What's on My To-Read List (and How Did It Get There)?

It's been a long time since I did a non-linkup post! Originally I envisioned doing more of these kinds of posts, but apparently I need the structure. Ah well.

The last time I shared some data on my personal reading was back in 2014, when I shared information on how my preferred book formats have changed over time and how I fit reading into an average week (a topic I definitely need to revisit now that I'm a parent!). This time around, I decided to take a look at my to-read list, which you may remember that I capped at the beginning of 2016 after creating a new "might want to read" list, which feels a lot less obligatory. What's left on the original list and why is it there?

I grouped the books into rough categories of why I put them on my list in the first place. (Some could definitely be in more than one category, but I picked the primary reason I put them on my list.) Here are the books I'm planning to read, and why I plan to read them.

Classics I Should Read: 55
I wrote a whole post previously on why I read classic books, and there are many that I'd still like to read. Some of these made it onto my goals for the year, like The Sun Also Rises, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Bleak House. Some are less obvious, like Silent Spring and We Need to Talk About Kevin. They're books that I see over and over again on lists of "100 books to read before you die" and "books to be well read." When I feel like there's a gap in my base of classic books, it goes on my list.

Diversifying My Reading: 42
A bunch of books ended up on my list during my 2014 project to diversify my reading, and I didn't get around to all of them. I'm still interested in reading books like In Search of April Raintree, The Mis-Education of the Negro, and Girl in Translation.

Books that Sound Interesting: 35
I'm a sucker for good nonfiction, so a lot of books are on my list because I think I'll learn something interesting from them. Books like The Discoverers, How the Irish Became White, Team of Rivals, and The New Jim Crow all fall into this category.

Books I Keep Seeing Recommended: 33
These are books that I see repeatedly not because they're classics but because they're popular. Books in this category include YA books that show up on a lot of Top Ten Tuesday posts, like The Raven Boys and Throne of Glass; books that Modern Mrs. Darcy and her readers recommend a lot, like Bel Canto and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day; and contemporary books that I've just seen show up in articles and book reviews a lot, like Cutting for Stone and The Light Between Oceans.

Highly Rated Books: 20
One of my 2016 reading resolutions was to read some books I'd never heard of that were highly rated by a lot of people on Goodreads. I didn't end up getting through very many in 2016, so I still have books like The Way of Kings, The Winds of War, and Imperium on my to-read list.

Books that Sound Enjoyable to Read: 16
These are books that I put on my list not to learn things or brush up on classics or expand my reading horizons, but simply because they sounded like I'd enjoy reading them. These include mysteries like Gaudy Night and A Kiss Before Dying, children's books like Howl's Moving Castle and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, and humor books like Girt and Notes from a Small Island.

Books that Sound Helpful to Read: 12
These books could be broadly considered "self-help," but they range from books about parenting (It's OK Not to Share and Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child) and relationships (Getting the Love You Want) to books about faith (Amazing Grace and For the Life of the World) and psychology (Feeling Good and 10% Happier).

Books from the BBC's Big Read List: 12
Every so often a list goes around claiming that "the BBC thinks you've only read 6 of these books!" This list is loosely based on an actual list that the BBC compiled based on their 2003 Big Read survey in the UK. I added a number of these books to my to-read list after I uncovered the original list, as a kind of combination of diversifying my reading, reading classics, and reading well-loved books I wasn't familiar with. These include The Magus, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, and Katherine.

Personal Recommendations: 5
One of my 2015 reading goals was to read through the books that had been personally recommended to me over the years, and I got through most of them, but there are a handful left, including The Blue Castle, Maurice, and Bitter in the Mouth. (A lot of books people recommend to me are already on my to-read list for other reasons, or there would be a lot more in this category!)

Holy Texts: 3
Another 2015 reading goal was to read holy texts from other religions. I read The Qur'an, The Book of Mormon, Tao Te Ching, and The Bhagavad-Gita, but I'm still interested to read The Rig Veda, The Upanishads, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

So there you go! It's interesting to see how much of my to-read list is based on specific reading goals I've had the past few years. Maybe next time I set a goal I should be more circumscribed in how many books I try to tackle for that goal!

I now have 515 books on my "might want to read" list, but it's only these 235 from my original to-read list that I'm determined to finish, which I'm guessing will take me about five years. This year I'm mostly focusing on the Classics category, as I hate coming across references in other books that assume I've read a classic book and/or spoil something in it. I also want to tackle more of the Books I Keep Seeing Recommended so I'll have more to discuss with other readers. (It's so frustrating when multiple people ask, "Have you read X?" and I have to keep saying, "No, it's on my list!") Outside of that, the rest are for my own interest, enjoyment, or learning, so I can read them in tandem with other books that I'm interested in from my ever-growing "might want to read" list.

I'd be interested to hear where your to-read list comes from. Have I inspired you to sort your own books into categories? If so, please share your own findings in comments!

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My Top Nine Fandoms

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

This week's topic isn't strictly book related — it's about fandoms we're part of. For me, I'd say the line between "This is a thing I like" and "I identify with this fandom" is whether I'd be willing to spend my own money on something that references or represents the fandom (e.g., a T-shirt, a decal, a boxset). So for example, while I enjoy watching the show Sherlock, I am not at all part of the insanely huge fandom that has sprung up around it.

Here are some fandoms I am part of (or was):

1. Belgariad/Malloreon
I think I've mentioned before that my friends and I were such big fans of this series in middle school that we assigned everyone in our group a different character and one Halloween all dressed up as our respective characters. It's been years since I've read the books (I need to embark on a reread!) but I've successfully gotten a number of other people to read them, including my normally non-reading husband. Also, these books forever ruined me on most fantasy because of how high they set my standards.

2. Doctor Who
My husband and I started watching this series (from the 2005 reboot) after we moved out here in 2012, and we haven't looked back. Two years in a row now we've gone to see the Christmas special in theaters, which I highly recommend if you've never done it before. For our son's first Halloween we dressed him as the TARDIS and went as the Doctor and River Song.

3. Harry Potter
I have no shame in being on this bandwagon. I didn't read most of the books until college (I'd read the first two when they came out and didn't fall in love enough to seek out any more), and it was surprisingly my husband who got me to pick them up again. I've reread them multiple times now, and I proudly wear the Ravenclaw shirt I got for Christmas. My special reading area has our hardcover set on a shelf above my reading chair.

4. Homestar Runner
I was a big Homestar Runner fan in high school — I owned multiple shirts and at least one Strong Bad CD, and I think I might have had decals on my car window but I can't remember for sure. My friend and I were in a web design class second semester of our senior year, and our semester project was a Homestar Runner-themed website that we had a lot of fun building.

5. KonMari
Yep, I'm one of the weirdos who followed the process in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up to a T and fell in love with it (also known as becoming a "Konvert"). I just recently had to pare down the number of related Facebook groups I'm part of. (Irony?) I've recommended this book to so many people, and I got the sequel (Spark Joy) as soon as it was published last year.

6. Lie to Me (R.I.P.)
It's pretty rare that I watch TV, and it's ever rarer that I become obsessed with a specific TV show, but this was one of the few. I knew it was doomed from the beginning, because Fox kept changing the time of the week it was on, randomly skipping weeks and even showing two episodes out of order. By the time it got to the third and final season, they'd abandoned the cleverness that defined the first season and just made it super-violent and repetitive. Nonetheless, I watched it until the end and spent way too much time on the TWoP forums for the show speculating about whether the two main characters were ever going to get together.

7. Nerdfighteria
This is probably the fandom for which I am most committed and which I most consider a big part of my identity. I started watching the vlogbrothers videos in the summer of 2007, which at the time was considered "jumping on the bandwagon" since the "real" Nerdfighters had been watching before Hank was featured on the front page of YouTube. That seems hilarious now that they've been going for 10+ years and generated a whole new bandwagon with The Fault in Our Stars. The fandom tends to attract middle school and high school students as new fans, which can make me feel old within the fandom sometimes but also can be a fun way for us (my husband and I) to bond with new freshmen in our residence hall.

