The Next Best Book Club discussion

I am trying to get through 50 books in a year and trying to only use the books on my shelves right now. That means no more buying books for me. LOL

Here is what I have read so far.

1. What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw by: Agatha Christie
2. Dashing Through The Snow by: Mary Higgins Clark
3. New Moon by: Stephanie Meyer
4. Eclipse by: Stephanie Meyer

I feel a little behind to reach my goal but hoping to make up for it in March. :~)

5. The Shack

How many unread books do you have on your shelves? I currently have 95! I'm not buying any new books until I've read about 80 of them... Good luck!

Becky, I am just now taking inventory of my books and I am up to 97 unread books. I still have many more to count.

Once I started inputing my harlequin romance shelves (havn't gotten to the boxes yet) my unread pile on GRs is just huge. I know I've read more of these than what's listed but if I can't remember, they go in as unread. (I had to seperate the unread from the to-read shelves on GRs). I still have boxes in the basement to eventually list. lol (I have so many because my father gives me his after he's done, I get Harlequin desires off a lady on freecycle giving them away, and I hit the annual summer friends of the library book sale where on the last day books are $1/bag and I can get about 60 into a paper grocery sack. And at that price, I'd get more than one bag. Of course, many of those are 20-40 year old romance novels.)

It's so easy to collect books...lol

Lisa wrote: "It's so easy to collect books...lol "

It is when you can get 60+ books for $1, however much you can fit in a bag! lol I love the bag sales that last morning. No time to read titles that morning though as it's a mad house as everyone is just grabbing. At least the tables are sorted by genre.

oh yeah....how can you refuse that? I know I wouldn't be able too. :~)

The few shopping carts would be gone as soon as the door opens. In fact, there is a line of folks with boxes and bags at the door waiting for them to open. lol I'd have grandparents babysit the kids and take the stroller with me to use as a shopping cart. I'd go to the romance table and grab books based on the color of the spine (telling me which harlequin series it falls into). Everyone is just grabbing books left and right like a madhouse. After I had what I thought was enough, lol, I'd stop and off to the side pack my bags. Paperbacks are the perfect height to match the width of a paper grocery sack. I'd pack a row across, and then add another. I think you can get either 4 or 5 rows high and the bag is stuffed like a huge brick! lol I'm pretty sure I got at least 60 books into each bag, maybe more. So at $1/bag, you'd get alot of books quickly from this sale and I used to get a couple bags each year at the annual sale. I think this year I'll grab books off the regular fiction and mystery tables as my romance collection is now quite extensive although old. I only started inputting all of them (slowly) into Goodreads as I don't have any other inventory of them and as I'm searching through my home library for books to fill the A-Z Book and A-Z Author challenges, it's easier than searching shelves that are stacked 2 high and 3 deep. lol

Wow...that is cool. I've been keeping track of my books in an excel sheet.

Lisa wrote: "Wow...that is cool. I've been keeping track of my books in an excel sheet."

I'm not that organized. lol The best record I've got is what I've read (not counting children's books) in a notebook over the last 5 years. I've put those into Goodreads (although was too lazy to put the dates read in, lol). So the GoodReads shelves are the only inventory I have of my home library. I did export it and sort by author or alphabetical by title. After I finish inputting more harlequins in, I'll export again.

yeah I need to figure out how to put mine in alphabetical order...Right now I'm just typing them into the excel file.

Lisa wrote: "yeah I need to figure out how to put mine in alphabetical order...Right now I'm just typing them into the excel file."

It was a bit tricky. I hit the AZ (arrow up or down) button after highlighting the column to sort it alphabetically. Trouble came in that if it only sorted the one column, not the entire list, then the book titles would be alphabetical but would no longer match up with the authors. I can't remember how I did it now, but I managed to keep all the rows together so all the books data stayed intact, but alphabatized the column (title or author) I needed. Just be sure to save it before you start if you don't do it right you can easily go back and try again if undo doesn't work. I had 3 copies of the list when I was done. The original GRs export file, one saved alphabetical by book title and one by author. But I need to do this again after I finish inputting the rest of my books.

hmm...this sounds complicated...lol my husband is an excel wizard so maybe he will have some suggestions for me. :~)

Briansgirl wrote: "Lisa wrote: "yeah I need to figure out how to put mine in alphabetical order...Right now I'm just typing them into the excel file."

It was a bit tricky. I hit the AZ (arrow up or down) button af..."

If you highlight ALL the data (not just the column with the book title) and hit the AZ(arrow down) button, it should work, as long as the book title column is all the way over on the left.

cool thanks Sara.

No problem. I love Excel. I'm not keeping a separate list of the books I read (I figure that's what goodreads is for), but it's definitely not a bad idea!

6. Chain Letter by: Christopher Pike

7. Graceling

Lisa, I like your reading goal! I have many books i own and need to read, and I certainly haven't imported them all on to GoodReads yet.

Briansgirl wrote: "The few shopping carts would be gone as soon as the door opens. In fact, there is a line of folks with boxes and bags at the door waiting for them to open. lol I'd have grandparents babysit the kid..."

My library does the same thing! Isn't that sale the best of the year?!


Lisa, your goal is awesome and I definately commend you for being able resist the pull of new books!

I'm jealous of these amazing sounding library sales. I get a lot of my books from a local thrift store where they're anywhere from $.75 to four dollars (nice hardcovers). It's definitely not as good as 60 books for a dollar, but I usually manage to come home with 20 to 30 pretty decent finds.

Anyway, I wish I were strong-willed enough to keep myself from buying anymore books this year (since my owned and unreads are somewhere in the 200's), but I'm weak! Weak, weak, weak!

I understand, Megan. Maybe you could make a mini-goal, like no buying new books until you've read 25 that you already own.

Thank you for the support. It is very hard and I have to say I haven't been that good. LOL I did buy 3 books the other day because people from my church gave me a gift certificate to Borders. They know where my heart is. LOL

8. Darkly Dreaming Dexter

I wanto to read Dexter! But it´s always out of stock here :(

Carol, I'm not sure if I liked it. LOL
It was written well, and it gets suspenseful but I really had a hard time reading about a serial killer. LOL
I'm sure it's just me.

Ahaha it happends lol
I don´t care reading about serial killers itself, but, I didn´t read the book so I´ll wait for it to give my true opinion about the subject haha

9. Howl's Moving Castle

10. The Graveyard

11. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

12. Fool by Christopher Moore

13. I Captured The Castle

14. Dead Until Dark

15. The Vampire Diaries The Awakening and The struggle

16. The Vampire Diaries- The Fury

17. Visions of Sugar Plums
18. Skipping Christmas

19. The Hunger Games