August Reading List: From My Shelves

Whoops!  I had this post all ready to go for the beginning of August, and then forgot to publish it!  I blame school starting up again.

 

 I buy too many books. I have known this about myself for some time, but a recent house organization project really brought the severity of this problem into focus for me. While cleaning out my closet, I pulled out lots of plastic storage bins that I hadn't actually looked through for years. I didn't even remember what was supposed to be in most of them, so I went through them one by one. Out of eight bins, two contained pictures and old souvenirs, one contained the parts to a fishtank, and one contained Christmas decorations. The remaining four were stuffed full of old books.  The shelves in the closet also contained stacks of old books.  The bookcase in my room was also overloaded with books and there was a knee-high stack of books on my floor.

I knew that I bought too many books, but until I had them all pulled out of their hiding places and stacked in front of me, I didn't realize how enormous my stash had become.  Following the steps I learned last April in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I evaluated each book in my collection and decided if I wanted to hang on to them or donate them. I ended up donating almost all of the books that I had read before. I kept a few books that were special favorites of mine and all of the books that I hadn't gotten around to reading yet (of which there are almost an entire large bookcase of).  I'm going to work on reading some of those this month.

I'm also going to combine my reading theme this month with my theme from last month - favorite authors.  I didn't get a chance to read very much in July, so I'm going to make a special effort to choose books this month that fall into both categories - books I already own that happen to be by authors I like.

Here's are the books I'm planning on reading so far:

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak - I loved The Book Thief and I've had this other novel by Markus Zusak hanging around on my shelves since last Christmas.

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys - I bought this book a few months ago since it looked interesting and it was by the author who wrote Between Shades of Gray. I hadn't even read Between Shades of Gray at that point, but I had a feeling I was going to like it.  Well, I was right. I read it in June and I loved it.  Now it's time to try this novel.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee - I bought this novel right when it came out, but was actually afraid to read it based on the reviews. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my special favorites and I didn't want to read about an Atticus Finch that was racist.  I've got to give it a try though. This month is the perfect time.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo - I've owned this book since I was in high school, meaning that it has been sitting on my shelves for over ten years. Whoa. This will also fit into my Back to the Classics challenge.

Bonus Round Books:
Any of the Rainbow Rowell novels I have hanging around here - Attachments, Landline, and Carry On are all sitting on my shelves.
 Will Grayson, Will Grayson by David Leviathan and John Green


Okay, let's get to it!