April in Review

My Reading

# of books read: 15
Best(s):(In which I tell you all my favorite reads and make up categories so they each win something)
Best graphic novel: New Kid
Best intersectional work: The Memory of Light (Latina character with mental illness)
Best Audiobook: Two Can Keep a Secret
Best opening line that got me to read the entire book in one sitting: Heroine "When I wake up, all my friends are dead."
Best near-future novel: Internment
Best far-future novel: Mortal Coil

Look how dark these covers are!  And the bright, colorful one illustrates a human body exploding, so...there are all sorts of ways to be dark.

Bookish Events and Happenings

Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon!  I always love those so much, and this was no exception. I had really good luck and loved all of the books I read.

I decided to start organizing a long-term Printz award project for myself. I found out what all the winners and honor books are and figured out which I've already read. I then came up with a convoluted method to decide which ones to prioritize first. This paragraph was much longer before I realized you didn't need to know the plan in that much detail.

I also had two (TWO!) authors reach out to me to ask if my students and I would want ARCs. Um, yes please! I know a lot of bloggers are all about the ARCs, but I am not up to the stress of requesting and reviewing. However, any time anyone at all sends books to my students, I am so delighted. (It was Paula Stokes and Donna Gephart, both of whom write terrific books, so yay, yay, yay!)

I've also decided to get involved in Project LIT, even though I'm still a little uncertain as to what that means. They're an online community of youth book clubs that promote diverse books and work to get books into areas that are "book deserts." (Which is different than a book dessert, which, obviously, would be a GOOD thing.) They have a fantastic list of books they're going to focus on, including two of my favorites from this month, and I'm trying to get copies of all of them for my classroom. *coughYouCanHelpcough* (My Goodreads list and wish list also have next year's OBOB books that I don't already own.)

On the Blog

After basically disappearing for two months, I came back again this month with 16 posts. I wrote four TTT posts (though I went off topic for two of them), two Sunday Salon posts, and two wordless Wednesday posts. I actually reviewed a book (weird, I know), and I created a tag. I blathered on about read-a-thon and I asked for advice about choosing a series or two to finish in May. I hosted a challenge as part of the read-a-thon, and it must not have been a very good one, because I got a (for me) huge number of views but only 3 entries. I even put up a discussion post. *so proud*

via GIPHY

IRL

• My youngest turned 13; oof. She had a good birthday and is still milking the relatives for presents. 
• My husband and I bought our first ever brand new mattress, which is just Peak Middle Aged to be excited about. 
• I taught a little evening class on setting up a bullet journal.
• Last weekend my sister and I went on a "private retreat," meaning we rented a guest room in a retreat center up in the Columbia River Gorge and spent two days reading, napping, and journaling. 

Huge rainbow on my commute one evening.

My monthly summaries are always linked to the Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up on Feed Your Fiction Addiction, along with many other terrific blogs' monthly reflections.  Nicole usually puts together a fun scavenger hunt giveaway too, so go check it out!

TTT: Thought Provoking Quotes from Books

TTT is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl .  If you want to quadruple the size of your TBR AND find a bunch of great book blogs to follow head on over and check it out! The topic this week is: inspirational or thought-provoking book quotes. This was hard for me, because a) I don't tend to write down (or memorize( quotes as I come across them and b) the Goodreads quotes I've "liked" and thus can find easily tend to either be people talking ABOUT books and reading, or smart-ass comebacks. But I think I've gathered a worthy set anyway. From Just Mercy, (young adult edition) which has a LOT to say about the connection between poverty and crime in our society. My work has taught me a vital lesson. Each of us is more than the worse thing we've done. and  I am persuaded that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. and The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.   From The Fault in Our Stars. I think this means more to me as a parent and someone who's been married almost 20 years than it would have to teen me.  'Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. 'Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is, keeping the promise.'   From A List of Cages. This one makes me think SO MUCH of my late parents.  It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered. From The Scorpio Races. This one is funny, but it's also...not wrong. Love what it shows us about both the parents and the kids here too. Mum liked to say that some things happen for a reason, that sometimes obstacles were there to stop you from doing something stupid. She said this to me a lot. But when she said it to Gabe, Dad told him that sometime it just means you need to try harder. From Orbiting Jupiter, a line that makes me feel very seen.  You know how teachers are. If they get you to take out a book they love too, they're yours for life.

 From a book I just read, Career of Evil, in which the detective admires the sunset.

You could find beauty nearly anywhere if you stopped to look for it, but the battle to get through the days made it easy to forget that this totally cost-free luxury existed.

What Books Did You Need?

Last week I came across this awesome tweet (and a bunch of very cool responses):

Ok say you could send three recently published books back in time to your 15-year-old self. Which three books would you send?

— 🌻Elle 🐈 Gato🌻 (@ellle_em) April 16, 2019

The first book that leapt to my mind is The Upside of Unrequited because I've never read a character whose approach to romance is so much like mine was. My daughter had friends over for her birthday, and they were all giggling and teasing about who likes whom, and it STRESSED ME OUT. I hated those conversations as a teen, and never admitted to liking anyone (besides, like, movie stars). I figured either my friends would say, 'Ewww, you like him?" or "HAHAHAHAHA like you'd ever get a chance!  Hey, ------ Wendy likes you!" which would make the person in question go, "Ewww."

Reading this book as a middle aged married lady made me feel SEEN in a way I'd never been seen in a book, and I know as a teen I would have found Molly's story so relatable and heartening. 

Bonus: I'm sure 15 year old Wendy, way back in 1984, would have been startled by all the non-straight characters, but that would have been good for her too. That's a year after one of my dearest friend's mom moved in with another single mom, and swear to God, I thought they were just saving money by sharing a house. I was freakin' 21 when she finally had to spell out for me that her mom is gay. We were so clueless, y'all. I thought the man I worked with my senior year in high school was the first gay person I'd ever met. Like, sure, Wendy, you go to high school with 2,000 people and they are all straight. So Albertalli's gay moms and bi sisters and everything else would have been EYE OPENING.

My other answers took a little more thought, but what I came up with next was Between Shades of Grey. I actually love Salt to the Sea even more, but knowing that I was already interested in my Baltic background, I think I would have been fascinated by the story of the Lithuanian teen deported to Siberia in the 1940s. I ended up learning a lot about that part of history when I lived in Latvia in my twenties, but it would have been cool to know more about it earlier. It might have influenced my thesis in college, which was about the first Lithuanian independence movement.

I know there are a lot of books I love now and would have enjoyed then too, but I was trying to think about books that might have made an impact in some way. I started thinking about what was going on around me then, and realized that apartheid was just starting to seep into my consciousness. My parents had a photojournalism book about it in our downstairs bookshelves, and when my freshman Global Studies teacher taught us about apartheid, I was so shocked to realize it was still going on--I'd assumed it was some sort of history book I'd seen. And although we read Cry, the Beloved Country that year, and later I read lots of  Nadine Gordimer short stories, I was reading about South Africa from a white perspective. So I'd like to hand myself Born a Crime (I don't think I would have needed the young reader's edition), or better yet, the author-narrated audiobook. 

So, 2/3 of the books I chose are really social studies assignments for the future history major, which is pretty on brand, but probably not what the question really intended. Still, thinking about what I needed to know at 15, I can't think of many books that would have delivered. "You'll stop hating yourself in another year," would have been good. "Be a little more grateful to your parents," seems like sound advice now, but would I have taken it? 

After more thought, I did come up with another topic that 15 year old me didn't need, but 18 year old me would, and if I'd started thinking about it at 15, I may have been better equipped. I don't want to overshare, but I read Wrecked with a pit in my stomach, and even said in my brief Goodreads review that I wish I could have handed it to younger me. 

