I Love Books

If there are any material objects I have too much of in my life, the winner hands down, would be books. In the last week (well, maybe the last 10 days, but that's probably just me trying to make myself feel better about it :) I have ordered 5 books from Amazon.

Now in my defense, one of those is a cookbook, but before you start thinking, Ok, well that's not so bad, let me explain that prior to ordering those 5 books, I also ordered at least 4 other books - all real books, none of which I have read yet. And actually, I'm not sure you can really count 2 of those as "real" books because they are makeup/beauty books by Carmindy, which, after I glean the information I need from them, I need to sell or just donate.

Ok, so I'm just trying to rationalize, I know, I know, those books are as "real" as any others and they do count.

On the upside, I did just finish reading 2 of all those books I recently ordered from Amazon, I have started on the 3rd, and will soon be reading a 4th.

I think the point I am trying to make is that I have too many books, and it is because I order too many books (from Amazon, mostly). Now, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Amazon.com and I love ordering books from them even more, because let's face it, if you're going to buy books, they usually have a way better deal than places like Borders, Books-a-million, etc. Plus they have a much better selection too, at least in my experience.

I love books so much and giving them away is really hard for me to do, even when I KNOW I probably won't ever read them. I always think, but I might want to read this someday. And then someday never comes so I am left with many books that I

A) don't really have any interest in reading at all

or

B) might have an interest in reading but know I will most likely never get around to reading them because I have so many other books that are higher priorities

or

C) have read but will never read again, so do I really need to keep all of those? Bite your tongue! While I probably do not need to keep all the books I have read, just my favorites/special ones, for me to say that I will get rid of the vast majority of them is complete heresy! Not to mention absurd. And crazy. Immoral, even.

So, I was thinking the other day that I need to solve this problem of having too many books, which is a two-fold problem. Firstly, my impulsive book buying from Amazon, and secondly, keeping books I do not want or need anymore, which could be enjoyed and used by any number of people if I would just get rid of them!

My solution to the first problem is simple in my mind, I just need to actually DO it! I need to get myself a library card. Don't judge, I love libraries and I used to have a library card a long time ago, but don't anymore. There are many reasons for why I need a library card. One of which being that one of the reasons I have too many books is because instead of previewing the book I am thinking about buying in person, (i.e. at a library), I peruse it on Amazon and usually, hastily decide I want it even though perusing it on Amazon usually tells me next to nothing about whether or not I will really want to buy and have this book forever. A library card would enable me to check out the books I am thinking about buying so I could read them BEFORE I buy them (what a concept!) and then decide, after reading them, whether or not I really need to own them.

I also need to go through my books and give some away or sell them to downsize my collection of books. I also have to get better about evaluating my book purchases, instead of impulsively buying books without assessing whether or not I really need to buy and own every book I want to read.

The BBC's Big Read

I need something to blog about. Thanks to the BBC's Big Read

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Star the ones you loved.*
3) Italicize those you plan on reading.
4) Underline those you have partially read (series) or gave the OCT (Old College Try)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (pretty sure I have read this, though I couldn't tell you much about it)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis*
37. Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White -Wilkie Collins (I REALLY want to read this one!)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - I hated this book with a passion
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (A good friend of mine calls this book Madame Ovary)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White*
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (I'm pretty sure I've read this, but not 100% positive)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Toole
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I really should read this book and I really want to)

Hey, I did better than I thought. I've read 16 of those. Pretty sad, but still, I'm just glad I made it over 10. Looks like I've got a lot of reading to do.