Ten Books I’ve Added to my TBR and Forgotten Why

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week we're talking about books that are on our TBR but we don't know why, which is a good time for me to share a big step I took with my to-read list on Goodreads! You may remember that a couple years ago my ever-expanding to-read list was stressing me out, so I capped it and started putting everything on a might-want-to-read list. However, I'd decided to still read through everything on my original list. Inspired by this recent episode of What Should I Read Next?, I finally decided it was time to let go of things on my to-read list that I was no longer sure I wanted to read and move them to my might-want-to-read list. Employing the criterion of "If I had a year left to live would I want this book to be on the list?" I got my list of 100+ books down to 48. And they're all ones I'm excited to read! That felt very freeing to do.

What's funny is that everything on that to-read list, both the books that stayed and the books I re-categorized, I know exactly why they were on the list! (I even did a post about this a few years ago!) I then started going through the oldest books on my might-want-to-read list, and even then I could pretty easily pick out why the vast majority of them had been added to my list. These ten, however, were ones I came across for which I have no ready explanation. It doesn't appear that anyone I follow on Goodreads had recently read them around the time that I added them to the list, and so I must have heard about each one from some outside source that convinced me I might want to read it, even though it's not the kind of book I'd normally gravitate toward.

Without further ado, here are the books!

1. Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams

2. Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

3. Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare

4. Nexus by Ramez Naam

5. Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

6. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

7. The Things I Didn't Say by Kylie Fornasier

8. Three Souls by Janie Chang

9. To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield

10. A Work in Progress by Connor Franta

Have you read any of these? Do you want to make a strong case for them?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: The Blue Castle and Educated
Five years ago I was reading: The Tale of Desperaux, Little House on the Prairie, Angle of Repose, and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Ten years ago I was reading: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe