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?

The Annotated TBR #5: Recommendations and Links masterlist

This is yet another masterlist of everything I've recently added to my TBR, but not my Goodreads To-Read List, because I want to credit all the recs I get from book bloggers.

The Afternoon Chat: What are you reading right now? on Go Fug Yourself always blows up my TBR, and I've only read two of those chats so far. I forgot to note the names of the commenters, though. 
Stranger in Their Own Land by Arlie Russel Hochschild
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
The Little Paris Bookshop
Lady Susan by Jane Austen (and the Love and Friendship movie?)
Swan by Frances Mayes
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant
The Special Power of Restoring Lost Things by Courtney Elizabeth Mauk
Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce
Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari (in audiobook form!)
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (read by Colin Firth)
The Summer Before War by Helen Simonson
The Nix by Nathan Hill
Dr. Siri Paiboun series by Colin Cotterill
Dancing With the Tiger by Lili Wright
The Boy is Back by Meg Cabot
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott
Fill the Sky by Katherine A. Sherbrooke
The Mental Floss History of the World
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
Tent City Urbanism by Andrew Heben
The Heaven Tree by Edith Pargeter
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
Seating Arrangements, Maggie Shipstead
The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer
The Strangler Vine, MJ Carter
Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld
The Antagonist, Lynn Coady
The Observations, Jane Harris
The Asylum, John Harwood
No Great Mischief by Alistair McCleod
Bird Box by Joshua Malerman
A Room with a view by E.M. Forster
The Shape of Snakes by Minette Walters
Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia Wrede
The History of the Rains by Niall Williams
Two Summers by Aimee Freedman
The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
The Gallery by Laura Marx Fitzgerald
The Name Therapist by Duana Taha
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton
Three Men in a Boat
Mystic River
The Fisherman
Under the Udala Tree
Death Comes to the Archbishop
The Warmth of Other Suns
Shores of Women
The Mysterious Benedict Society
Homegoing
Dostoevsky but only the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations
Rachel Dratch's book
N.K. Malesin
The Language of Food
East of Eden
Ta-Nehisi Coates

From Parnassus Books' lit journal Musing's 43 Books to Read Right Now
The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
As Good as Gone by Larry Watson
The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church
and Ann Patchett's notes on the Read Harder challenge

Books set in Africa from Anne Bennett at My Head is Full of Books
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, 
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, 
West with the Night by Beryl Markham, 
Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein, 
The Bitter Side of Sweet by Tara Sullivan, 
Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell
also from Anne Bennett: Exit, Pursued by A Bear by E.K. Johnston, previously on TBR but recommended again

African Literature from Diana at A Haven for Book Lovers
Born on a Tuesday by Elnathan John
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

11 book pairs that match your childhood favorites with what you should read now from Modern Mrs. Darcy
Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan (to match From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E, Frankweiler)
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis (to match The Chronicles of Narnia)
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis (also to match The Chronicles of Narnia)
Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (childhood match-up for The Grapes of Wrath)
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
and from the comments:
The Paris Architect
The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
The Bone Clocks

20 books everyone will be talking about this fall from Modern Mrs Darcy:
The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote, from M reads books
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre and
To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfeld from Karen at Booker Talk
The Crepes of Wrath by Sarah Fox and
Out of Circulation by Heather Day Gilbert from Carrie at Reading is My Superpower:
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway and
The Smell of Other People's Houses by Bonnie Sue-Hitchcock from Bri at Transported by Books
Fakes, edited by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer from Bennard at The Book Hooligan
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold and
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman from Stephanie at Don't Be Afraid of the Dork
Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott from Geoff Whaley at The Oddness of Moving Things
Anina ng mga Alon by Eugene Y. Evasco from Amber Garma at Bookbed
Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan from L at Big Reading Life

Anubha Yadav/Huffington Post's 14 Contemporary Short Stories That Will Spark Your Mind
Cait at Paper Fury's Historical Retelling Wishlist
Cait at Paper Fury's Fairy Tale Retelling Wishlist
On the Inimitable, Exhausting Wonder of Physical Books by Petr Knava on Pajiba

The Annotated TBR #4: Books from 2016

(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:

From a Fully Booked sale (they were transferring to a different level):
When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale, About the Size of It by Warwick Cairns, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Way Things Work by David Macaulay

From a huge (for me) BookSale haul:
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, The Paris Review 213, Telling Tales edited by Nadine Gordimer, The Color of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe, Water Tales by Alice Hoffmann, Blood Orange Brewing by Laura Childs

From Diplomat:
The Runner by Cynthia Voigt and Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary

Penguin Little Black Classics hoarding:
The Fall of Icarus by Ovid, A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees by Kenko, The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows by Rudyard Kipling, Anthem for Doomed Youth by WIlfred Owen
From a birthday splurge:
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, Here by Richard McGuire, Wonder by R.J. Palacio, The Royal We by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

