Friday, August 1, 2014

Interrogating My Bookshelf?

Two months ago, Book Riot posted a little survey-esque thing based on the below comic:


So for each category depicted in this comic, you'll pick a book (or books?) on your own bookshelf that fit under it. And I thought that sounded pretty cool and awesome and since I don't even want to LOOK at my to-review list nor do I want to think about it or do anything to reduce it, I decided to do this! Now having said that, let the fun begin!

Read?
In general, I suck at lot with reading the books that I buy. I don't know why but unless it's a contemporary (those, I get through pretty quickly), I have such a hard time wanting to pick up my copy even if it's a book I'm super excited for. But still, even despite my general suckiness at my own books, it's not like I've only read one! So which book to pick? I'm going to go with what Peter did in the Book Riot article and pick the last book I have on my bookshelf that I read. Which would be (drumroll please)... Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling. It's a reread for me, as part of my attempt to finish my very first reread of the Harry Potter books by the end of summer. I just finished the second and have not even started the third and I'm thinking about those MASSIVE THINGS OF BOOKS that are to come and sweating a little bit. Yep, just a little. But seriously, it was so much fun to reread the Philosopher's Stone (though I haven't reread the entire series, I've read the first about three times already!) It's been about three or four years since I last read it and so many things were forgotten. Like how seriously funny J.K. Rowling's writing is? And how freaking adorable Neville is? And just ahhh, so much greatness.


Intending to Read?
I intend to read all the books on my bookshelf that I haven't read yet but obviously, that doesn't always work out. Literally more than half the books on my bookshelf, I intend to read so I don't really know what to say for this question? I'm going to say Graceling by Kristin Cashore though because that was the last book I took off my bookshelf to place on my bedside table with goals of reading it only to let it become a dust collector. Most of my books don't even leave the bookshelf honestly so THAT in itself is a pretty big deal.  

Half-Read?
I'm rethinking my decision to do this survey now that it's mostly just becoming Exhibit A of how bad Annie is at reading the books that are on her damn shelf. I really only have a few books that I've actually finished on my shelf (like maybe ten to fifteen?) and among the rest - the unfinished books - I mostly don't even get past ten pages of them. So yeah... I suck, I know. It took quite a bit of rummaging around though before I found George's Secret Key to the Universe by Lucy & Stephen Hawking which is a middle grade I started back when I was eleven or something and am pretty sure I never ended up finishing.

Pretend I've Read?
I guess I'll go with Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for this one because I half read, half skimmed this book and I'm not sure if that really means that I actually read it - like devoured every single word of it and marveled at his genius or whatever. I remember the details (ish) and I didn't just Sparknotes it but I guess I didn't really REALLY read it either, if that makes sense. But either way, I use it a lot to make me seem like a very intellectual person who spends her time reading people like Dickens and Tolstoy instead of wasting her time playing the latest Kardashian game (by the way, I'm an A lister now so ha!) so I suppose that falls into the idea of why you would pretend to read a book in the first place. Or something like that.

Saving for When I Have More Time?
This is totally Grave Mercy by R.L. LaFevers. I actually am so interested in this book but dang, have you seen that thing? Freaking ginormous. It's like almost the size of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which I'm fairly certain is the longest Harry Potter book). I can barely pick it up! But since it is summer and I don't think I'll have any more time to read it than I do now, I'm going to make sure I pick it up and FINISH it by September! Well, we'll see how that goes...

Will Never Read?
I probably will never read Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. I seriously just bought it because I had money leftover and just wanted to spend it up. I didn't even LOOK at it, I just picked it up and saw that it had witches and was like "Cool" and went to go buy it. God, I was such a bad seven year old. Also I'm pretty sure it's not even the first book in the series (or maybe it is?) so I'm probably just going to donate it to a book bank or something like that.

Purely for Show?
Hmm, this one might have to be Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I'm pretty sure I have one of the most beautiful copies of the book, if not THE most beautiful. I mostly bought it BECAUSE it was so beautiful (and also, it was on sale) but of course, now that I have it, I do plan on reading it. What type of person would I be, not reading the books they own? But this is a bit ironic because at the moment, Stardust is not on my bookshelf. In fact, I'm not sure WHERE exactly it is so I should probably look into that but yeah, while I don't intend for it to be purely for show, I guess I did buy it because it was such a show-y book and would look freaking fantabulous on my shelf. Because Stardust was never really a book that I WANTED to read - sure, it was on my TBR but it wasn't a book that I was serious about. But now that I have it... well, like I said, I'm planning on reading it.

Read, But Can't Remember A Single Thing About It?
Well, I kinda have sucky memory when it comes to books in general so I don't remember a lot to begin with - even for books that I read just a month ago. So for this question, I had to go waaaaay back to like fifth grade when I read The Water Mirror by Kai Meyer. I seriously don't remember anything about it except that it's about a water mirror... and is set in Venice? And maybe includes a brother-sister duo? Apart from that, nada.

Wish I Hadn't Read?
This should be "Wish I Hadn't Bought" because I have SO MANY BOOKS for that. Because among the ten to maybe fifteen books I've read I don't have any that I really disliked so badly that I would wish it to be completely erased from my mind. I don't even think I've ever felt that way? Like there are BAD books I've read but I've never like really HATED anything. So yeah. I seriously have zero clue about this. I think I'll just give you the last book I gave a one-star too which was The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (which isn't TECHNICALLY on my shelf since I own it as an ebook). I didn't like it but I also didn't hate HATE it. Like I'm still glad I read it because I learned a lot and it was interesting... until it wasn't.

---

And that's it from me for today! Feel free to answer some of these questions in the comments, I'd love to see what you have to say! Thanks for reading if you made it this far and I hope you have a great day and a great rest of the week! 

No comments :

Post a Comment