Booking Through Thursday: What’s Sitting on Your Shelf?

Okay, so here is an interesting blurb by Christopher Schoppa in the Washington Post.

Avid readers know all too well how easy it is to acquire books—it’s the letting go that’s the difficult part. During the past 20 years, in which books have played a significant role in both my personal and professional lives, I’ve certainly had my fair share of them (and some might say several others’ shares) in my library. Many were read and saved for posterity, others eventually, but still reluctantly, sent back out into the world.

But there is also a category of titles that I’ve clung to for years, as they survived numerous purges, frequent library donations and countless changes of residence. I’ve yet to read them, but am absolutely certain I will. And should. When, I’m not sure, as I’m constantly distracted by the recent, just published and soon to be published works.

So, the question is: “What tomes are waiting patiently on your shelves?”

According to my LibraryThing account, I own 498 unread books (eek!). It’s actually more than that because I don’t mark reference-type books as read or unread. Crazy talk, I know. I don’t even want to think about how many years worth of books that is (as I keep buying and otherwise acquiring new books). So to answer the above question, I’m going to narrow it down to five books I was really excited about acquiring but somehow haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favourite authors, so I’m always on the lookout for her latest book. I patiently waited for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to come out in paperback and ordered it from Amazon as soon as it did... but somehow still haven’t read it.



I can’t remember where I first heard about Madeleine Thien; I think a friend read me part of one of her stories at some point. I was thrilled to find a brand-new copy of her first novel Certainty secondhand... (I just noticed that Thien won the 2006 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award for this book.)

Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson is actually a trilogy of novels that chronicle working-class life in Victorian Oxfordshire. I asked for this one for Christmas (a few years back), specifically because I’ve been researching my family history and some of my ancestors came from Oxfordshire...

I’d been looking for a good history-of-food book (mainly because I want to know more about where various foods originally came from), so when I spotted this one (called Food: A History) by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, I snatched it up. This was when I was in London, England, back in 2003...


According to the inside flap, In and Out of the Garden by Sara Midda “is an exquisite potpourri of garden lore painted in minute, jewel-like detail.” Every page, including the text, has been hand-painted. It looks beautiful. And since I grabbed this one from another woman at a book fair (she had found it and actually graciously offered it to me when I expressed an interest in it), you’d think I’d have read it by now...

What books do you own that you were excited about when you first acquired them, but haven’t gotten around to reading yet?