Part of my efforts to buy more Filipino books:
Alternative Alamat edited by Paolo Chikiamco, Our Darkest Hours by Jose Miguel Arguelles, Macarthur by Bob Ong, This Side of Sunny by Agay Llanera, Beginner's Guide by Six De Los Reyes, Sugar and Salt by Ninotchka Rosca, Dear Distance by Luis Joaquin M. Katigbak, Shine by Candy Gourlay 

Random secondhand buys, from book bloggers' recommendations:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

From the Manila International Book Fair: 
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Penguin English Library edition), To Be Or Not To Be by Ryan North, The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (recommended by lefthandedbooklover.blogspot.com), The Elements of Style illustrated by Maira Kalman, We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

From Yumi Thrift Shop:
Hardcovers of How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (duplicate, I have a paperback) and Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley

From a friend who's selling her books for a move:
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

From a friend of a friend, via the #SaveTheCulture book exchange tag on Facebook:
Manila Men in the New World: Filipino Migration to Mexico and the Americas from the Sixteenth Century by Floro L. Mercene

For my sister's birthday:
Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman, Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh

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 

I still want to cut back on my reading for now and focus on my research. Maybe five books for this month would be reasonable.

The Annotated TBR #3

(I came across this idea on Badass Romance.)

I didn't read any of the books from last month's TBR. Maybe it was because I got caught up in reading my Filipino graphic novels and the sequels to The Winner's Curse, but it may also have been because nothing on my TBR appealed to me.

The one book I should really finish reading is The Passion of Mademoiselle S., which I won in a Goodreads giveaway months ago. Aside from that, I want to take the Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge,  There are 12 categories for the challenge:

1) A book published this year: The Raven King, published April 26th, 2016

2) A book you can finish in a day: Trip to Tagaytay, read July 25

3) A book you've been meaning to read: I'll Give You The Sun

4) A book recommended by your local librarian or bookseller

5) A book chosen for you by your sibling

6) A book published before you were born: Night Flight, first published 1930

7) A book you previously abandoned

8) A book you own but have never read

9) A book that intimidates you

10) A book you've already read at least once

I probably won't have any trouble finding books that fit 7-10. Getting a recommendation for #4 will probably be toughest, unless I pick something from the bestseller pile and pretend that counts. My sister has already picked out No Comebacks by Frederick Forsyth. 

Funnily enough, in one of MMD's reading challenge-related posts, I'd commented a short TBR. Here it is, for future use:

Some books on my 2016 reading list are Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth, Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock, One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir by Diane Ackerman, and Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. I also hope to finish The Strange Story of the Quantum by Banesh Hoffman (started last year) and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (started in 2012).

I've only read two from this list, so that's 5 left, with 5 months to go. But I have a feeling my reading will slow down in the coming months because of all the schoolwork ahead.

The Annotated TBR #2

(I came across this idea on Badass Romance.)

I've been meaning to finish Captain Corelli's Mandolin since late 2014, and in June I decided to just give up on it. I wasn't particularly interested in what would happen to any of the characters, and though the setting was lovely and new to me, I was kind of sick of wartime novels. No take backs, too, since I gave away my copy last Wednesday.

From last month's TBR, I have to admit I didn't make any progress on the biographies of Roald Dahl and Marie Antoinette, or on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, though I'm staying optimistic for this month.

For the long-distance book club we have book 3, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and hopefully book 4, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

For my birthday treat to myself, I want to reread some old favorites, either The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, Inside Las Vegas by Mario Puzo, or Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I also want to read one of the books I bought in anticipation of my birthday, either Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini, Here by Richard McGuire, or Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, which incidentally is on Ann Patchett's list of the 75 best books of the past 75 years. Other books I own from that list are The Once and Future King by T.H. White and The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

The Annotated TBR #1

(I came across this idea on Badass Romance.)

There are dozens of books on my shelf that I've been meaning to read for ages. Most of them are from freshman year, when I discovered the thrill of secondhand bookstores on campus. These bookstores had carefully curated selections of more highbrow/intellectual-sounding authors, all these paperbacks with tasteful cover art and great reviews.

Here are some I've been intending to read since the beginning of 2015:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke

Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antoine Fraser

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

Jane Eyre

The Once and Future King

The Life and Times of Akhnaton

Sense and Sensibility

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now by Maya Angelou

Sherlock Holmes Volume 1

And here are some I specifically picked out for June:

At the start of the year I planned to reread Roald Dahl in June. Maybe just Matilda or Fantastic Mr. Fox or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one of his iconic works. Probably supplemented with a little progress on his biography, Storyteller by Donald Sturrock.

I've always been curious about Never Let Me Go, and the Long Distance Book Club decided on this for June. Now I kind of regret not buying any of the secondhand copies I came across over the years.

From the books I owned previously:
Tracy Chevalier is always an easy-ish read, complex but uncomplicated, if that makes sense. I should finally finish Burning Bright.
I've had Marie Antoinette: The Journey and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell on shelf for at least five years. Time to make some real progress.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, ano na? I made my friend choose between Tender is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, and This Side of Paradise for the next LDBC book, and she picked the first one.

One Filipino book for this month! Hopefully Sixty-Six.

Plus, of course, whatever e-books strike my fancy.