Pick-a-Shelf discussion

Here's the link for this month's shelf:

Favorites

I'll start with these, and hopefully add more (seems I say that every month!)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London Apr 20
The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery Apr 7
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K.Rowling
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson Apr 4
I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak Apr 7

I am being conservative with my list this month, because I always make a bigger list than I can ever get to. I am going to start with three that are for other current challenges I am involved in. Two of these books were on my list for last month's "Dystopia" shelf, but I never got to them.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I need to read 2-3 other books for other challenges as well - none of which manage to make it onto the Favorites shelf and so can not do double duty. But if I get through those, I'll add to this month's shelf list.

I'll just aim for 1 but seeing that it's a list filled with favourites, I might end up reading more, who knows? :D

My pick is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I'm probably the only English Lit graduate who's not read it yet, shame on me!

Alright I found 22 books that from my TBR list from the first couple pages of this shelf.. so i guess to narrow it down I will read at least one of these:

The Princess Bride
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Persuasion
Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies

Em, I have read three of the books on your list. I hope you enjoy them!

Brave New World - a leftover from March
The Joy Luck Club - it ends in a "b" so I can read it right before Brave New World and include it in my chain :)

Candiss - I just read Never Let Me Go, and LOVED it. I hope you like it, too.

This is great since many of my challenge books for other groups are on this list. Here are mine:

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Changes by Jim Butcher
Robert Frost's Poems by Robert Frost

I am going to try and get to
The Help
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Little Bee
Elsewhere
Enter Three Witches

and hopefully some more.

I had twelve books from the first 20 pages that are either sitting on my shelf or on my kindle already waiting to be read. What a great opportunity to knock some of them out!

I'm going to short list them now, and hopefully add more as the month goes on. . .

1. The Kite Runner (I'd already started this a couple of years ago, but put it down at the rape scene. I would love to pick it up again and finish it.)
2. Rebecca
3. The Thirteenth Tale
4. The Hiding Place
5. Me & Emma
6. The Eyre Affair
7. A Thousand Splendid Suns
8. Olive Kitteridge

I love playing TBR clean up with this shelf!

Tina - Rebecca and The Thirteenth Tale are really good.

Lyn M wrote: "Tina - Rebecca and The Thirteenth Tale are really good."

That's good! I'm looking forward to them :-)

I loved the Red Tent--hope you do too! I'll be interested to hear what you think about the Historian--I read it for a bookclub and most either loved or hated it.

Tina wrote: "I had twelve books from the first 20 pages that are either sitting on my shelf or on my kindle already waiting to be read. What a great opportunity to knock some of them out!

I'm going to short l..."

I have been reading The Kite Runner and I know exactly the scene you were talking about. Horrific. I hope to finish it within the week, but I think it would be a good one to go back to. Heavy, but good.

The purpose of this group is to read books I wouldn't normally look at, but this shelf included sooo many books on my to-read list, I'm going to try and knock a few of them off :)
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Princess Bride - William Goldman
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Going to start with Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China as i'm also reading this for another group after that I don't know so many on this shelf are on my tbr list that it's going to be difficult to choose. On the plus side I have the first two weeks of april off and with nothing to do but read.

Think I'll add The Gnostic Gospels as I'm going to be reading that for the chain challenge

1. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
2. The Gnostic Gospels
3. The Elegance of the Hedgehog
4 Silence of the Grave
5. Round Ireland with a Fridge
6. Playing with Fire
7. The Forest of Hands and Teeth
8. Nada
9.Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - abandoned for now
10.James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing
11. The Big Over Easy
12. Their Eyes Were Watching God
13. The Faceless Ones
14. Dark Days
15. Mount Dragon
16. Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man
17. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
18. Subterranean
19. Nocturnes
20.Suite Française

Karen wrote: On the plus side I have the first two weeks of april off with nothing to do but read."

Sounds like heaven to me!

Wow Karen - That sounds so good. BTW - I want to read Wild Swans also, I hope you like it.

I am going to add The Count of Monte Cristo to my list since I still have about half of it to read, and I will finish it this month.

Karen wrote: "Going to start with Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China as i'm also reading this for another group after that I don't know so many on this shelf are on my tbr list that it's going to b..."

I love Wild Swans! It makes me cry every time. I love that it's real...

Ok, I'm going for the ones I own but haven't read (gasp!).

1/ Gone with the Wind
2/ The Call of the Wild

If I get these done (I read multiple books at once -- it's a special book that can hold my attention)I'll try some new ones;

3/The little prince
4/The Princess Bride (LOVE the film).

Now all I have to do is find the bloody things...

Catching Fire. Now I have an excuse to go out and buy it!

I'm going to read:

Angels and Demons
The Da Vinci Code
The Lost Symbol

Here is my list, I'll see how many I can read in the month:

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

A few of the many possibles are

Suite Française By Irene Nemirovsky
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass By Lewis Carroll
Dark Places By Gillian Flynn
Rules By Cynthia Lord

Cam - I just read Alice's Adventures, etc. in Feb, and it was really good. I enjoyed it more, and got much more of the humor, than I did when I read it as a child.

