The Swimmer by Roma Tearne.

Let's see how I get on with these, shall we?

For more info on the Orange Prize for Fiction, see their 2011 page where the longlist and further details about the prize can be found.