Tuesday, September 29, 2009

What's in my TBR stack

The following is from Shelf Awareness, an email newsletter for the book trade:

"Bookseller, where art thou?" asked Kristina Chetcuti in the Times of
Malta observing: "Unfortunately, bookselling is a dying art. Not only in
Malta, I would say. I think it's the globalisation/chainstore effect.
Instead of personal recommendations we are given bestseller lists which
are almost the same in every shop worldwide. Instead of bookworm
independent booksellers we have stores full of very efficient, polite
salespeople, many of whom are not readers. It's like going to a
beautician and when you lie on the couch you realise she has a thick
dark moustache: however good the service, you want someone who practises
the service they're giving.

"This is my idea of a bookshop: rickety-hickety and with a little bell
which rings when you go in. I know that probably it does not make
business sense, but I know it makes a very harmonious place for the
soul. As Franz Kafka says 'A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas
frozen inside our soul.' How I wish we could stop selling and buying
books from soulless places."

I agree, and wish desperately that I could have an ideal bookshop with a little bell over the doorway.
Sigh.
I've finished a book called "The Tenth Gift" and am currently trying to read "The Earth Hums in B Flat" by Mari Strachan, which is proving to be a difficult task, as the plot is plodding along at a snails pace.

The books languishing in my TBR are:

There's No Place Like Here by Cecelia Ahern
Afternoons With Emily by Rose MacMurray
Cathouse by Dean Ing (I read this book when I lived in Florida)
Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Silent in the Sanctuary by DeAnna Raybourn
An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice
Return to Gone Away by Elizabeth Enright
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe by Jennie Shortridge
Winterlands and IceFalcons Quest by Barbara Hambly
The Sex Life of Food by Bunny Crumpacker
Faery Moon by PR Frost
The Book of Joby by Mark Ferrari
The Winter Rose and The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
The Glory Cloak and Harriett and Isabella by Patricia O'Brien
Cranberry Queen by Kathleen DeMarco
An Irish Country Village and an Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor
Firebird and The Taylors Daughter by Janice Graham
The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir
The Bride Stone by Thomas Williams
King of Sword and Sky by CL Wilson
Cybeles Secret by Juliet Marillier

I've got a few more on stand by in the bathrooms for when Crohns strikes and I need to keep my mind off the pain, but you get the idea.
So what should I start in on next?
Suggestions?
It is prime reading weather, with cooler, often rainy days and hot tea and blankets at the ready! I love autumn!

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