Katey - Going to have a Dan Brown month, huh?

Tina wrote: "I had twelve books from the first 20 pages that are either sitting on my shelf or on my kindle already waiting to be read. What a great opportunity to knock some of them out!

I'm going to short l..."

OOh, "The 13th Tale" is one of my favorites. Very different from any other book I have read. I'm sure you will enjoy it.

There are 18 books on this shelf that I currently own,(Great Job BJ Rose) so that should keep me pretty busy. I won't list them all, but I will list a few that are at the top of my interest this month:

Avalon High
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
The Phantom Tollbooth
Lucky Jim
Catching Fire
and
Tigana

We will see how far I get. I do have a week off, so that should help.

Okay, now I'm adding King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa since I started it this a.m. for my Africa group and it is on the favorites shelf too. Serendipity!

First of all, I'm very excited to have found this group. What a great idea! Will keep me directed too. I own several from this shelf that I have been meaning to read:

The Giver
The Great Gatsby
The Red Tent
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

I am going to finally read:
To Kill a Mockingbird

Colleen wrote: "I am going to finally read:
To Kill a Mockingbird"

I love that book! It's still so real...

I'm adding to my list the one I've just started, "The Jungle Book". I read it a lot in primary school (which is hindsight worries me a little) but I haven't read it in 20 years. Another one I found lying around the house...

Lyn M wrote: "Katey - Going to have a Dan Brown month, huh?"
lol yes lyn i am
my dad gave me his collection to read and this is the perfect time and excuse to get me to read them :)

I really enjoyed all three, as well as the other two that he wrote. Hope you enjoy them.

Wow! What a huge, diverse bookshelf! It's a challenge just to pick something.

I'll read
Wicked Lovely (on my faculty book club list)
The Golden Compass
Her Fearful Symmetry
Labyrinths(has been waiting on my bookshelf)--not happening--see later message below;
and, as something I wouldn't have read this month otherwise, I'll try:
Passage to India or To Kill a Mockingbird
Rebecca

I'll be reading:

Rebecca
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Dead Man's Folly
The Time Traveller's Wife

Lyn M wrote: "I really enjoyed all three, as well as the other two that he wrote. Hope you enjoy them."

thanks lyn i'll let you know how i go
i actually saw the da vinci code movie and loved it so i'm sure if i love that then i'll love the books even more :)

I will be finishing Atlas Shrugged, which I started for last month. Luckily it is in the list for this month. The rest of my list is below:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Anna Karenina

Catamorandi wrote: "I'll be reading:

Rebecca
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Dead Man's Folly
The Time Traveller's Wife"

I'm reading Rebecca now too! You'll have to let me know what you think about it :-)

I'm also going to read Rebecca (I started it yesterday, so far so good!)

I'll also try:
Robinson Crusoe
The Woman in White

Luckily for me, this shelf has a lot of books that overlap with my other book clubs... so for this month I plan to read:
Rebecca
Haunted
Inkheart
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Twilight

Lot's of people reading Rebecca! If anyone is interested, The Book Addicts bookclub has it as a buddy read this month. . .

I'm currently reading Wintergirls *very chilling* and listening to Anne of Green Gables

BJ Rose wrote: "I'm currently reading Wintergirls *very chilling* and listening to Anne of Green Gables"

I adore Anne of Green Gables :)

Tina wrote: "BJ Rose wrote: "I'm currently reading Wintergirls *very chilling* and listening to Anne of Green Gables"

I adore Anne of Green Gables :)"

I'm enjoying it. I just got to the part where Anne wants to call Marilla Aunt Marilla but Marilla tells her to do what she's told instead of 'discoursing' about it!

I love Anne of Green Gables too. Anne is one of my all time favorite characters.

Lyn M wrote: "Candiss - I just read Never Let Me Go, and LOVED it. I hope you like it, too.

This is great since many of my challenge books for other groups are on this list. Here are mine:

The Red T..."</i>
My daughter doesn't do much reading but she loved
[book:The Red Tent. She said she would read The Bible if the stories in it were as good!

I'm going to start with The Thirteenth Tale. There are a lot of books on this shelf that I have read already but I am sure that there are a number that I can find on one of my bookshelves at home that I can continue with. My goal is still not to buy any new books till I whittle down that shelf in the bedroom (unless I just can't help myself!)

Hope you are successful Arlene. I just went to Arizona on vacation, on a plane yet, and came back with 2 new books. Already finished one of them.

Just finished Rebecca --how's it going for the other readers?

Making some changes to my plans for the month.

I remember loving Rebecca when I was a teenager, many years ago. Several of you chose it, and seeing Tina's stellar review has prompted me to add it back to my "read it again" list, this month if I can.

I also realized why Labyrinths is always on my bookshelf. It's not a book you can "finish" in a month, maybe ever. It's a selection of Borges' short stories and other short works (he never wrote long stuff), and each one needs time to be savored, to think about. Borges is the father (or maybe the grandfather) of what we know today as "Magic Realism," so it's sometimes very hard work, at least for me. But it's worth it, and I'll keep at it.