Popular Books Everyone Else Has Read But Me (It Seems)

• The Hunger Games trilogy. I'll mention this first because of all the movie hype surrounding it right now. My mom and sister have both read it and recommend it, but it's not a series I've had a burning desire to read.
• The Harry Potter books. I should probably have my children's-lit-lover card pulled, but I couldn't get into this series. I've tried several times with the first book, and I've quit every time.
• The Chronicles of Narnia. I yawned my way through the first book when I was 11, and remember very little about it. I never had any desire to read the rest of the series. On the other hand, my sister read and re-read them.
• Charles Dickens books. I've tried at various times over the years, but I'm just not drawn to his writing style. I've never been able to finish one of his books.
• John Steinbeck books. I never had to read any of his works in my British international high school, or at university (amazingly) and I've still not gotten around to it as an adult.
• Stephen King books. I'm not into the horror genre, and until recently, I thought that was all he wrote, but I've since learned that's not so, however...so far I've not given any of his books a try. (I love the movies The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both film adaptations of his works.)

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

Summer Reading Game Plan A.K.A. Taming My Out-of-Control TBR Pile

Okay, so here's the deal! (This is my Susanna's favorite phrase right now. Don't know where she got it, but for some reason she loves it, because she uses it in any negotiating she tries to do. "Here'th the deal, Mom. You make me a thandwit-th and I'll take it upstairth to wath a movie." "No, here's the deal, Toots, I'll make you a sandwich, and you get to eat it at the table." OR "Here'th the deal, Mom. You read me ten bookth tho I want to thtay in bed." I've got a con-artist in the making.)

Anyway, in looking over my bookshelves in the last few days, I realize I really, REALLY need to concentrate on reading from my own shelves instead of getting distracted by the amazing books y'all are bringing to my attention, thus forcing me to keep borrowing more and more books from the library while my own shelves weep in abandonment. I have a whole bunch of books that have been waiting patiently for me to get around to them. And I need to use the summer to start purging books that I really don't want to re-read. (For myself, I only keep books that I love to re-read.) I also need to go through the kids' shelves to get rid of books that aren't favorites, especially those that are available at the library as well.

So my summertime reading is going to consist of books off my own shelves with only a few library books sprinkled in here and there. And heaven knows my two older girls are set for reading for a while. I purchased the next three Ivy & Bean books for them, plus, they recently acquired a bunch of Boxcar Children books at a library book sale. And it won't hurt Susanna's to be limited to our own shelves.


*UPDATE: I am deeply embarrassed to admit that after counting the unread books in my shelves, I find there are 115 books THAT I OWN still waiting to be read. Appalling. And that doesn't include my Goodreads list or my own Excel spreadsheet that contains a combined 500-ish books I want to read...someday.

And since publishing this post, I discovered that the Book Blogger Hop this week is on this very subject. Head over to Crazy For Books to join the Hop and disclose your own/read others' dirty little secrets regarding their out-of-control TBR stacks.