Pick-a-Shelf discussion

One of our co-mods, Susan, was picked as shelf-picker for the month, and she has picked Diversity as our shelf for September. Have a look at the shelf and give us an idea of what you might read. It should be a "diverse" list, lol.

So - my first impression when looking at this shelf is that I do not have a very "diverse" TBR. Unlike some of the shelves that we read from, including last month's, not many books come up as being on my TBR. The few books that are listed are mostly ones that I have already read. That said, I may read You Know Me Well by YA author Nina LaCour as I liked the first book that I read by herHold Still.

Alternately, I might read The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo, which has been on my TBR for a long time.

What a great shelf!

I'm quite shocked to see that my reads don't seem to be very "diverse". So this is going to be a good way to change that!

Apparently I don't have anything on my owned TBR, so I'll have to see what I can get hold of. I'll come back with my choice.

Interesting shelf! I didn't have many on my TBR either, although I have read quite a few. I found only these two on my owned TBR:

The White Tiger - comes up in almost every challenge I do, will I finally read it?

Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story - a spinoff from Will Grayson, Will Grayson, looks like fun

I am going to read Perfect Chemistry

Marina wrote: "What a great shelf!

I'm quite shocked to see that my reads don't seem to be very "diverse". So this is going to be a good way to change that!

Apparently I don't have anything on my owned TBR, so..."

I felt the same way, Marina. Mine isn't very "diverse" either, even though I read a lot of books with characters and themes that I would consider diverse.

Rosemary wrote: "Interesting shelf! I didn't have many on my TBR either, although I have read quite a few. I found only these two on my owned TBR:

The White Tiger - comes up in almost every challeng..."

I have the same problem with The Help, lol. It is on my LOST list, I have planned to read it for several challenges, AND it has been on several shelves, but I just never seem to get to it. In my case, I think it is because I watched the movie and so I just feel no urgency to read the book.

Lyn (Readinghearts) wrote: "Rosemary wrote: "Interesting shelf! I didn't have many on my TBR either, although I have read quite a few. I found only these two on my owned TBR:

The White Tiger - comes up in almo..."

It is a good book. I read the book before I saw the movie.

Jayme(the ghost reader) wrote: "Lyn (Readinghearts) wrote: "Rosemary wrote: "Interesting shelf! I didn't have many on my TBR either, although I have read quite a few. I found only these two on my owned TBR:

[book:The White Tiger..."

Ya, I just have to get to it. I usually like to read books before I see the movie, but will usually read them even after I have seen a movie. I feel it fill in gaps.

I am not sure what I'll read yet, but there are 100 pages of this!!! Not a shelf I ever use when shelving books. I'll find out; I am 100 percent positive something I read will fit, as I have a scifi sequel that deals very much with diversity, but on a scifi aliens level (I read the first one and that is VERY much a part of it!!!)

I went through the shelf until I found books I had on my tbr list.

From the first two pages I found these on my TBR Wishlist:

Brown Girl Dreaming
Homegoing
Under a Painted Sky
Everything I Never Told You

I must say...in the first three pages there's just 5 books I have in my TBR and 5 already read....shocking!
These are my possibilities:

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (it would be a re-read actually)
Every Day by David Levithan

Some advice?

Klela, I've heard very good things about Wonder and Americanah, but I haven't read them myself. To Kill a Mockingbird is just wonderful, I read it a short time ago - but I don't know if you feel like re-reading it, that's for you to say! :)

I think I'll choose one among the following:

Americanah
The Help
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

If you haven't read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, please do so now. It's AMAZING!!!

I'll have these (mostly from the first page:)


I'll read one of those...

Klela, I liked Eleanor and park

Man, number one is The Hate U Give. I loved that book - highly recommend if you haven't already read it.

There were a few on my TBR on that first page, so I'm going to do one that I already had marked to-read: Brown Girl Dreaming

And I'll take D.G.'s advice and read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Jayme(the ghost reader) wrote: "Klela, I liked Eleanor and park"

Thanks!

Marina wrote: "Klela, I've heard very good things about Wonder and Americanah, but I haven't read them myself. To Kill a Mockingbird is just wonderful, I read it a shor..."

I heard good things about Americanah and Wonder too. I'll take a couple of days to decide!

