Chaos Reading discussion

Like most of us I have a ridiculously large TBR shelf. In my case, well over 1,000 books.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

To try and cut this down, I started a "must-buy" shelf for the absolutely essential books. So now when I go online book shopping I at least have a place to start. Now even my must-buy shelf is getting out of hand. I've gotten it down to roughly the 100 mark, but I'd feel better if I could shrink it a bit further, since I'm still adding to it all the time. Anyone want to have a look through and tell me if any of them are really not worth the bother?

Ruby's Must-Buy Shelf
http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

Feel free to help me cull the other shelf too if you've got time on your hands!

I don't see much to remove from your shelves, just stuff to add to mine (dang you!). Only Revolutions I couldn't read more than 10 pages, and I wanted to love it because it's Danielewski. If you can read some in a library book or a friend's copy ahead of time, you might be better able to decide if it's for you.

Have you read The Atrocity Exhibition? I'd put that ahead of Crash if not (sorry, I know replacement recommendations aren't actually culling).

I recently finished Room. I put it in the "It's good but it's also wildly overrated" group.

One word: Library.


I can't imagine buying all the books I'd like to read!

I had some time, though, so I looked through your full list. As far as culling goes:

Foundation -- i know it's a classic, but it is so. boring.
Water for Elephants -- not terrible, but seriously meh.
Living Dead Girl -- ditto
The Unit -- very mixed feelings on this one, see my review.


On the other hand, you should push these to the top of your list (prioritizing helps, right?):
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Geek Love
The Blind Assassin
Ubik
The Lies of Locke Lamora

Thanks guys! That helps.... I think...... It's so hard to remove books from the TBR. Demoting them is one thing, but removing them..... is hard.

Riona - I just removed 4 books from the must-buy list.... only to have you try to add 5! Doh :(

You're welcome. ;)

Hear the Wind Sing is a pretty unnecessary Murakami read I thought :)
My Booky Wook 2: This Time it's Personal is gash! If you watch his stand up around the time he wrote it, it's mostly the same material delivered more funnily

As for the must reads, you have:
Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland
Popular Hits of the Showa Era
Hunger
2666
Parasite Eve

Hope that was helpful :-)

Leo wrote: "Hear the Wind Sing is a pretty unnecessary Murakami read I thought :)
My Booky Wook 2: This Time it's Personal is gash! ..."

Dammit! Why does "gash" have to be a negative word? Gash is good! Gash is GOOD!

2666 is on my (real) bookshelf, BTW. And it's calling me. It's just such a big commitment!

Ruby wrote: "Dammit! Why does "gash" have to be a negative word?"

Sorry! Meant to reply. Since 2666 is like 5 loosely connected books, you might enjoy 5 interbookular dips in it :D Also we appear to be at opposite ends of the globe, so we can polarise gash all we want haha :-)

Your kindle list is far more adventurous than my reading list, I haven't heard of most the books on there. I've really enjoyed a lot of Joe Lansdale stories, so I'd recommend you check those out. And 2666 is worth the effort, for sure! Won't you get the occasional break for lighter (literally) reading when you prop plane off to the back of beyond?

Leo wrote: "Since 2666 is like 5 loosely connected books, you might enjoy 5 interbookular dips in it :D Also we appear to be at opposite ends of the globe, so we can polarise gash all we want haha :-) ..."

Bahahaha! I LOVE a conversation that contains the phrases, "interbookular dips" AND "polarise gash"!

Whitney wrote: "Won't you get the occasional break for lighter (literally) reading when you prop plane off to the back of beyond? ..."

Yeah that's the idea behind taking the Kindle with me, but the last few trips I've been reluctant to put down the current paperback! Last week I ended up taking both Fragile Things and High-Rise and ignoring the Kindle entirely. Had to leave some work papers behind to do it too. Oops.

Ruby wrote: "that's the idea behind taking the Kindle with me, but the last few trips I've been reluctant to put down the current paperback!"

I'll confess; please don't turn me in. I draw the line at pirating books & music that I don't already have in hardcopy, but I'm not beyond finding epub downloads for books I'm already reading (especially when I'm either going on vacation, or my eyes are acting up and I find I need stronger reading glasses than I have with me).

Derek wrote: "I'll confess; please don't turn me in. I draw the line at pirating books & music that I don't already have in hardcopy, but I'm not beyond finding epub downloads for books I'm already reading..."

I do the same thing :-)

Bastards! Here I am. Doing the right thing. Being a law abiding citizen of the net. And you guys are just..... making me feel stupid for not thinking of that.

I wish I had this idea first, since my TBR list is similarly out of control. I started going through the list page by page, but then I saw that I could compare your TBR list to my "read" list with the compare books function.

Anyway, I did come across a few that I didn't think were that bad, but might not be worth your time:

The Revisionists - Kind of a standard time-travel-to-prevent-past-from-being-altered-type-deal.
Dying to Live - Only if you're really Jonesing for a zombie series. I didn't dislike it, but I'm sure that most of the other zombie books in your TBR list would be more interesting. My opinion anyway.
Help! a Bear Is Eating Me! - I generally like bizarro if it's well-done. I guess by definition the premise of this book is different, but the execution seemed like: "bizarro for bizarro's sake" without some of the really unsettling elements you hope to get.
Katja from the Punk Band - When I saw the premise, I thought I would totally love it, but the writing was overly simplistic for my tastes.

Conversely, you should totally read Blueprints of the Afterlife right now.

