Thursday, August 4, 2011

I'm a Bit Ashamed, But Not Above Sharing

I've never read a lot of the classics. While pop culture has told me enough about these books to know the plot and characters, I've never read them. So tonight, when I logged into Amazon (I prefer brick and mortar normally, I SWEAR) to read when a novel I'm super anxious to read is available (This Dark Endeavor. Not til the 23rd. Sadface.) one of these 'classic' books was in the 'also bought' section, so I went ahead and got it.

Here was my first mistake. I'm not a shopper. I'm one of those impulse buyers that store owners love. Since I rarely shop, I tend to go overboard since my thinking turns into, 'well, I never get myself anything, and I've got the cash, so...'

I wound up, in the end, with thirteen tomes now being shipped to my house. Of these, I will say such classics as A Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and American Gods are all now going to FINALLY be read by me.

There's several authors I follow and I have now bought Tawna Fenske's Making Waves and Sean Ferrell's Numb. In addition to those, I bought ones that it seems everyone else has read recently but me (as far as YA goes) which are Incarceron, The Hunger Games Trilogy, The Maze Runner, Whisper, and The Forrest of Hands and Teeth.

Because I'm random, I chose a couple more books I'd read about on blogs this week which are Beasts of No Nation, Hold Me Closer Necromancer, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. (I'm especially excited about the last one. Thanks Emily!)

There's a few of these well outside my comfort zone. I'm the sort of reader that sticks to what I love and rarely venture outside that. But that's sort of stupid, I decided. If it's well written, then I should give it a go.

What this longer blog post's point was (since I rarely have one) is to give an example of how blogging IS a valid and worthwhile form of advertizing. I'd otherwise have never heard of several of these if not for blogging.

As an aside, I've a file called, "Books I Need to Buy" and on that remains (and a couple aren't available yet) A Monster Calls, American Desert, Animal Farm, Beautiful Creatures, Boneshaker, Divergent, Geek Love, Going Bovine, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell, Little Kingdoms, Never Let Me Go, Speak (I KNOW, RIGHT? WTF is wrong with me for not reading it yet?), The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Alienist, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Blind Assassin, The Brief Wondrous Live of Oscar Wao, The Corrections, The Hanged Man, The Help, The Invention of Murder, The Monsters of Templeton, The Near Witch, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Somnambulist, The Tiger's Wife, The White Tiger, The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, Thirteen Reasons Why, This is Where I Leave You, When You Reach Me, and Wintergirls. 90% of these come from an agent I respect's personal pics. His taste is like mine, so I'm going to run with it.

We're not even going to go into the books I already own that I've not read yet *coughEndersGameWaterforElephantsTheArtofRacingintheRainTheReplacementLittleBeeTheRoadTheBookThiefWatchmenGirlWiththeDragonTattoocough*

So, are there any books you're ashamed of not having read yet? Do you have any more suggestions for me to try?

10 comments:

vic caswell said...

oh man. i'm not nearly as well read as i should be.
looks like you have yourself a lot of fun coming up!

Lenny Lee said...

hi miss christi! yikes! for sure you got wild in the book store. ha ha. for sure your gonna have lots to keep you busy reading. im thinking you could add miss hilarys new book the white assassin to your list. i did a review of it on my blog if you could wanna see what its about. i got so much books cause of reviews and i won a bunch off blog contests. cause of blogs im reading way lots more. :)
...hugs from lenny

Sarah said...

I consider myself pretty well-read. I got started on the classics when I was young and never stopped. However, there are a few books I haven't read that it seems like everyone else has. Stuff like Catch22, Slaughterhouse 5, All Quiet on the Western Front, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's kind of weird that I haven't gotten to those, yet.

Elizabeth Poole said...

Oh wow, you sound just like me. What gets me is the free shipping on Amazon on orders over $25. Every time I go to buy ONE THING it turns into three or four books in order to get that coveted free shipping. I have a sickness, I know.

I also bought a truckload of books from Borders online when they went out of business. I bought some of the YA I keep hearing about (The Hunger Games was included) but also books from authors I want, but always seem to buy something slightly more pressing.

I can personally tell you that American Gods is one of my favorite books of all time. The Great Gatsby was surprisingly not boring, especially since it's "literary" (I find most literary fiction boring, I am a bad person, I know), and I LOVED the Catcher in the Rye. I suspect you might enjoy Catcher a lot, since you like to write towards the darker themes like me.

I read and loved Making Waves, and The Forrest of Hands and Teeth look really interesting.

What I did to organize my books is create an Amazon wish list, and then put all the books I want to buy eventually on there. Whenever I hear about something new, I just look it up on Amazon and add it to my wish list. I have about...seven pages of books there. :D

I would also recommend Kurt Vonnegut the next time you're in the mood for classics. Again, given my limited knowledge of your tastes, I think you would enjoy his darkly surreal take on things. I love Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five the best.

I could recommend a ton more, but I think I should stop here. :D Maybe we should a book recommendation blog fest or something. :D

Congrats on increasing your book hoard!

Christi Goddard said...

aspiring - it will take me ages to get through these all. i don't know how agents can do EVERYTHING and keep up with all the books.

lenny - the white assassin is on my list, and i've heard great things about it. thanks, sweetie!

sarah - *ahem* not read those, either. *hangs head in shame* Though I really want to read Vonnegut. I get compared to him by readers and I'd like to see how.

elizabeth - I thought about making the Amazon list, but I worried I would always shop there if I did. I really want to stick to brick and mortar as much as I can. we've got two here (Hastings and Books a Million) that I'm inside a couple days a week. I like to wander along and run my fingers over the spines. Yeah, I'm kind of a freak.

and I totes want to give Vonnegut a whirl. I don't know why I put it off. Fear of intimidation, perhaps. :-)

Lisa Gail Green said...

LOL! I don't want to recommend anything else until you catch up a bit! A lot of those are ones I love though. Especially Beautiful Creatures, Going Bovine, The Replacement, and of course Hunger Games.

Leslie S. Rose said...

Okay, we're cutting off your credit card. Don't feel bad. I just bought a new bookshelf and it's already filled with my TBR books. Next up for me is THE MAZE RUNNER. I've read all of the books on Lisa's list and you HAVE to read them. Ready...Set...Go...You're in for treat after treat.

A.T. Post said...

Dang! You beat me to it. I've never read "The Catcher in the Rye." I was going to buy it at the going-out-of-business sale at my local Borders, but I passed it over for Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Golding's "Lord of the Flies." (I've read both, but that was for school; 'skimmed' is a better word.)

On the theme of 'catching' I've never read Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" and have always wanted to rectify that inequity.

Christi Goddard said...

I loved Lord of the Flies, but it's been years (like 2 decades) since I've read it.

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