Tag Archives: books to read

Ever Hear of TSUNDOKU?

Posted on June 2, 2021 | 9 comments

Hi there!

I have a question for you to start this off … Do you practice Tsundoku? Had you ever heard of it?

Tsundoku – pronounced sun doe coo – is a Japanese expression meaning “leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other unread books.” The word literally means reading pile. Someone by the name of Sanders said, “the Tsundoku scale can range from just one unread book to a serious hoard.”

Now can you say you practice it? 🙂 I definitely can! First, let me make it clear here that I am not a hoarder of books, I am a collector of books. There is a difference … right?

I have come to the conclusion that buying books and reading them are actually two entirely different hobbies. – Unknown

My reading pile consists of not only hard copies, (in the low hundreds) but it extends to e-books, and also audio books. So, yes, I have hundreds of unread books! Should I be ashamed of that? Well, maybe, but I prefer to embrace the fact that I have found books I am looking forward to reading, albeit many of those will be in the far-off future simply because of the quantity of them. Anyway … isn’t tsundoku a pretty word? 🙂

That is why I am happy to be participating in reading challenges — because I have so many of my own books to read that I can fill almost all of the prompts with them. I do still borrow the occasional novel from the library, because I have lists in my library account of the ~~hundreds of books~~ low thousands of books I want to read. I just can’t help myself!

As usual, on my “Books I’ve read in [whatever year]” page here on my blog, I keep track of the books I’ve read each year. There you can see I continue to read many picture books. It’s a record I keep for myself and for anyone who might be interested.

Now it’s your turn to share.

Do you practice tsundoku? Or, do you have lists of books you hope to borrow or buy to read? Are you participating in any reading challenges?

Thanks for reading, and blessings on your day! Let’s keep in touch.

9 Comments

Posted in Miscellanea

Tagged book collecting, Books, books to read, Japanese expression, reading challenges, reading pile, tsundoku

‘Read More Books’ challenge: Week 8: 364-415 of the list of 623 of the best books ever!

Posted on December 5, 2013 | 8 comments

Are you ready for week eight of our Read More Books challenge?

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s never too late to join in.

Check the ones you may have missed or want to review:

WEEK ONE WEEK TWO WEEK THREE WEEK FOUR WEEK FIVE WEEK SIX WEEK SEVEN

How did you do with your reading? Even if you didn’t finish the book you selected, it counts if you select one for this week to add to your TBR pile.

364. Father and Sons — by Ivan Turgenev

365. A Wild Sheep Chase — by Haruki Murakami

366. Point Counter Point — by Aldous Huxley

367. Babbitt — by Sinclair Lewis

368. The Souls of Black Folk — by W. E. B. Du Bois

369. The Thirty-Nine Steps — by John Buchan

370. The Jungle — by Upton Sinclair

371. Under Satan’s Sun — by Georges Bernanos

372. The Voyeur — by Alain Robbe-Grillet

373. The Secret Agent — by Joseph Conrad

374. All Quiet on the Western Front — by Erich Maria Remarque

375. Double or Nothing — by Rayond Federman

376. The Bonfire of the Vanities — by Tom Wolfe

377. The Phantom Tollbooth — by Norton Juster

378. Amers/Oiseaux/Poesie — by Saint-John Perse

379. The House of the Spirits — by Isabel Allende

380. Paradise Lost — by John Milton

381. The Joke — by Milan Kundera

382. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — by L. Frank Baum

383. At Swim-Two-Birds — by Flann O’Brien

384. Contempt — by Alberto Moravia

385. Dealing with Dragons — by Patricia C. Wrede

386. Blood Meridian — by Cormac McCarthy

387. The Home and the World — by Rabindranath Tagore

388. 2001: A Space Odyssey — by Arthur C. Clarke

389. American Pastoral — by Philip Roth

390. The Cannibal — by John Hawkes

391.Matilda — by Roald Dahl

392.The Thornbirds — Colleen McCullough

393. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd — Agatha Christie

394.Good Night, Mr. Tom — Michelle Magorian

395. Nadja — André Breton

396.King Lear — William Shakespeare

397. The Magnificent Ambersons — Booth Tarkington

398.Othello — William Shakespeare

399. Aurélien — Louis Aragon

400.Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World — Haruki Murakami

401.The Color of Water — James McBride

402.Soulier De Satin — Paul Claudel

403. Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman

404. The Sonnets — William Shakespeare

405.American Psycho — Bret Easton Ellis

406. The Bean Trees — Barbara Kingsolver

407. Nightwood —by Djuna Barnes

408. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction — by J. D. Salinger

409. High Fidelity — Nick Hornby

410. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — Hunter S. Thompson

411. Kane and Abel — Jeffrey Archer

412. Franny and Zooey — J. D. Salinger

413. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui —by Bertolt Brecht

414. Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen

415.The Faraway Tree Stories — Enid Blyton

I love to hear from you! From the above list:

Which books have you read?
Which books do you want to read?
Which books are you going to obtain this week?(Even if you are not officially taking the Read More Books challenge I would love to hear about your reading.)

Note: I got permission to share this list on my blog. (Thank you, Stuart!) You could go HERE for the list of “623 of the best books ever written” and see them all at once for yourself, and/or you can follow the list here a few at a time.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!

8 Comments

Posted in Mostly About Reading

Tagged best books ever, books to read, classics, Literature, novels, read more books challenge, reading, reading challenge

‘Read More Books’ challenge: Week 6: 260-311 of the list of 623 of the best books ever!

Posted on November 14, 2013 | 6 comments

Are you ready for week six of our Read More Books challenge?

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s never too late to join in.

Check the ones you may have missed or want to review:

WEEK ONE WEEK TWO WEEK THREE WEEK FOUR WEEK FIVE

How did you do with your reading? Even if you didn’t finish the book you selected, it counts if you select one for this week to add to your TBR pile.

260. Les Misérables — by Victor Hugo

261. Tristes Tropiques — by Claude Lévi-Strauss

262. Dream of the Red Chamber — by Tsao Hsueh-Chin

263. Slouching Towards Bethlehem — by Joan Didion

264. Old Goriot — by Honoré de Balzac

265. Oscar and Lucinda — by Peter Carey

266. The Interrogation — by J. M. G. Le Clezio

267. Appointment in Samarra — by John O’Hara

268. A House for Mr. Biswas — by V. S. Naipaul

269. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer — by Patrick Suskind

270. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — by J. K. Rowling

271. The Secret Garden — by Frances Hodgson Burnett

272. Asterix the Gaul — by René Goscinny

273. The Wasp Factory — by Iain Banks

274. The Fountainhead — by Ayn Rand

275. Four Plays — by Eugene Ionesco

276. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — by J. K. Rowling

277. Germinal — by Émile Zola

278. The Moonstone — by Wilkie Collins

279. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha — by Roddy Doyle

280. Sixty Stories — by Donald Barthelme

281. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality — by Sigmund Freud

282. Waiting for the Barbarians — by J. M. Coetzee

283. Angela’s Ashes — by Frank McCourt

284. The Abyss — by Marguerite Yourcenar

285. The Way We Live Now — by Anthony Trollope

286. The Rifles — by William Vollmann

287. Democracy in America; and Two essays on America — by Alexis de Tocqueville

288. Cranford — by Elizabeth Gaskell

289. A Christmas Carol — by Charles Dickens

290. Fahrenheit 451 — by Ray Bradbury

291. The Rocognitions — by William Gaddis

292. On the Origins of Species — by Charles Darwin

293. Sula — by Toni Morrison

294. Daniel Deronda — by George Eliot

295. The Tartar Steppe — by Dino Buzzati

296. Young Lonigan — by James T. Farrell

297. On the Social Contract — by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

298. Sea of Poppies — by Amitav Ghosh

299. Portnoy’s Complaint — by Philip Roth

300. Shadow of the Torturer — by Gene Wolfe

301. Das Kapital — by Karl Marx

302. Cider with Rosie — by Laurie Lee

303. The Prince — by Niccolò Machiavelli

304. The Horseman on the Roof — by Jean Giono

305. The Executioner’s Song — by Norman Mailer

306. Atlas Shrugged — by Ayn Rand

307. Suite Française — by Irene Nemirovsky

308. Mountains Beyond Mountains — by Tracy Kidder

309. Cold Comfort Farm — by Stella Gibbons

310. The Story of Tracy Beaker — by Jacqueline Wilson

311. Angle of Repose — by Wallace Stegner

I love to hear from you! From the above list:

Which books have you read?
Which books do you want to read?
Which books are you going to obtain this week?(Even if you are not officially taking the Read More Books challenge I would love to hear about your reading.)

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

6 Comments

Posted in Mostly About Reading

Tagged best books ever, books to read, classics, Literature, novels, read more books challenge, reading, reading challenge

‘Read More Books’ challenge: week 5: 208-259 of the list of 623 of the best books ever!

Posted on November 7, 2013 | 8 comments

Are you ready for week five of our Read More Books challenge?

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s never too late to join in.

Check the ones you may have missed or want to review:

WEEK ONE WEEK TWO WEEK THREE WEEK FOUR

How did you do with your reading? Even if you didn’t finish the book you selected, it counts if you select one for this week to add to your TBR pile.

208. Dead Souls — by Nikolai Gogol

209. Rabbit, Run — by John Updike

210. The Complete Stories — by Flannery O’Connor

211. The Making of Americans — by Gertrude Stein

212. Crash — by J. G. Ballard

213. The Glass Bead Game — by Hermann Hesse

214. Darkness at Noon — by Arthur Koestler

215. The Plague — by Albert Camus

216. The Soft Machine — by William S. Burroughs

217. Les Liaisons Dangereuses — by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

218. The Wanderer — by Alain-Fournier

219. Winesburg, Ohio — by Sherwood Anderson

220. Froth on the Daydream — by Boris Vian

221. Trainspotting — by Irvine Welsh

222. The Moviegoer — by Walker Percy

223. The Canterbury Tales — by Geoffrey Chaucer

224. Main Street — by Sinclair Lewis

225. Take It or Leave It — by Raymond Federman

226. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China — by Jung Chang

227. Nightmare Abbey — by Thomas Love Peacock

228. My Name is Red — by Orhan Pamuk

229. The Second Sex — by Simone de Beauvoir

230. The Awakening — by Kate Chopin

231. From Here to Eternity — by James Jones

232. The Black Sheep — by Honoré de Balzac

233. The Man Without Qualities — by Robert Musil

234. The Way of All Flesh — by Samuel Butler

235. The Wapshot Chronicle — by John Cheever

236. Going Native — by Stephen Wright

237. The Charterhouse of Parma — by Stendhal

238. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum — by Heinrich Böll

239. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare — by William Shakespeare

240. The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street — by Naguib Mahfouz

241. Stranger in a Strange Land — by Robert A. Heinlein

242. In Cold Blood — by Truman Capote

243. The Code of the Woosters — by P. G. Wodehouse

244. The Red and the Black — by Stendhal

245. Sybil, of Two Nations — by Benjamin Disraeli

246. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories — by William H. Gass

247. Paroles — by Jacques Prévert

248. The Maltese Falcon — by Dashiell Hammett

249. Alcools — by Guillaume Apollinaire

250. Wise Blood — by Flannery O’Connor

251. The Magus — by John Fowles

252. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils — by Selma Lagerlöf

253. The Blue Lotus – by Hergé

254. The Naked and the Dead — by Norman Mailer

255. Orlando: A Biography — by Virginia Woolf

256. Hunger — by Knut Hamsun

257. The Time Traveler’s Wife — by Audrey Niffenegger

258. A Tale of Two Cities — by Charles Dickens

259. A Wrinkle in Time — by Madeleine L’Engle

I love to hear from you! From the above list:

Which books have you read?
Which books do you want to read?
Which books are you going to obtain this week?(Even if you are not officially taking the Read More Books challenge I would love to hear about your reading.)

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!

8 Comments

Posted in Mostly About Reading

Tagged best books ever, books to read, classics, Literature, novels, reading, reading challenge

‘Read More Books’ challenge: Week 3: 104-155 of the list of 623 best books ever!

Posted on October 17, 2013 | 9 comments

Are you ready for week three of our Read More Books challenge?

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s not too late to join in.

Check WEEK ONE and WEEK TWO of the list.

How did you do with your reading? Even if you didn’t finish the book you selected, it counts if you select one for this week to add to your TBR pile.

NOTE: Next Thursday, Part 10 of Sue Harrison’s writers workshop will be the highlight. Come back October 31 for part four of the reading challenge. This gives you more time to read until the next list of books. 🙂

Here is week three’s list:

104. The Heart is A Lonely Hunter — by Carson McCullers

105. Vanity Fair — by William Makepeace Thackeray

106. Commedia — by Dante Alighieri

107. The Count of Monte Cristo — by Alexandre Dumas

108. An American Tragedy — by Theodore Dreiser

109. White Noise — by Don DeLillo

110. The World According to Garp — by John Irving

111. Atonement — by Ian McEwan

112. Nostromo — by Joseph Conrad

113. The House of Mirth — by Edith Wharton

114. The Brothers Karamazov — by Fyodor Dostoevsky

115. The Good Soldier — by Ford Madox Ford

116. The Name of the Rose — by Umberto Eco

117. The Shipping News — by Annie Proulx

118. The Woman in White — by Wilkie Collins

119. Herzog — by Saul Bellow

120. The Counterfeiters — by Andre Gide

121. My Antonia — by Willa Cather

122. Scoop — by Evelyn Waugh

123. A Room with a View — by E. M. Forster

124. Bible: King James Version

125. Wide Sargasso Sea — by Jean Rhys

126. Love in The Time of Cholera — by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

127. The Remains of the day — by Kazuo Ishiguro

128. The Big Sleep — by Raymond Chandler

129. I, Claudius — by Robert Graves

130. Tropic of Cancer — by Henry Miller

131. Tender is the Night — by F. Scott Fitzgerald

132. Journey to the End of the Night — by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

133. The War of the Worlds — by H. G. Wells

134. A Suitable Boy — by Vikram Seth

135. Possession — by A. S. Byatt

136. A Confederacy of Dunces — by John Kennedy Toole

137. The Bell Jar — by Sylvia Plath

138. Waiting for Godot — by Samuel Beckett

139. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — by Junot Diaz

140. Being and Nothingness — by Jean-Paul Sartre

141. A Thousand Acres — by Jane Smiley

142. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay — by Michael Chabon

143. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation — by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

144. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — by Roald Dahl

145. Lady Chatterley’s Lover — by D. H. Lawrence

146. JR — by William Gaddis

147. The Histories — by Herodotus

148. Doctor Zhivago — by Boris Pasternak

149. Lucky Jim — by Kingsley Amis

150. Underworld — by Don DeLillo

151. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler — by Italo Calvino

152. Life — by Georges Perec

153. The Master and Margarita — by Mikhail Bulgakov

154. The Good Earth — by Pearl S. Buck

155. Henderson the Rain King — by Saul Bellow

From the above list:

Which books have you read?
Which books do you want to read?
Which books are you going to obtain this week?(Even if you are not officially taking the Read More Books challenge I would love to hear about your reading.)

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

9 Comments

Posted in Mostly About Reading

Tagged best books ever, Books, books to read, read more books challenge, reading list

‘Read More Books’ Challenge: Week 2: 53-103 of the list of 623 of the best books ever!

Posted on October 10, 2013 | 12 comments

Are you ready for week two of our Read More Books challenge?

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s not too late to join in.

Check WEEK ONE of the list if you missed it.

There were a few responses to week one’s challenge. How did you do with your reading? Even if you didn’t finish the book you selected, it counts if you select one for this week to add to your TBR pile.

Here is week two’s list of 52 books:

53. A Prayer for Owen Meany — by John Irving
54. Emma — by Jane Austen
55. David Copperfield — by Charles Dickens
56. The Portrait of a Lady — by Henry James
57. The Trial — by Franz Kafka
58. Crime and Punishment — by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
59. A Clockwork Orange — by Anthony Burgess
60. The Age of Innocence — by Edith Wharton
61. Don Quixote — by Miguel de Cervantes
62. As I Lay Dying — by William Faulkner
63. His Dark Materials — by Philip Pullman

64. Brideshead Revisited — by Evelyn Waugh

65. The Golden Notebook — by Doris Lessing

66. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — by Mark Twain

67. Things Fall Apart — by Chinua Achebe

68. Tom Jones — by Henry Fielding

69. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — by J. K. Rowling

70. Song of Solomon — by Toni Morrison

71. Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable — by Samuel Beckett

72. Finnegans Wake — by James Joyce

73. Absalom, Absalom! — by William Faulkner

74. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman — by Laurence Sterne

75. Charlotte’s Web — by E. B. White

76. The Ambassadors — by Henry James

77. Sons and Lovers — by D. H. Lawrence

78. A Farewell to Arms — by Ernest Hemingway

79. Women in Love — by D. H. Lawrence

80. Birdsong — by Sebastian Faulks

81. Gulliver’s Travels — by Jonathan Swift

82. Watership Down — by Richard Adams

83. Gravity’s Rainbow — by Thomas Pynchon

84. Frankenstein — by Mary Shelley

85. Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady — by Samuel Richardson

86. The Old Man and the Sea — by Ernest Hemingway

87. Dune — by Frank Herbert

88. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe — by Daniel Defoe

89. Go Tell It on the Mountain — by James Baldwin

90. All the King’s Men — by Robert Penn Warren

91. The Magic Mountain — by Thomas Mann

92. The Call of the Wild — by Jack London

93. The Tin Drum — by Gunter Grass

94. The 42nd Parallel — by John Dos Passos

95. Under the Volcano — by Malcolm Lowry

96. Disgrace — by J. M. Coetzee

97. The Diary of a Young Girl — by Anne Frank

98. Bleak House — by Charles Dickens

99. Light in August — by William Faulkner

100. Scarlet Letter — by Nathaniel Hawthorne

101. Pale Fire — by Vladimir Nabokov

102. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin — by Louis de Bernieres

103. Howards End — by E. M. Forster

From the above list:

Which books have you read?
Which books do you want to read?
Which books are you going to obtain this week?(Even if you are not officially taking the Read More Books challenge I would love to hear about your reading.)