Nicholas wrote: "I wish I had this idea first, since my TBR list is similarly out of control. I started going through the list page by page, but then I saw that I could compare your TBR list to my "read" list with..."

Well, I tried that with your books (you can't as far as I can tell actually compare specific shelves, it just compares everything you both have shelved), and the only think I could find on your list was The Night Circus. I'll quote my entire review: "Nothing happened... and then nothing happened again." There are others I really disliked, but most of them are books that some of my GR friends thought were great (like The Passage).

Nicholas wrote: "I wish I had this idea first, since my TBR list is similarly out of control. I started going through the list page by page, but then I saw that I could compare your TBR list to my "read" list with..."

Oh, nifty. The only thing on out mutual lists that I would cull is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which I thought it was pretty meh, especially considering the page count. But then that's another one that most other people thought was great.

Whitney wrote: "The only thing on out mutual lists that I would cull is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which I thought it was pretty meh, especially considering the page count."

Oh, thank you. I thought I was the only one. In fact, that's why I didn't suggest he cull that one!

Derek wrote: "Whitney wrote: "The only thing on out mutual lists that I would cull is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which I thought it was pretty meh, especially considering the page count."

Oh, thank you. I ..."

Consider it culled. I tried to be ruthless in removing other titles, but the list only ended up about 10 books lighter. This is not what I imagined when I decided to be ruthless.

Adam wrote: "It's one of those love it or hate it books. Personally I loved it, but that's why I suggest reading a sample on Amazon. It should become apparent pretty soon what side of the divide the reader is on. "

Yes, that's a really good idea. The samples are usually quite sufficient to let you choose.

Hiya Nicholas,
Compared books and personally I would remove The Flame Alphabet (although it's polarising pretty hard) and The Wee Free Men was good but it's for kids...up to you :-)

I never actually thought any of Pratchett's books were intended for kids - and yet I tend to find the humor too juvenile to keep my interest.

I also loved The Wee Free Men. Technically, all the Tiffany Aching books in the Discworld series (The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, and I Shall Wear Midnight) are classified as children's books, but they are very readable by adults.

Hm that's true... Sorry if I gave a bad recommendation, it's just a personal preference not to read children's books. At the uni book club they chose Something Wicked This Way Comes and I felt so embarrassed to have read it that I didn't go to the meeting haha! I wanted to save anyone else from that feeling :-)

Leo wrote: "Hm that's true... Sorry if I gave a bad recommendation, it's just a personal preference not to read children's books. At the uni book club they chose Something Wicked This Way Comes and I felt so e..."

But that's not a children's book, either. It's a classic, and yet only 121 Goodreads users have even shelved it as "Young Adult". Having children as lead characters doesn't make it a kids book. Is The Body (i.e., the original of the movie, The Stand) a children's book? You're cutting yourself off from good stories because of an arbitrary idea that they were never intended for adults.

Leo wrote: "Hiya Nicholas,
Compared books and personally I would remove The Flame Alphabet (although it's polarising pretty hard) and The Wee Free Men was good but it's for kids...up to you :-)"

Thanks, Leo. I don't think I can bring myself to remove The Flame Alphabet just yet, exactly because of how split the opinions seem to be. I do like the suggestion of reading a sample on Amazon before diving in.

I forgot to mention - Nicholas, I did a "compare books" and wanted to mention Blood Zero Sky. I'd probably skip that one.

My review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Whitney wrote: "I don't see much to remove from your shelves, just stuff to add to mine (dang you!). Only Revolutions I couldn't read more than 10 pages, and I wanted to love it because it's Danielewski. If you ca..."

I would agree with you Whitney. Room is definitely overrated.

Books I'd cut:
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby--bad translation. The stories could have been interesting, but the wording was very wooden.
Pale Fire--just terrible.
Daughters of the North--good set u, but abrupt ending that didn't really follow through.
Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris--seemed disorganized. It was difficult to stay interested.

Definitely keep the Sherman Alexie, though. Good stuff.

Bethany wrote: "Books I'd cut:
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby--bad translation. The stories could have been interesting, but the wording was very wooden.
Pale Fire--just terrible.
..."

o.0
We're just about to do Pale Fire as Group Read!

I wish you more luck than I had with it. I had to read it for a postmodern literature class. As a result, I will never read another Nabokov book. Ever.

"… had to read it for a postmodern literature class"

I think that says it all :)

Derek wrote: ""… had to read it for a postmodern literature class"

I think that says it all :)"

Beat me to it. The few postmodern textbooks I have glanced over have managed to suck all the joy out of whatever subject they addressed. I remember my friend had a book for a class that was an analysis of Capitalism as reflected in the character of Scrooge McDuck. I was jealous until I glanced through the pages containing completely humorless analysis and endless jargon and neologisms.

The same class had some other really awesome books--Love by Toni Morrison and The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. It also had some tough Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury). Nabokov, though...no. No more.

Bethany wrote: "The same class had some other really awesome books--Love by Toni Morrison and The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. It also had some tough Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury). Nabokov, though...no. No..."

Well, I hope the discussion is something you can contribute to anyway. Not everyone has to love the group reads :)

I haven't read a book on your list I hated, sorry. ;-) But you have a few of my alltime favorite books on your list!
I would recommend:

The Name of the Wind !!!

The Shadow of the Wind, they are both so beautiful and with such a rich storyline.

& also The Glass Castle if you like memoir kind of books, it's really adventurous though :D Not your normal kind of autobiography.

I also loooved The Time Traveler's Wife but that's probably not for everyone. ;-) It's a tear jerker for sure.