So what about you? What books that are out now(ish) would you send back in time to teen you?

Finish a Series: Too Many Ideas

Beris and Michelle at Because Reading is Better than Real Life are hosting a challenge in May. Finish a whole series. Three or more books consists a series, and you can't have read them all before. I have a whole set of series spreads in my bullet journal to remind me of what I'd like to get back to, so I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choices. There are a few that I only need one more book to complete, but I don't want to re-read the other two, because I still remember them well enough and there are too many other books out there to spend my time like that. The remaining books fall into these categories.

HAVEN'T READ ANY BOOKS FROM THESE SERIES YET
This makes me nervous, because what if I read the first book and don't like it enough to keep going?

• An Ember in the Ashes This is the one I keep confusing with Rebel of the Sands, which I've read, but keep picking up again thinking it's this one.  I feel like I heard good things about this one.

• The Young Elites For some reason, I like Marie Lu's books without being obsessed about them, so I really think the only way I'll finish a whole series is if I just read them one after the other.

• Grisha trilogy Technically I read the first one already, but I didn't like it enough to keep going, and I don't remember it. I'm hoping my love for everything she's written since and the overall world she's built will make me like it more now.

I COULD RE-READ ONE AND THEN THE TWO I HAVEN'T READ YET AND IT WOULD COUNT.

• The Eighth Day: I have the series in my classroom because it was a good deal on Scholastic books, and was surprised at how much I liked the first book.

• Bartimaeus: I know I've read the first one and loved it. Can't remember if I read the next one or not. 

• Every Day: The first book was terrific. A wakes up in a new body every day, but when they fall for a girl, can she learn to love them no matter what their outward appearance is?

• The Hainish Cycle: Ursula K. Le Guin was a genius and is one of my heroes. I've read many of these decades ago, but there are some I'd love to re-read and others I've never gotten to. Probably the most intellectually challenging option on my list.

• March : It's a graphic novel series. I think I can handle this one. Frankly, I'm embarrassed that I haven't finished it yet.

• Antsy Bonano Before Neal Shusterman wrote mind expanding works of science fiction like Unwind, Scythe, and Dry, he wrote this extremely funny MG/YA series. I read the middle book by accident, and would like to read all three in order.

• Kopp Sisters Based on a real family, these detective stories mix historical fiction, feminism, mystery, and self discovery.

MYSTERY SERIES I COULD FINISH.

These would all involve reading more than the minimum number of books, but they are also all pretty quick reads. They are all good series; I read whatever was available when I discovered them but haven't gone back and read what the author has added since. 

• Maeve Kerrigan 

• Frieda Klein

• Ballad series

MIDDLE GRADE SERIES MY STUDENTS LOVE AND I FEEL SOME OBLIGATION TO BECOME FAMILIAR WITH DESPITE MY OVERALL LACK OF ENTHUSIASM FOR MIDDLE GRADE FANTASY

• Keeper of the Lost Cities I read the first two to please my intense Messenger fans, and tbh, didn't adore them. BUT they all tell me the first two are the weakest. And they are MEGA FANS, and I want to show support. 

• Land of Stories The first book was an OBOB selection, and my students really enjoyed it. They asked me to buy the rest of the series for our classroom and have been cruising through it. 

What would you pick? I think I need to commit to March, obviously, but I should be able to do at least one other series too. It also depends a bit on what's readily available; I'm not buying the adult mysteries so I'd have to get them at the library. 

Wordless Wednesday: Black and White and Read All Over

I made a display of these books in my classroom, but couldn't get a photo that did it justice. I just love the way they look together, and I'm sure it's no coincidence that they all deal with timely issues of justice, identity, and courage.

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday.

TTT: First Ten Books I Reviewed

 TTT is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl .  If you want to quadruple the size of your TBR AND find a bunch of great book blogs to follow head on over and check it out!

