Hairballsrus Returns-and I still have too many books!

Starting from scratch in the middle of the year with no real goal as of yet. Just need to read. Read, read, read. With speed. Or not. But definitely from my own bookshelves. I'm trying to cull my collection. It is so much easier to let go of a book that you have read and discovered you loathe as opposed to hanging onto a book for years because you haven't opened it.

So let's get cracking.

1. A Discovery of Witches Audio book
2. The Trouble with Witches
3. The Feast of the Drowned
4. Hunted
5. The New Yorker Book of Cat Cartoons
6. Lirael
7. Widdershins
8. Dreams Underfoot
9. Sizzling Sixteen AB
10. Smokin' Seventeen AB
11. American Gods

Welcome to the challenge and good luck at culling your book collection.

It is so much easier to let go of a book that you have read and discovered you loathe as opposed to hanging onto a book for years because you haven't opened it

Ohhh, yes, so true. Love your username, by the way. :)

I'm with melonbrawl on that one - it's so much eaiser to let go of a book that you have read, full stop.

Thank you for the warm welcome. Now let's kick some of these books out of the nest!

1. A Discovery of Witches Audio book. Okay, okay, technically I downloaded this book about an hour before I started this challenge, but that still means it was on my TBR mountain! While there were some new elements to this paranormal romance, the first half of the story dragged (and not good way, mind you) and the second half ended in a cliffhanger. It's the first of a trilogy. Hmph. Two years from now will I download the next book? That's a definite maybe.

As for the rest of my TBR pile, I compiled a list of 319 books to pick from. But I'm really lusting after the books I just checked out from the library!

Three down, millions to go!

2. The Trouble with Witches See a theme here? I was on a paranormal kick before paranormal was cool!!! Now paranormal is mostly overdone. How long do you think it'll take before the genre's "retro"? Third in a series that I've only read the first book of...dang you sentence finished with a preposition! Not much of a plot, setting up the next novel mostly. Paranormal novels need to make the out of place (i.e. magic) feel common. This one felt forced. The magical elements were so far in between, I felt like commenting "Yeah, right" whenever they did happen. Compare it to a cup of tea with the tea bag only dunked once or twice. Weak. Mostly concepts mentioned, but not explored.

3. The Feast of the Drowned A 10th Doctor Who novel. Yes, I'm a Doctor Who fan. I have been since 1979. I confess I started collecting the new novels because of the covers. They look so pretty on the shelf! What? I've got to read them, too? I don't remember that in the contract. This was an adventure with the Doctor and Rose. Stephen Cole had their dialogue down fairly well,with Rose being concerned and the Doc being obnoxious. They didn't spend nearly enough time together though. As with most DW plots, you have to separate the characters to get the job done, but Ten and Rose are such a fun couple it seems a shame. I'd like a story told from the Doc's point of view. Are there any of those out there, and perhaps already on my shelf?

It's actually perfectly reasonable to end a sentence with a preposition in English. So there!

I think there tend not to be many books that really get far into the Doctor's POV, just because his POV seems like it ought to be dauntingly complicated and alien. There are doubtless some that do it more than others, but the only things that are leaping to my mind are two surprisingly well done choose-your-own-adventure-type books from the 80s that were actually written in first-person from the Doctor's perspective: Doctor Who and the Vortex Crystal and Doctor Who and the Rebel's Gamble. (At least, I know the first of those was first-person, and I think the second was, as well.) They're probably both long out of print now, though.

I have some of the newer choose-your-own-adventures that I mooched, but they're pretty dull. You've got to be in the mood for a DW novel. I find myself wanting to read them in the Spring.

Another book off the pile. Woo hoo!

4. Hunted by James Alan Gardner League of Peoples Series

Pretty straight forward science fiction adventure yarn with clones, killer moss and lobster queens. Reads like old sci-fi with a totally believable Universe. Doesn't take itself too seriously, but still has a moral at its heart. "Do the right thing and don't act like a jerk." This is Book Four in the League of Peoples Series. The adventure, however, is self contained. It made me smile more than once and I look forward to reading more from this author. His saucy dialogue is a delight.

Right now, I'm trying to read Little Fuzzy, it definitely qualifies as a TBR novel, it's practically disintegrating from hanging about the house for so long, but I'm finding them blood thirsty little critters instead of the classic cuties they're supposed to be. I feel sorry for the land-prawns. Whack!

Okay, this didn't actually take a lot of effort, but it WAS a book I needed to read.

