From the stacks

I have accepted Michelle's reading challenge that I found via Chris. Like most dedicated readers, I find my pile of to-be-read (TBR) books grows rather faster than my list of already-read books. This particular challenge is to pick five books from the TBR pile and finish them -- or at least some of them -- between November 1 and January 31. Here are my five, in no particular order:

1. Waiting / Ha Jin
2. The beet queen / Louise Erdich
3. One hundred years of solitude / Gabriel García Márquez (this one will be a stretch for me)
4. I write what I like / Steve Biko (also a stretch, but it's only 150 pp.)
5. The historian (I cheated a bit on this one; it's the January book for one of my book groups, so I would have read it anyway -- but I bought it and it's on my shelf and it's waiting to be read. So there.)

What will make this a real challenge is that I already have a monstrous pile of books from the library and (I just checked the library website) 10 more in my queue. Here are the ones piled by my bedside in order by due date:

1. Moving violations : war zones, wheelchairs, and declarations of independence / John Hockenberry
2. Bound to please : an extraordinary one-volume literary education / Michael Dirda
3. Brainiac : adventures in the curious, competitive, compulsive world of trivia buffs / Ken Jennings (yes, that Ken Jennings)
4. Mayflower : a story of courage, community, and war / Nathaniel Philbrick (November book group selection, discussion a week from yesterday -- gotta get moving on this one, it's over 400 pages and nonfiction)
5. The inner circle / T.C. Boyle
6. The ruins / Scott Smith
7. Water for elephants / Sara Gruen (December book group selection)
8. The inheritance of loss / Kiran Desai
9. I been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots / Susan Straight

Now, I realize that none of these is Ulysses or Paradise Lost or even War and Peace, but they are all at least 300 pages. Oh, and did I mention I have 10 more book on request? I am pretty far down the list for the Stephen King and the John Grisham, but the others will be waiting at the library sometime in the next few weeks. Hey, you know what? This is starting to sound a lot like the pressure of Christmas knitting or my god, my stash is about to take over the planet. We hobbyists take our pastimes seriously, folks.