This is where the resolution starts to hurt, with the new book lists. I somehow managed to avoid nearly all of the Most Anticipated Books of 2012 posts and articles around New Year, but it was only so long before I clickety-clicked my way to temptation. It came this week, in the unexpected form of the Waterstones 11 - the bookshop chain's picks for the hotly anticipated debuts of the year. The list doesn't hold many suprises, and is determinedly white, anglo-centric and dominated by contemporary realism (although, lots of women writers - hurrah!). But it doesn't take much to inspire booklust in me at the moment. I like the sound of The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, a nice bit of fairytale-realism; The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan has an intriguing synopsis; Absolution by Patrick Flannery could be the worst type of navel-gazey literary fiction or the best; and I'm even intrigued by Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, the newest 'Great American Novel' about baseball, a subject ordinarily far from my heart.
But, no no no no no. I will not pre-order and I absolutely will not fish for review copies. Instead I will sidestep over to my shelves and pick off a Waterstones 11 of last year: Patrick de Witt's The Sisters Brothers. I'm feeling in the mood for another American voice in the wake of To Kill a Mockingbird (a post to follow) and I'm hoping its newness will take the edge off my sudden desire for something recent.
The shelves where de Witt has been sitting are looking a little lighter this weekend, after a huge TBR purge. Over the last two days I have filled five huge cardboard boxes and, averting my eyes and holding my breath, handed them over to the local Hospice charity shop. Painful at first, but then an enormous relief. It was difficult to start with and my first pass over the shelves turned up only half a dozen books that I'd read and was willing to get rid of; the second pass a handful more that I knew I didn't want to read (books I'd been sent unsolicited, or started and not finished). This was never going to do the job required, since my determination was to cut the number of books by a quarter. On the third pass I employed a new set of criteria: Had I read it before? If so, was I planning to re-read it in the next two years? If not, was I realistically going to read it in the next three years? If the answer to either of these questions was 'no' then in the box it went.
A pattern started to emerge. In went volume after volume of epic fantasy: series that I last read as a teenager; series where I had read the first book and acquired the rest but was very unlikely to re-visit; series that I had acquired over a decade ago and was unlikely to start at all. Lots of Katherine Kerr, Tad Williams, Robin Hobb, Stephen Donaldson. Many I had bought second hand after reading library copies and then never cracked open again. Once I started to put them in the charity box a mist seemed to clear. The crippling nostalgia was gone and I was plucking books off the shelves left, right and centre. I felt thoroughly liberated. Instead of deluding myself about what I should, would or could read, I focused on what I really wanted to read. It still wasn't easy, but the rhythm carried me and I feel much better for it now. Good stuff. Perhaps by the end of the year I will have halved the pile and thoroughly refocused my reading life.
Week 3 Statistics
Books completed: 2 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; and I also finally finished Edward Burne-Jones: The Last Pre-Raphaelite by Fiona MacCarthy.
Books bought: 0
Books acquired: 0
Books given away to charity: 74 (eep! but also hooray!)
Books added to Amazon wishlist: 2 - Yes, only two! Ironically one of them is the first volume in an epic fantasy trilogy.
~~Victoria~~
Well done on the purge! I've yet to find the courage to do something like that, but I can imagine how liberating it would be. I need to make peace with the fact that some of the books I acquired over the year simply no longer appeal to me.
It's hard to stay strong when faced with so many exciting new books, isn't it? I also really like the sound of The Snow Child.
Posted by: Www | Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 09:23 PM
Oops - that was me above. A bit of an accident with OpenID there :P
Posted by: Nymeth | Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 09:26 PM
Congratulations! Wooo!
Posted by: Smithereens | Monday, January 23, 2012 at 07:57 AM
You kept David Anthony Durham, though, right?
Right?
Posted by: Niall | Monday, January 23, 2012 at 08:36 AM
Oh well done you. I have managed not to acquire any books this week, but have got nowhere near a purge. In fact this may be because there are still books from the last one hanging about in crates that need to go to the charity store. I should sort that out, shouldn't I?
Posted by: litlove | Monday, January 23, 2012 at 09:13 AM
My own TBR purge is gathering momentum. I've managed to find 50 books to part with. The new bookcases are almost built (would have been finished yesterday but for the lack of a critical corner screw, necessitating a 70 mile trip to IKEA ... and it was all going so well.) As I populate them later this week, I suspect a TBR purge system will come naturally. Though I do like your will-i-read-it-in-the-next-3-years criterion. That should separate the must reads from the can do withouts.
Posted by: LizzySiddal | Monday, January 23, 2012 at 12:41 PM
You gave up Stephen R. Donaldson? We couldn't do that at my house. My husband chose a white gold wedding band because he loves the Thomas Covenant series so much. Geeky, I know, but I read the series too and completely understood. Congrats on the purge. I understand how hard it must have been. We have e-readers at my house and last summer purged a good many public domain books from our shelves that were also available as e-books and it was hard to do. You're doing great! Keep it up!
Posted by: Stefanie | Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 04:18 PM
Good for you - I'm trying to purge my TBR along with the TBR Double Dare too. I finally decided recently that I didn't need to re-read the Thomas Covenant Books, but can't quite let go of the first three yet, the others have gone. However, my embargo pile of new books acquired for after the end of March is now at a dozen... Oops, but with the exception of my book group read for March - I will not touch them. (fingers crossed).
P.S. Hope you love The Sisters Brothers - I adored it.
Posted by: Annabel | Sunday, February 05, 2012 at 10:01 AM
I've also reached the conclusion that purging books is the only way I'm going to get my books down to a manageable level but I haven't been able to start.
There's also this vague thought that I could conceivably make money from selling them when the simplest thing to do will be to box them up and donate them to a charity shop or my local library.
Next it'll be the turn of my CD collection. :(
Posted by: Lalith Vipulananthan | Sunday, February 05, 2012 at 09:13 PM