Books, Books and More Books - Part 2

My TBR Bookshelf

Last night my Mom asked me what I was going to write about next. That was an easy question. Books. I've been chomping at the bit to get back to "Books, Books and More Books." So here goes.

This particular bookshelf is in the guest bedroom. It used to be filled with paperbacks of historical and contemporary fiction. But those got moved to another place and classics and history books pretty much took over. Every Christmas and birthday I order some books from Amazon.com as a present to myself. That way I know I always get something I really really want. So my last couple gifts to myself have been Wordsworth Classics (those are the books with blue covers) and some history books that caught my eye.

Though the classics can be purchased in a variety of editions, Penguin Classics, Barnes and Noble Classics, Oxford Classics, Dover Classics Bantam Classics, Signet Classics and Kindle Classics. I recently took a liking for the Wordsworth Classics. Though I have to admit I have a fair number of Penguin, Oxford, Bantam and Signet Classics too. Hey, remember, I love books? I buy what I can find. Sometimes from Amazon, and other times from local bookstores. In Pensacola we have Books-a-Million, B. Dalton and Barnes and Noble. I frequent them all. Pretty much nothing compares to holding a brand new book in my hands. Although I have to admit that now that I own a Kindle, it's really cool reading classics on my Kindle too and I've downloaded lots of them, many of which are freebies. Anyway ...

Now back to this particular bookshelf. These are all TBR (to be read) books. Old favorites I read years ago, usually back in my college days, and want to re-read, or classics I never got a chance to read. There's also non-fiction, autobiographies and history books that I've stumbled across from time to time. I probably have a lifetime's worth of reading on that one bookshelf, as the shelves are packed two rows deep with more books cross-wise on the top. I worry that if a hurricane comes along I'll have to evacuate with all my books.

This wicker bookshelf has moved back and forth across the country, first with my Mom and then with me. So it's been in California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Texas and back to Florida, just to name a few locales. On our last move, from the Texas Hill Country back to the Florida Panhandle, I think I counted 27 boxes of books. I have to add that my husband was more than willing to buy me a Kindle for my last birthday in hopes that I don't add any more boxes of books to any impending moves. Though I think we're pretty much settled here near the grandkids, so my husband probably won't have to lug any more of those boxes of books. Besides, the paperbacks aren't all that heavy, It's the art books that are the heavy ones. Anyway, as I was saying ...

This particular bookshelf has old favorites I'm anxious to re-read, like Mary Stewart's The Moonspinners and Lawrence Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet": Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea. There's also Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace; D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Women in Love and Sons and Lovers; Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities; E. M. Forster's A Passage to India; Jessamyn West's The Friendly Persuasion; Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica; and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

As for books I haven't yet read, but have always wanted to, there are many on this shelf: Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice; George Elliot's Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda; Charlotte Bronte's Villette and Shirley; Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, The Return of the Native, Under the Greenwood Tree and others of his I somehow missed through the years. Also, there's D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow; Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe; and Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask. So I've got a lot of reading to do.

As for the non-fiction/autobiography/history books I've got quite an assortment: Queen Victoria's Little Wars by Byron Farwell;  Gertrude Bell, Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell; Twenty Chickens for a Saddle by Robyn Scott; The Pirate Queen by Susan Ronald; The Oxford History of the French Revolution, 2nd Ed. by William Doyle; The Valley of the Assassins and A Winter in Arabia by Freya Stark; Savage Kingdom by Benjamin Woolley; 1453 by Roger Crowley; The Blue Nile and The White Nile by Alan Moorehead; The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk; and Four Queens by Nancy Goldstone. I could go on and on.

Some contemporary paperbacks I recently bought made their way to the TBR bookshelf: Janet Evanovich's Finger Lickin' Fifteen (I've read all the way through 14 & the "Between the Numbers" books too), Mary Alice Monroe's Swimming Lessons (I love her books); Daniel Silva's The Defector (this is a great series of espionage/international intrigue), and Bernard Cornwell and  Susan Kells' The Fallen Angels (a sequel to A Crowning Mercy, which was great). Anyway, I'm nothing if not eclectic in my reading. I just plain love books. I'm hoping that you do too and that some of these gems will be added to your TBR bookshelves too.