Cleaning Up My TBR- Down the TBR Hole #1

I joined Goodreads a few years ago, way before I started blogging, so my profile is kind of a mess.  I really want to clean it up so I can make better use of it.  I thought what a better way to do that than to join the Down the TBR Hole meme started by Lia @Lost In a Story! I am going to do it once a month instead of weekly, and hopefully make my Goodreads a pleasant place to be again 🙂

Here is how it works:

• Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?
  

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Down the TBR Hole #1

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

My Thoughts: This book is on my Classics Club list, and I have always wanted to read such a classic piece of literature.  The premise sounds interesting to me too… Now to find out if I like Dickens. Verdict: KEEP

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Moby Dick by Herman Melville

“It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships’ cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.”

So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author’s lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

My Thoughts: Ugh. This is hard already.  I feel like I HAVE to read it because it is one of the most famous books of all time, but it just sounds SO BORING and SO LONG.  This has always been one of those books that I would say “I’ll read it SOMEDAY…” Let’s be real though… I’m never gonna be in the mood for this.  (I feel the guilt already and may change my mind later…) Verdict: TOSS

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Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan’s most celebrated geisha.

In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl’s virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction – at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful – and completely unforgettable.

My Thoughts: Ok, this book has been on my TBR ever since I saw my mom reading it when I was in middle school.  I just don’t feel a very drawn to it… I feel weird getting rid of it after so long but…. Verdict: TOSS

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Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

My Thoughts: This one has been called EPIC in many cases, and has won a ton of awards.  Its been sitting on my shelf for years, and I don’t know why I haven’t read it yet!  It is definitely different from what I normally read, so I think I’ve been waiting until I’m in the right mood for it… I just need to get on with it. Verdict: KEEP

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The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down’s Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this story that unfolds over a quarter of a century – in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that long-ago winter night. Norah Henry, who knows only that her daughter died at birth, remains inconsolable; her grief weighs heavily on their marriage. And Paul, their son, raises himself as best he can, in a house grown cold with mourning. Meanwhile, Phoebe, the lost daughter, grows from a sunny child to a vibrant young woman whose mother loves her as fiercely as if she were her own.

My Thoughts: I added this book because my mom had read it and gave me her copy, but I probably would never have picked it out on my own.  While part of it intrigues me, there are so many other books that I want to prioritize. Verdict: TOSS

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WOW.  This is A LOT more difficult than I thought it would be… It feels like I’m getting rid of my babies.  Hopefully it’ll get easier as we go because I’ve got 861 left to go… Oh boy…

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What do you think of my choices?  Let me know in the comments 🙂