8. Pemberley Digital
Few web series can match the perfection that was The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, though I also really enjoyed Emma Approved. I own the boxset of LBD and I keep wanting to host a LBD marathon in our hall, but I'm afraid no one would show up to watch the whole 7 1/2 hours with me. Someday it will happen! Unfortunately it doesn't seem like Pemberley Digital is planning to do any more projects, but who knows — maybe the right story will come along.

9. Settlers of Catan
In our board game-loving family, this is the game we come back to most consistently. I know I'm not as hardcore a fan as some (I've never played any of the variations other than the expansion pack), but when I thought about fandom-related merchandise I thought of the Catan onesie a friend got for our son when he was born and the Catan-like serving dishes with associated cookbook we got our friends as a housewarming gift. I love how every game is different but the basics are pretty simple once you understand them.

Which fandoms do you identify with?

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Best of the Bunch: March 2017

Today I'm sharing the best book I read in March.

Of the 12 books I read this month, I had three 5-star books:

Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie

American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus by Lisa Wade

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh

These were three very different books — a classic murder mystery, a newly published nonfiction book, and a reread of a memoir/nonfiction book that I nominated for book club this month. Of these, the best of the bunch was...

Lisa Wade could have taken a "kids these days" alarmist approach to the investigation of hookup culture, but instead she centered the voices of actual college students to talk about the good, bad, and ugly of hookup culture. She provided historical and sociological context for the stories and synthesized them into topic areas, but overall did a great job of keeping the students' personal experiences front and center — which also made for a better and more interesting read. She does not ignore the subset of students who are "enthusiasts" about hookup culture, but she also details the many ways in which the disadvantages women face in society at large are magnified in disturbing ways in hookups. This is worth a read for high school seniors and their parents, anyone who works with college students, and really anyone interested in how sexual mores and behaviors on campuses have changed over time.

What is the best book you read this month? Let me know in comments, or write your own post and link up below!

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Ten Authors: Those I've Met and Those I'd Like to Meet

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

This week is all about authors we've met or want to meet! I've met a handful of authors but definitely have a wish list of others I'd like to meet!

Edited to add: I made a suggestion on Goodreads that users should be able to sign up to receive alerts when their favorite authors are coming to town. Feel free to chime in on the thread if you like the idea!

Authors I've met in person:

1. John Green
I originally met John and his brother, Hank, at a Nerdfighter gathering in Chicago on 8/8/08. My now-husband and I arrived at the exact right moment to meet both of them and then ride up in the elevator to the event together. I've met John twice more at book signing events, including one in his current city where I got to meet his wife as well. I feel lucky that I got to meet him so many times before The Fault in Our Stars came out and he became a mega-celebrity.

2. Rachel Held Evans
I knew Rachel as a blogger before I read any of her books, but I'm now caught up on all her books to date. I met her when she spoke at a nearby university here. (She said she recognized my (old) blog name! I just about died.) I got to have another conversation with her the following year at the Gay Christian Network (GCN) conference after she spoke. She's seriously one of my favorite people in the whole world.

3. Justin Lee
I got to meet Justin at my first GCN conference, which I attended due to an invitation on his blog for more straight Christians to attend. His book Torn is one of the best things I've ever read, and he is also one of my favorite people ever. It was wonderful to be able to tell him that in person.

4. Pamela Redmond Satran
I met Pamela in person once, though I worked on a couple of projects for her virtually. I've only read part of one of her books, How Not to Act Old, unless you count the baby name book she co-authored that I transcribed into an online database for her.

Authors I've met virtually:

5. Christina Baker Kline
I got hooked up with Christina via her friend Pamela Redmond Satran and helped her with a book proposal based on a blog she had at the time. She sent me signed copies of several of her books, though this was sadly before her bestseller, Orphan Train, was released! We did butt heads a bit when she tried to get me to help with promoting her personal Facebook page and I tried to convince her to create an official author page instead. (Looks like she came around eventually.)

