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?