The topic this week is: first ten books reviewed (in any capacity). I still do more quick impressions on Goodreads than I do formal reviews on my blog, so I'm going to go with the first several reviews on GR and the first few on Falconer's Library.  (Also, I apologize for the wonky font switches. When I was copying and pasting it got all messed up, and even when I highlight all and adjust, it reverts to weird stuff on its own.) 

1. 

The first book I ever entered in Goodreads was way back in June of 2009. Its official title is The Pox Party, but it's known as Octavian Nothing book 1. 

My review:

The child protagonist is so isolated from the world that it takes awhile to figure out what era, what continent, and what the actual circumstances are.  I enjoyed that, so I won't spoil it by explaining it all here.  I'm also a sucker for novels made up of different points of view and types of "documents," and this one is mostly (fictional) biography with a series of letters from minor characters partway through, giving you a chance to see Octavian as others do.  I will be getting volume 2 on my next trip to the library.


It's in the young adult section, but other than the age of the protagonist, I'm not clear why that is.

Two notes: I never did pick up the second book (!), and I love that this book and author feature heavily in Gary D. Schmidt's Orbiting Jupiter. 

2.
Then I reviewed, later that same day, The Murder of Bindy MacKenzie. 

This one really is a young adult novel, and quite funny.  Again, I enjoyed it partly because it's written as a collection of notes, diary entries, transcripts of conversations, school documents, etc.  

Spoiler:  It was fun that the "murder" theory Bindy's friends enthusiastically pursue seems over-the-top and unlikely, but not only does it turn out to be true, but the poisoner is--gasp--the middle school teacher!

So cute that I didn't know how to hide spoilers. And at first I thought I was being weird about YA, but then I realized I'm comparing it to Octavian Nothing, which didn't feel very YA to me.

 

3.
The next review is for a book I finished in November of 2008, but reviewed in June 2009. It was for Steven Pinker's Language Instinct. 

Pidgin languages are created as a lingua franca between people who speak different languages (as on slave plantations) or none (as when ASL was created for the deaf). These languages are imprecise, ungrammatical, rudimentary. But in the next generation, children who are raised only speaking the pidgin language create order, and the grammatical language they effortlessly develop becomes a creole language. The kids figure out how to indicate verb tense, noun cases (who did what to whom),etc., instinctively--hence the title. Isn't that amazing? A perk of reading a scholarly book just for fun is that you can skip the boring parts, but this book really doesn't have many boring parts, just tidbits like the above. 4. I must have gone back and added a bunch of books I'd read long before joining Goodreads, because this next review is from a book I first read in about 1987.  The River Why by David James Duncan is one of the few books that I would have claimed as my favorite for a good chunk of my life, as I explain in the review.

This is my favorite book. 

Okay, I read it when I was 18, and it's a coming of age story. If I discovered it today, it might not have the same impact. Also, as a native Oregonian, I loved recognizing my home in these pages. I'm a sucker for quotes, and Duncan gives us several with each chapter. It starts out with a lot of boisterous humor and becomes increasingly philosophical, perfect for a reader like myself who might be frightened off by too much philosophy right up front. And then there's the love story...

My copy of this book, bought in Annie Bloom's bookstore in Multnomah Village the summer after high school, is now held together with a rubber band. It's been to Vermont, to Japan, to Denmark, and to Latvia. (I didn't get to accompany it to Japan, but I understand it was read by several people while there.) There may be a good argument for Duncan's The Brothers K being a better book, but Gus and his friends and family will always have my heart. 

5.
The next few are all reference type material. We have Hiking the Columbia River Gorge, ("helpful appendices"), McNeil's Mount Hood: Wy'east-The Mountain Revisited (which I contributed 20% of the ratings and 100% of the reviews to), The Anne Lovejoy Book of Northwest Gardening ("If only I had a spare blender, I would try adding more moss... to my lawn by blending buttermilk and moss into a 'thick slurry' and pouring that on all the bare spots.") Beyond Culture, and Seven Wonders: Everyday Things for a Healthier Planet (recommended by "my eco pal, Amy.")