6. Ramit Sethi
If you need to get your personal finances in order, I can't recommend a better book than Ramit's I Will Teach You to Be Rich, but it was his job search advice that got me personally connected with him. I took his fantastic Dream Job course at the level that let you join weekly group phone calls where he answered a handful of questions submitted ahead of time by students. Not to brag, but my questions got selected more than anyone else in the class (5 times), and every time I got to have a personal conversation with him where he gave me specific advice for my situation. Even though his public persona is a bit of an ass, he's actually a really great guy whom I admire a lot.

Favorite living authors I'd love to meet:

7. Vanessa Diffenbaugh
It's no secret around here that The Language of Flowers is my favorite book. Even though I didn't LOVE We Never Asked for Wings as much, I'm still a big fan of her writing and would love to meet her in person.

8. Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver is the only author who is legitimately on my bucket list to meet before, well, I guess before she dies. (She's got a few decades on me.) Her Animal, Vegetable, Miracle made me a vegetarian, and The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible are two of my favorite books of all time. I very much want to meet her! I can only hope she's working on another book and will be touring again before too long.

9. Liane Moriarty
I've read four of her books, and I loved What Alice Forgot and Big Little Lies. She has a great way of capturing the way that people (especially women) reflect, rationalize, and strategize in their interactions with one another. I think it would be fun to hear her speak about her writing process.

10. J.K. Rowling
I mean, of course. She's created two of my favorite series (Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike) and she seems to relish fan interaction even when she must be drowning in it. Did she make it on your list, too?

Which authors do you want to meet?

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Ten Books I Read in One Sitting

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

This week's topic is books that you read in one sitting. It's pretty rare for me to have enough uninterrupted hours to sit down and read a book straight through, so some of these may have been read in more than one sitting. Regardless, they're short enough that you could sit down and read them straight through. There's some overlap here with books I picked up on a whim.

1. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
This is one of the books I picked up on a whim, in this case from the guest room bookshelf while visiting my parents one weekend. In those luxurious pre-child days I could stay in bed for another three hours to read a whole book before getting up for the day!

2. Citizen by Claudia Rankine
I listened to this the first time on audio and got through the majority of it while cleaning the apartment one evening. The second time I read it in print and read it over the course of two evenings between my son's bedtime and mine.

3. Devilish by Maureen Johnson
As I mentioned in the other post, one summer my now-husband and I stayed with his aunt in her non-air-conditioned home in New Jersey, and so I would walk to the local library for the air conditioning and stay there a good part of the day reading. This is a book I picked up to read during one of those sessions.

4. Fences by August Wilson
I don't know if I read this in one sitting the first time I read it (in high school), but I recently reread most of it during my son's afternoon nap. Plays are good for reading in one sitting since they're meant to be performed within a set amount of time.

5. for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
I'm not saying you should read this in one sitting, as it can be pretty heavy, but it's another script for a performance where you can easily get through it in a couple hours.

6. The Giver by Lois Lowry
I've talked about how I loved this so much more on rereading it as an adult, and I also couldn't put it down. I'm not sure I read it in a "sitting" so much as had it on the Kindle app on my phone and read it everywhere I went that day.

7. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
This 1000+ page book is definitely not a book you'd expect to read in one sitting, but this was another one of those hot summer days where I spent all day at the library, and so I read this cover-to-cover during the course of the day. (OK, maybe it was over two days.)

8. Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
Last summer a friend lent this to my husband, who kept it sitting out for months because he rarely reads books. When he went on vacation with our son for a couple weeks and I was looking for a new book to start, I picked this up and read it at the kitchen table over a few cups of tea.

9. Winter of Fire by Sherryl Jordan
This past Christmas we traveled to visit my in-laws and my husband and I both got sick, so my father-in-law took our toddler out for the day and I wrapped myself in a blanket, made a cup of tea, and spent the day reading this book I'd brought with me.

10. With Burning Hearts by Henri Nouwen
Last summer I started this book after work the day I was picking up my husband and son at the airport from their aforementioned vacation, and I read it up until I had to go get in the car to get them. When I got to the airport I was early, so I sat in my car and read until I had to go inside, then I stood by baggage claim and read until they arrived. It was that good!

