Tuesday, January 23, 2018

The Annotated TBR #5: 2018 Overview

(I came across this idea on Badass Romance.)
This is less of an update and more of a masterpost. Here's everything I bought in 2016 that I still haven't read, updated with books I bought in 2017 that fall in the same categories and books from before 2016 as well. So this is everything I own and need to get around to reading.

From chain bookstores:
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Way Things Work by David Macaulay, Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 
Here by Richard McGuire, The Royal We by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

From BookSale, a secondhand bookstore chain:The Color of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe, Blood Orange Brewing by Laura Childs, Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes, In the Midst of Life by Jennifer Worth, The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier, Mathilda Savitch, Remember the Tarantella, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Drive by James Sallis, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Cherie

From other secondhand bookstores in the mall:The Runner by Cynthia Voigt, Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, The Nautical Chart by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Penguin Little Black Classics hoarding:The Fall of Icarus by Ovid, Come Close by Sappho, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun by Emily Dickinson

Part of my efforts to buy more Filipino books:Macarthur by Bob Ong, Mythspace by Paolo Chikiamco, Mga Tala sa Dagat ni Annette Acacio Flores, Si Diwayen ni Augie Rivera, Ito ang Diktadura ni Equipo Plantel, Isang Harding Papel ni Augie Rivera, Gun Dealer's Daughter by Gina Apostol

Random campus secondhand bookstore buys:The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende,  A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

From Yumi Thrift Shop:Hardcover of How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (duplicate, I have a paperback)

From my beloved Little Free Library, which I feed with romance paperbacks from my aunt's collection:A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (currently reading)

Books I won in a giveaway:My Invented Country by Isabel Allende, The Accidental by Ali Smith, The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, There is No Dog by Meg Rosoff


Have you read any of these books? Would you recommend that I read any of them first?

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

2017/2018 reading

According to Goodreads, last year I read 15,089 pages across 65 books. Pretty good, but a far cry from my personal best of 104 books. I split them into seven categories, and here are my two favorites from each:

Chick Lit (5)
Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern
Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

Filipino (12)
Found by Isa Garcia
Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan

Graphic-ish Novels (2)
Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh
To Be or Not To Be by Ryan North

Nonfiction (8)
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
One Hundred Names for Love by Diane Ackerman

Poetry & Classics (8)
Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
I Shall Not Be Moved by Maya Angelou

Well-reviewed (7)
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Young Adult (18)
Wonder by R.J Palacio
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

*there were 5 books I couldn't put into any category, but I didn't have any favorites from them.

My 2018 Goodreads reading challenge has been set for 40 books. There are 53 unread books from those I purchased in the last three years, and there are 6 other books I've committed to buddy-read with a bookish friend. I'm sure as the year goes on my TBR will just grow longer and longer, but this year I'm trying to finish those 59 books I've committed to, without any distractions.
© Someday this will be a book blog
Maira Gall