6. 
I must have spent all day that June 25, 2008, thinking about books and writing little reviews for ones I'd loved. There's Middlesex, Winterdance, City of Darkness, City of Light, Emma, Hard Times, and Far From the Madding Crowd. 

7. 
The next review for a book I'd actually read right before entering. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was a book club book, back when I was in a book club. I reviewed it in August of 2009.

I loved this book, but I'm going to register my complaints anyway--the first minor, the second more weighty.
1.  Most of the book is written in a psuedo-biographical form, complete with footnotes and explanations of what later happened to both people and objects. Yet we get to read Joe's mother's last letter, which he then loses, and Rosa's letters to Joe after he leaves, which he then burns.  How would the fictitious researcher get ahold of them?  But since it's really a novel, I can overlook this.
2.  This one didn't bother me until after I finished the book.  For 12 years, Sammy and Tommy have a father/son relationship despite Sam not having fathered the boy.  Then Joe shows up, Sam leaves, and both he and Tommy are okay with that.  This is a slap in the face to all adopted families.  Joe is Tommy's biological father, not his "real" father--the real father is the guy who raised him.  Of course, it helps that Sam and Rosa's marriage was a facade--but even that is not entirely true.  

Quibbles aside, it was an amazing adventure indeed.

8.

I was on Goodreads a good long time before I started blogging in summer of 2015. My first review was, yes, a review of a beloved childhood favorite, not something new or recently read. I wrote a joint review of Kate Seredy's duology: The Good Master and The Singing Tree.

  Kate and Jansci's story has stayed with me for a very long time.  I hope some of you will also vicariously gallop across the puszta with Kate's shrill whistle ringing in your ears.



9. On July 11, 2015 I wrote my first current review on the blog, for the novel in verse Inside Out and Back Again. I wrote that I had read it because I wanted to be better able to "sell" it to my students. I currently have a group of four girls reading it together, so that makes me feel successful! 

10. 

Then on July 15th, 2015, I reviewed The Scorpio Races, which I loved so much I had to gush about it. This basically set the stage for my reviewing life on the blog--I only write a review if I finish the book desperate to talk about it. 

Have you been in the mood for a movie, but not had anything in particular you want to see, so you just watch something that's available, and it blows you away? 

Or has a friend ever dragged you along to an event that you didn't really feel like going to, and you meet your future husband have an outstanding time? (The first one actually happened to me, but it might not be as widely applicable.)

Or, how about this:  Have you ever decided to read something that you kind of didn't think you'd enjoy, but enough people were talking about it that you figured you may as well, and it wound up being your favorite book you'd read all summer?  Because that's what happened to me over the past few days with The Scorpio Races.

Sunday Post #29/Sunday Salon #2

Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer hosts the weekly Sunday Post link-up, and Deb at ReaderBuzz is expanding Sunday Salon from a FB group to a link-up as well.


What I Read
Heroine by Mindy McGinnis. Read this in one sitting. 4.5/5
Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith, aka J. K. Rowling. Not sure why these are called the Comoran Strike books and not the Strike and Robin series. 4/5
Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus Terrific PG thriller. 4/5

and I skimmed This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Phillips.


What I'm Reading/What's Next
I started Odd One Out by Nic Stone and am enjoying it so far, and I've picked up Seraphina after enjoying Tess of the Road so much.


Falconer's Library Log

I spent several hours at the library last weekend and did some blogging, so I actually had a few posts go up this week.

Bonus photo from the walk we took near the library.

• I was inspired by a quote to create a new tag--If On a Winter's Night a Traveler was the source. Play along! 
• I reviewed the stunning fantasy novel Tess of the Road.
• I participated in Top Ten Tuesday, but instead of rainy day reads, wrote about tropes and topics that make me not want to pick up a book. 