Which books have you read in one sitting?

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What I've Been Reading Lately (Quick Lit)

Today I'm linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy's Quick Lit to bring you some short and sweet reviews of what I've read in the past month. For longer reviews, you can always find me on Goodreads.

Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves: I picked up this book primarily because I've been trying to get my great-grandfather's WWI memoir published, and I thought I should read *the* WWI memoir that seems to have set the standard. Overall, the book was interesting and entertaining, and it kept my attention enough to keep reading but not enough to make me eager to pick it up again each time I put it down.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine: I reread this in print and it was definitely easier to follow than in audio. I think it provides an excellent overview not only of the ubiquity of racial microaggressions but also of the toll they take on the person experiencing them. The poetic, abstract stuff was still over my head.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah: This was a timely read about two sisters living in occupied France during World War I. One wants to fight back and the other wants to keep her head down, but there are consequences for both choices. I didn't LOVE this the way the rest of Goodreads appears to have loved it, but it was still a great read.

The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie: This provided a bit of a change from the typical Poirot novel, as it flips back and forth from Hastings' narrative to a third-person one, and it's dealing with an apparent serial killer rather than the usual closed cast of characters. It was clever in the way of most of Christie's books, but not one of my favorites.

Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie: Although I've figured out Christie's pattern for who the killer is, it doesn't make it any easier to figure out the how and why, and this was no exception. It's told from a new perspective (the first-person narration of a nurse), which is always a nice change. Good luck piecing the clues together better than I did.

Fences by August Wilson: In Troy Maxson, Wilson has managed to create a character who is both sympathetic and despicable. The story is rooted in the specific setting of a black family in 1950s Pittsburgh, but the themes about parenting and fate are universal.

The Happy Sleeper: The Science-Backed Guide to Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night's Sleep-Newborn to School Age by Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright: Our toddler went from being a great sleeper to fighting weekend naps, needing us to lay with him until he falls asleep, and asking us in the middle of the night to come lie down in his bed. This book gave me what I was looking for, which was a collection of strategies and suggestions that we can try to help him feel more comfortable falling asleep on his own. We haven't tested them out yet, but the reviews are promising, and the book itself was easy to read, comprehensive, and reassuring, so I definitely recommend giving it a shot.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath: This isn't a foolproof guide to influence and communication, but it provided numerous memorable stories and helped get my wheels turning about ways to apply their principles in my work. Teachers, marketers, and company execs will likely find the information readily applicable.

What have you been reading this month? Share over at Modern Mrs. Darcy!

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Top Ten Books On My Spring TBR

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

This week's topic is books we plan to read this spring. Seeing as how I'm trying to get through some long books this year and a lot of classics (which can be slow reading), I'm not sure it's realistic that I'll get through all ten of these before summer, but these are at least the next ten books on my to-read list that I'd like to read!

1. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
This is one of the books that has been on my to-read list the longest. Time to pick it up!

2. Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie
I'm still working my way through the Hercule Poirot books. I have this one ready to go on audio when I finally finish The Brothers Karamazov.

3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The other Dostoyevsky I'm trying to read this year!

4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
This one's also been on my to-read list for a while, and at under 200 pages it would make a good break from the super-long books I'm reading.

5. Dune by Frank Herbert
This is another from the books that have been on my to-read list the longest. Wherever there are classics that are also sci-fi, they tend to have fallen to the bottom of the pack for me.

6. If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
I enjoyed Invisible Cities, and this sounds equally creative and fun.

7. Kindred by Octavia Butler
I keep seeing this recommended over and over. It's time I finally read it.

8. The Stand by Stephen King
I've never read any Stephen King as I don't do well with horror, but I've heard this is one that's worth reading regardless. It's also one of my 1000+ page reads for the year.

9. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
I've actually read quite a bit of Hemingway despite not being a huge fan (A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, A Moveable Feast), and yet I've missed this one classic read.

10. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Another long classic I'm going to tackle this year!

Which will you be reading this spring?

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