You all have one. Let's see it.
Mine isn't as big as it has been recently, but I actually have my eye on some new books (and you can probably see a couple of these are also pretty new), and I'm just finishing up the new China Miéville collection which jumped the queue...
In lieu of a photo, here's my list:
The Moonstone (working on it) - Wikie Collins
No Name - Wilkie Collins
Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Aurora Floyd - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Highgate Rise - Anne Perry
Belgrave Square - Anne Perry
Farrier's Lane - Anne Perry
The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Perry
Traitor's Gate - Anne Perry
Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry
Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry
Brunswick Gardens - Anne Perry
Bedford Square - Anne Perry
Half Moon Street - Anne Perry
______ = finished
This is a really good idea for a thread, and actually fishing out the unread books from my shelf and piling them up has reminded me of how much I have to catch-up on. I might keep them like this and only put them back when I've done them, to stop me buying any more books until I'm through with these.
From top to bottom:
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks
Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800 by Keith Thomas
The English Civil Wars by Blair Worden
Madness and Revolution: The Lives and Legends of Théroigne de Méricourt by Elisabeth Roudinesco
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevesky
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Plays 1 by Brian Friel (I've read a couple but I need to finish off the whole set)
The Blunders of Our Governments by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe
Under The Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush by Graeme Thomson (I've read this before but I was given the updated version that includes 'Before The Dawn' as a Christmas present so it would be rude not to)
1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear by James Shapiro
Writing Plays - It's an exercise book that I need to dip in and out of. It was already there on the shelf and I couldn't be arsed to take it out.
Margaret Thatcher: Volume One by Charles Moore
I also have a couple of books that I started but didn't finish and want to go back to. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Reformation: Europe's House Divided which I was really enjoying but put to one side to get through something else (because it's gigantic) and want to get back into, and Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution by Jonathan Israel which I feel almost obliged to read for some reason, but it's tough because his writing is so dry. He's an important scholar on the Enlightenment, so I'll try at least a few more chapters.
Now, if only I didn't have to sleep...
^ Tess, Far From The Madding Crowd, and The Woman In White are all really good reads. If you like TWIW, I suggest checking out The Moonstone also by Collins. (in your spare time)
Holy hell, that's a tall pile!
I'm not even sure what's in mine right now, but it's pay weekend and there's a new China Mieville out, so I'm off shopping tomorrow...
Thanks Kala, I saw your post in the other thread and made a mental note to add it to my list. I'm really looking forward to The Woman In White. All I know of it is that awful Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which won't take much to improve on. I've never read any Hardy which feels like a big omission.
I'm really good at 'just browsing' through bookshops on my lunch break, and then actually buying books that I won't get around to for ages, particularly if it's payday or if I have points on any of my loyalty cards (making it a vicious cycle). I have this constant fear that I'm only a few weeks away from abject poverty, so whenever I have a bit of spare cash I hoard so that if that were to happen I would at least have a backlog of books to read. Of course if things got really bad I could also use them as fuel. I know this is pathological, but I'm working on it.
I envy these short stacks.
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