Three Things

1. The daughter's birthday was a success. I made cheesecake and homemade hot fudge sauce, and my husband made tacos on her birthday and got her and her friends pizza and junk food for last night's party. We are all chubbier but happy.
2. I had a lot of fun leading a small bullet journal workshop on Thursday evening, and it has rejuvenated my own bullet journaling. Today while my kid was at skating lessons I made a weekly spread and did some sketching.

1. My sister gave me a shooting star. 

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler Tag

• I came across this in the Goodreads Quotes section and it made me laugh, so I clicked on it. Today it popped up on my blog, and I thought, "It's a tag!" So credit to Italo Calvino for this one. Feel free to borrow, use, adapt, share, etc.
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• Sections in the Bookstore:
• (for my purposes I'm going to do "sections in my Goodreads TBR list")
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• Books you haven't read: Vanishing Girls by Lauren Olivier. I've liked her other books. I should read this, right?
• Books you needn't read: Fray by Josh Whedon Given recent conversation about Whedon's issues, I can skip this one.
• Books Made for Purposes Other than Reading: Show-Off: How to Do Everything, One Step at a Time by Sarah Hines Stephens  I don't know if that's what this category means, exactly. 
• Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written: Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children by Cheri Register This was another challenging category to interpret, but I'm taking it as a book I've lived myself.
• Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read but Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered: Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years by Margaret Mead I've had this on my TBR since my TBR was notes scratched on the back of a receipt when I found something good in the bookstore. I just don't feel like it's every going to rise to the top of the list though.
• Books You Mean to Read but There Are Others You Must Read First: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens I had it on hold at the library once too, and still didn't get to it. But I will!
• Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'til They're Remaindered: Once and Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy I only buy for my classroom, and I'm not convinced enough kids are desperate for this one to shell out full price. 
• Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback: The Past and Other Things that Should Stay Buried by Shaun David Hutchinson Such a clever category title! And truly, I feel less of a need to get this in hardback (remaindered) than the previous title. 
• Books You Can Borrow from Somebody: Becoming by Michelle Obama`Right? Everyone has a copy of this.
• Books Everybody Has Read so It's As If You Had Read Them, Too: I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara Her persistence led to the capture of the Golden State Killer! 
• Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages: A Heart for Any Fate by Linda Crew  This has been on my TBR since 2010, and it's been sitting on the coffee table for a few months now.
• Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success: The Merry Baker of Riga by Boris Zemtzov I've had a number of good pieragi and cups of coffee at the Jautrais Maiznieks, and would love to read this memoir by its owner.
• Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment: Parenting in the Eye of the Storm by Katie Naftzger About the challenges of parenting adopted teens, of which I have two as of Wednesday. 
• Books You Want to Own so They'll Be Handy Just in Case: The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr (or any of the Not So Big House books!)
• Books You Could Put Aside to Read Maybe in the Summer: A Feast of Crows by George R. R. Martin I can only get through these doorstops when I have some time off. 
• Books You Need to Go With Other Books On Your Shelf: The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas by Ursula K. Le Guin (to go with The Unreal and the Real: The Collected Short Stories)
• Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified: Being Caribou: Five Months on Foot with a Caribou Herd by Karsten Heuer I never knew I wanted to know what it was like to be caribou until I saw this title.
• Books Read Long Ago, Which It's Time to Re-read: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera I last read this in the spring of 1990. 
• Books You Have Always Pretended You Read, and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Read Them: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens I read a lot of Dickens in my pretentious youth, but somehow did not read this most classic of classics. 
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• Which of those categories made you laugh? Which immediately brought a title or two to mind? I loved the phrase "but unfortunately your days are numbered," and I knew right away that I could borrow Becoming from any number of people. 
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  a
  

  “Sections in the bookstore
  
  

  - Books You Haven't Read

  
  - Books You Needn't Read
  - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
  - Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
  - Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
  - Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
  - Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered
  - Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
  - Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
  - Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
  - Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
  - Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
  - Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
  - Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
  - Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
  - Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
  - Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
  - Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read
  - Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”
  ― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
•