Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
Read the synopses of the books
Decide: keep it or should it go?
My shelf has decreased to 1146. I finished a book and removed two books from my wishlist.
This week’s books:
The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson – KEEP. I’ve enjoyed Bryson’s writing style before, and I’m strangely fascinated with language and how it has evolved over time. In another lifetime, I probably would have been an etymologist.
Selected Poems by Robert Frost – GO. I’m not a reader of Poetry. I’ve tried, and I would like to be, but when I want to sit down with a book and read for a while, it has never been a book of poems that I’ve picked up. I’ll read a poem here and there, but that’s about it. I need to let go of the reader that I think I could be someday and allow myself to be the reader that I am by making space for the books I know I’ll read.
The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – KEEP. I loved The Shadow of the Wind, and while The Angel’s Game wasn’t quite as good, I’ve been looking forward to reading this 3rd book in “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series for a while.
The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport- KEEP. I was mildly obsessed with Anastasia Romanov after reading a book about her that I checked out from the library at school. It was years before the animated movie (which I’ve never seen), but I never forgot her story. I thought I was done with all that until I read the Goodreads synopsis, and I now want to read this book even more than when I originally got it. The only reason I’ve put it off for so many years is that it’s a bit of a chunkster.
Cape of Storms by Nina Berberova – KEEP. Here is another book about the Bolsheviks’ impact on Russia and its people, in this case, three Russian exiles who escape to France. This is a much shorter book in comparison to The Romanov Sisters and I don’t remember where or when I got it or if I even knew what it was about, but it was sometime prior to November 2017, when I added it to my want-to-read shelf.
My want-to-read shelf is down one to 1145 books. The next post is full of yet more physical books that I own, and I doubt I’ll be parting with any of them.