5. The New Yorker Book of Cat Cartoons

Dumped the Fuzzies for the moment. Not in the mood. I turned my attention instead, to a sequel of Sabriel, a fantasy I read in 2009 I think.

6. Lirael The "familiars" steal the show, the Disreputable Dog and Mogget.

No luck with touchstones or editing posts today apparently.

7. Widdershins by Charles de Lint This was a tag team effort, part audio book, part hard copy. An emotional read, sappy, but a good sappy, some of the story felt a bit "fanficy", but oddly enough I felt that more about the audio book than the text. It kept me up til 3 a.m!

There are two storylines, first a war between the "cousins" (animal spirits, the first inhabitants of the Americas) and the fairy folk who arrived with the first human settlers and the second: the romance of Jilly Coppercorn and Geordie Riddell, two characters very familar to any reader of De Lint's Newford Short Stories.

I'm not going to claim I've read every Newford story, far from it, but I had enough invested in the characters to enjoy the tale. It makes me want to dig out my Newford books, not necessarily to read more about J&G, but to revisit some of the other treasures-"The Moon is Drowing While I Sleep" and "Mr. Truepenny's Book Emporium and Gallery" to name a couple.

Dipping in and out of several books (as usual), Abhorsen-last in the Garth Nix series, but I can't get past the part where the Disreputable Dog catches a rabbit (what is it about bunnies in Fantasy novels? It started with Samwise catching one, didn't it? Now you can't go on a road trip to kill the Big Bad without catching a bunny and eating it. Yuck!), Dingo, another de Lint novel, a novella more like it, that I could finish in one swallow, but starting it actually made me turn my thoughts to Widdershins and I got distracted by the longer novel, The Science of Fear- a library book, good first couple of chapters but I have a feeling the book's just going to repeat itself for the next 300 pages, Enigma-a recent book mooch that the movie's based on, a movie I love by the way. I don't feel compelled to read all the way through, just dip into the story and compare the differences. Sigh. There are others. There are always others. And of course today I started listening/reading Spirits in the Wires, another de Lint that I've owned a few years and actually started reading as a library book a long time ago, but I don't remember whether I finished it or not, so I might as well count it as a TBR, right?

And by the end of the day I'm sure I'll be interested in something else as well.... I know better; I know I have a much better success rate when reading one book at a time. I honestly don't have ADHD, Oh, look!! A chicken!

Ooo, just thinking it'd be nice to reread Greenmantle and de Lint's Jack books too.... Oh, and come to think of it, The Little Country too.

And that, of course, is the reason I never get anything finished!!!

8. Dreams Underfoot a Newford Short story collection. Told you I wouldn't read anything on my list!

9. Sizzling Sixteen Janet Evanovich AB
10. Smokin' Seventeen Janet Evanovich AB
11. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

#10 doesn't qualify as it only came out last week! I meant to buy the book originally and get it signed at a local bookstore, but downloading the AB just fit better into my schedule.

As for American Gods, I'm pretty sure I started reading it years ago and lots and lots of the story was familiar, but about two thirds of the way through I started hitting new material so I'm going to count it as a "read" of a TBR title, as opposed to a reread. I was inspired to pick up the book up again after watching an internet interview with Neil Gaiman celebrating the 10th anniversary of the book.

Funny that I've just been reading Charles de Lint who explores the same idea as American Gods from a different angle and with different Gods in Widdershins.

Three unexpected days off produce....

12. One for the Money Janet Evanovich AB Relistening to past loves. I miss how funny the first books in this series were. Can't help but snort when Stephanie locks Morelli in the refrigeration truck. Tee Hee.

13. Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green I held onto this book for HOW LONG? Now I can say goodbye to this novel and the series it road in on without regret. That's the great thing about TBR books.

14. The Brief History of the Dead I should get extra points for finishing this while suffering from the stomach flu. I'n not sure why I couldn't get into this before; the book's been hanging around the house for at least a couple years. What a great idea. When you die, you go to live in the City and you remain there as a resident as long as someone alive remembers you. Once they die, you disappear from the City. Suddenly the City's population swells, then it nearly empties out. What's happened? I can only assume the author really hates Coca Cola.

15. Hex Hall Yet another paranormal teen series. I can't help but be pulled in by the cover art. Doesn't qualify as a TBR. Impulse read, although at least I didn't buy it.

What is with the touchstones? First they work, then they don't.