Monday, January 18, 2016

Top Ten Books I've Recently Added To My TBR List


I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

As I mentioned recently, I've locked down my TBR list pretty tightly in the last year. I'm being more intentional about what I add to the list so that it doesn't get unmanageably long. I want to keep it in a range where I could realistically read everything on the list in the next five years, which for me is under 350 books. (I read about 120 books a year, but some of those are book club selections or other books that don't come from my TBR list.)

With that preface, here are the last 10 books I added to my Goodreads "to read" list.


1. 10% Happier by Dan Harris
I've already read a lot of books in this vein, especially when I was doing my own happiness project back in 2011, but Modern Mrs. Darcy named this one of her favorite nonfiction books of 2015 and has continued to recommend it, so I added it to the list. I trust her recommendations — she was the one who pointed me to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up!


2. Citizen by Claudia Rankine
I read an article about the woman who was caught on camera reading this during a Trump rally, and so I looked up the book to see what it was about. It's one of those books that I might have passed over in the past, but with my new standards for broadening my reading, I decided to add it to my list.


3. Endangered by Eliot Schrefer
I had not heard of this book until it was emphatically recommended on Goodreads by one of my friends. Then I saw an article about it somewhere (can't find it now) and decided it was worth a read.


4. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
I loved Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson's first book, but when this one came out I thought, well, it's probably similar to the first, and there are so many other books out there to read. But I kept hearing about it and then there was a great quote from it in my Reader's Digest this month, so I decided I was depriving myself by not putting it on my TBR list.


5. George by Alex Gino
For some reason, I thought this was a picture book when I kept hearing about it, maybe because the main character is in elementary school. I requested it on PaperBackSwap because I'm building my son's collection of diverse picture books, but then it arrived and I realized it was a normal-sized book aimed at slightly older kids. I'm looking forward to reading it.


6. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
I heard a lot of mixed reviews of this book and specifically heard it didn't live up to the hype, but that's not always a reason not to read something. When a good friend told me how much she enjoyed it, I decided to put it next in the queue for my "audiobooks I'm only allowed to listen to at the gym," as it's supposed to be the kind of book that's hard to put down. Hopefully my expectations are sufficiently low going in for me to enjoy it.


7. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
After I finished Twelve Years a Slave and complained that it was too detached and impersonal, a Goodreads friend suggested this book, which is also a true first-person account of slavery. Maybe this one will talk more about people's experiences than about the mechanics of a fish-catching machine.


8. It's OK Not to Share by Heather Shumaker
This book has been recommended a number of times on a mothers' Facebook group I'm part of, so I added it to my list. I think one of my reading goals for next year will be to catch up on the parenting books on my TBR list, and also reread my favorites, as I will have a 2-year-old this time next year!


9. The Rig Veda (holy text)
As part of my long-term goal to read more holy texts from a range of religions, I thought I should tackle the Vedas, or at least the first one.


10. Ugly by Robert Hoge
I read this great article about how we talk to kids about physical attractiveness (probably shared on the above-mentioned mothers' group), which specifically mentioned Hoge and his experiences. I saw he was an author, so I looked up his book and added it to my list. Wonder was the first book I'd read that specifically addressed facial deformities, but I want to read this first-person account written by someone who has the perspective of years behind him to reflect on.

What are the most recent adds to your to-read list?

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