Books I Bought I Intend to Read…Soon

I have a long shelf of unread books that stares at me from the other side of my office. I delighted in buying these darlings. Now there they sit, an embarrassing reminder of my lack of self-control at Barnes & Noble, and now at Amazon.com, where a lot of damage can be done with a teeny mouse click! As my guilt and anxiety builds, what was once a joy has become a nagging responsibility, like a pile of dirty dishes that need to be washed. Despite all my hand-wringing and half-hearted reform efforts, my book-buying habits will always outweigh my ability to keep on top of my reading. Here’s what currently sits on my “To Read” shelf, in no particular order…

• Fawn McKay Brodie, by Newell Bringhurst (biography)
• I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like, by Mardy Grothe (non-fiction)
• A Year in the World, by Frances Mayes (memoir)
• Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein (humor)
• The Best Creative Non-Fiction, by Lee Gutkind (non-fiction, what else?)
• Effie Marquess Carmack (autobiography)
• 4 Zinas, by Martha Sonntag Bradley (biography)
• Weaving the New Creation: Stages of Faith and the Public Church, by James Fowler (non-fiction)
• Halfway Home, by Margy Logue (memoir)
• The Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories (fiction)
• Motherland, by Pamela Marin (memoir)
• Shades of Gray, by Pamela Carrington Reid (fiction)
• More Stories We Tell: The Best Contemporary Short Stories by North American Women (fiction
• What Wildness Is This: Women Write about the Southwest (memoir)
• Night Soil, by Levi Peterson (fiction)
• Oliver Cowdery: Scribe, Elder, Witness, by John W. Welch and Larry E. Morris (biography)
• A Jury of Her Peers: American Woman Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, by Elaine Showalter

There are more, unfortunately…

If anyone especially likes any of these books, please let me know so I can move it to the top of the list.