Just When I Thought I Was Catching Up

Just when I start to think that I'm making a little headway on the huge number of unread books I have accumulated, I step back for a minute to take stock and find that I'm still losing ground. This stack shows the books that have entered my life just since the beginning of September, twelve of them in total. As of this morning, I've completed ten books in September and I'm in the process of reading five others...still behind by two at this point. It's hopeless.

I must be one of the last people on Earth to read Case Histories, but I found a nice, cheap copy at Half-Price Books the other day and decided to finally add it to my TBR list.

As some of you might remember, I'm a huge fan of the writing of Joyce Carol Oates and have over 80 of her books on my shelf. I already had an ARC of The Barrens but found this band new hardcover at a great price and jumped on it.

The Monsters of Templeton arrived in the mail just a couple of days ago, an unexpected ARC that really looks interesting. I read the first three chapters last night and I'm hooked on the story already. This one won't be published until early 2008 and is set in Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and the author's hometown.

I've never read Kathy Reichs but a neighbor gave me a copy of Bones to Ashes as a thank you for some house-watching that I did for him. It looks interesting and I'm curious to see what her writing is like.

I picked up The Landsman from Barnes & Noble the other day because it's another Civil War novel and because I couldn't believe the price on the thing. This particular store only had two copies on the shelf, both marked down to 50% off, plus and extra 10% off for members. I was also carrying around a coupon that gave me another 15% off on any item of my choice and I charged it on my Barnes & Noble credit card, getting another 5% off the price. I couldn't resist parlaying all those discounts together to buy a brand new hardcover for less than paperback price.

I've been hearing a lot about The God of Animals (mostly good) for a while and found this first edition copy on the bargain table at another Barnes & Noble location.

I read Ellen Foster a while back and I always enjoy reading Kaye Gibbons, so when I spotted this new copy of The Life All around Me by Ellen Foster I grabbed it. I think I paid all of $2 for it.

I had never heard of The Dogs of Babel before I spotted a copy for $1 but the premise sounds interesting so I bought it. It's the story of a man who becomes obsessed with teaching his dog to speak because it was the only witness to his wife's death. Now, you have to admit that's a different idea for a novel.

The Life of Pi has become a modern classic, and it didn't take very long. Now I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I haven't read it and have very little idea of what it's about. This copy will let me fix that.

What's So Great about America is not what it sounds like from the title. Notice that there is no question mark after the title. It's a statement, and this author proceeds to tell his readers exactly what is so great about this country. Every time that I go to a bookstore it depresses me to see all the negative books about this country and our government, so I bought this one as an antidote to all of those others.

David Baldacci is another of those authors whom I haven't read despite seeing his name everywhere that I look. I seem to remember that he was a favorite of Clinton's and that the President was pictured one time carrying a copy of a Baldacci book to the White House helicopter. I thought I would give him a try with this mass market copy of The Collectors because it's a book-oriented thriller.

Harry Turtledove has been a favorite of mine for several years because I'm a big fan of alternate history novels. I spotted this paperback copy of The Disunited States of America and bought it to see what Turtledove has been up to since I last read him. It's a book aimed at the Young Adult audience, so I may have made a mistake.

Good grief, it's even worse than I thought. I just spotted two others that I added to the list in September and placed in another stack. The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin is another Rebus mystery, a series I'm just now starting to read, so this was a natural when I spotted it on the bargain table at Barnes & Noble.

And, lastly, I received in the mail an ARC of Richard Russo's The Bridge of Sighs thanks to the kindness of a fellow book blogger who decided to share it with me. I'm looking forward to getting to it in October because it looks great.

So I've fallen behind by four more books, not two as I thought a few minutes ago. I suppose I shouldn't be too concerned because that's a bit better than I usually do. Having too many books is just never a problem.