Down the TBR Hole #2 - 11/8/2020

 

Down The TBR Hole is a meme created by Lia @ Lost in a Story that revolves around cleansing your TBR of all those books you’re never going to read and sort through it all to know what’s actually on there.

It works like this:

• Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more if you're feeling adventurous) books. Of course if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
• Read the synopses of the books.
• Decide: Keep it or let it go?

So I made a comment the other day about wanting to be more active on the blog again, and so Joood, my arch-nemesis, bossed me into joining this meme. I'm just going to warn you that this is going to be an exercise in futility for me, because I add dozens of books to my to-read shelf on Goodreads every day as I enter literally all of the giveaways. But that is also going to add another element to my posts, because I refuse to completely break up with a giveaway win, at least for now. I may change my mind on that in the future. But also, since my shelf is so crazy out of control and only getting worse, I'm going to have to go through way more than ten books per post. So for now, my posts will be light on graphics, and I'm only going to explain the books I'm keeping. 

Let's go, shall we?

When I shared the last post, I'd gotten my to read count down to 139, 646. But I've entered more giveaways, so here is where I'm starting. 

Current To Read Count: 139,668

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas - My heart says keep it, but my brain says bye. So goodbye. 

Paradise Lost by John Milton - Get lost.

The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexander Dumas - Farewell

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle - Goodbye

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte - Bye.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien - A part of me really wants to keep this, but I'm throwing in the towel.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - Dystopian and about books. This one stays. 

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - Au revoir (but it pains me to say goodbye). 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - Goodbye

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - Farewell

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas - I'll just watch the movie.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Goodbye, Watson

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - Goodbye

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - See ya' later

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough - Even though I bought used copies of this on three separate occasions, I'm saying goodbye to this for now. 

North and South by John Jakes - Farewell

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom - Book about the Holocaust and WWII, it stays. 

Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally - Another book about the Holocaust. It gets to remain on my list.

The Midwife's Apprentice - This book can go.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Adios (20)

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - So long

Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Goodbye

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum - We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Farewell. 

The Complete Grimm's Fairytales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm - Auf Wiedersehen

Hans Christian Anderson's Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Anderson - Also goodbye

The Iliad by Homer - Adios

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - Farewell

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien - So long

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - Bu-bye.

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren - It's a no from me (30)

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - So long

The Crucible by Arthur Miller - See ya' later

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - Bye

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - I think this book is on a list of books that I'm supposed to read by the age of 40 (which Bob from Platypire Reviews and I are "racing" to complete), so it stays. 

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde - This one's gone

The Brother's Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Goodbye

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov - Big fan of science fiction, and really enjoyed the movie starring Will Smith, so I'm going to keep this one. 

Candide by Voltaire - Goodbye

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway - Farewell

Watership Down by Richard Adams - Goodbye (40)

The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway - Adios

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells - I was told I dishonored my family and my cow for getting rid of another Wells book from my To-Read shelf, in spite of that, this one is going too.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman - This one stays, because I said so.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner - Bye

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller - So long

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli - Ciao

The Aeneid by Virgil - Goodbye

The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath - Girl, bye

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - This book seems like it'd still be somewhat relevant today, so it's staying.

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence - Adios

Books removed: 43

Books kept: 7

As I'm going through the books that I added to my To-Read shelf when I first joined Goodreads (I'm assuming because the all have the same added date and it's back in 2013), it's quite clear that I was on a classics kick. While I try to read their synopses on Amazon today, most of them just talk about how the books are like the greatest works from the X century. Not very helpful there, Amazon, but I reckon most people looking to buy classics aren't super concerned with what the story is actually about anymore. 

So this list is twice as long as the last one. Do you think this was a better length? Worse? Doesn't really matter? I need to know. - Katie