Klela wrote: "I must say...in the first three pages there's just 5 books I have in my TBR and 5 already read....shocking!
These are my possibilities:

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
[book:Wonde..."

I don't really know anything about any of those except To Kill a Mockingbird, which is just great!

D.G. wrote: "If you haven't read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, please do so now. It's AMAZING!!!

I'll have these (mostly from the first page:)
[bookcover:The Wrath and the Dawn..."

I did not list that one, D.G., but it was recommended to me by another book friend and has been on my TBR for a few years. Maybe I should try it.

Jayme(the ghost reader) wrote: "Lyn (Readinghearts) wrote: "Rosemary wrote: "Interesting shelf! I didn't have many on my TBR either, although I have read quite a few. I found only these two on my owned TBR:

The White Tiger- comes up in almo..."

It is a good book. I read the book before I saw the movie. "

I DIDN'T KNOW THERE'S A MOVIE!!! I thought the book was sooo funny!

Edited: um... I just tried to Google this and only found a Russian movie called White Tiger which is unrelated to this book by Aravid Adiga?

Am currently reading And the Mountains Echoed and absolutely loving it!

Tien wrote: "Jayme(the ghost reader) wrote: "Lyn (Readinghearts) wrote: "Rosemary wrote: "Interesting shelf! I didn't have many on my TBR either, although I have read quite a few. I found only these two on my o..."

I think the movie we were talking about was The Help. Rosemary said that White Tiger had come up several times but she never seemed to get it read, and I said that I had the same problem with The Help. But since I had already seen the movie, I felt not great compulsion to read the book. Which is actually unusual for me.

Yeah I was talking about "The Help" I read the book before I saw the movie.

I liked The Help better than The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, although both are good. I've read a fair number of books here, but really have read many that belong here but might not have been shelve/tagged that. I just don't use diversity as a tag/shelf and suspect that it's not used by tons of people seeing as none of them have super high numbers of shelves (it gets fairly low fairly quickly).

I also recommend the Across the Universe trilogy (I saw at least 2 of them as I went through the pages by Beth Revis.

That said, it's a great shelf to be reading.

I think I'm going to read Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter, which is one of the ones I saw that's not only on my tbr, but that I have here thinking I could use it for something else. It turns out it didn't work for the other thing, but will fit here.

I have that one my tbr list. Maybe I can fit it in somewhere else.

I have a whole bunch of books to choose from my TBR list

I think I'll start with Geekerella
then maybe
A Gathering of Shadows
Lady Midnight
Ink and Bone

all depends on my challenges for the month.

Lyn (Readinghearts) wrote: "I think the movie we were talking about was The Help. Rosemary said that White Tiger had come up several times but she never seemed to get it read, and I said that I had the same problem with The Help. But since I had already seen the movie, I felt not great compulsion to read the book. Which is actually unusual for me. "

oops! I guess I wasn't reading properly ha ha ha

I actually have read The Help & haven't seen the movie... :p

The movie is awesome! I have seen it three times since I read the book.

Tien wrote: "Lyn (Readinghearts) wrote: "I think the movie we were talking about was The Help. Rosemary said that White Tiger had come up several times but she never seemed to get it read, and I said that I had..."

The movie is really good, but I usually like to read the book to fill in the stuff they can't fit in the movie.

Joyce wrote: "I have a whole bunch of books to choose from my TBR list

I think I'll start with Geekerella
then maybe
A Gathering of Shadows
Lady Midnight
[book:I..."

I have Ink and Bone on my TBR, too. Maybe I should add that one to the list.

Bea wrote: "From the first two pages I found these on my TBR Wishlist:

Brown Girl Dreaming
Homegoing
Under a Painted Sky
Everything I Never Told You"

Brown Girl Dreaming is beautiful, Bea.

Tien wrote: "I thought the book was sooo funny!"

I'm glad you liked The White Tiger so much, Tien! I have been putting it off for so long, and I don't know why. Maybe it's the cover. Anyway, I've just had it picked for me in another group, so it is definitely on my list for September :)

Klela wrote: "I must say...in the first three pages there's just 5 books I have in my TBR and 5 already read....shocking!
These are my possibilities:

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Wonde..."

Klela,
Eleanor & Park is great. Although I'd never heard of Americanah, and now that I've looked at it, I think I need to add it to my list.

Wow, great ideas people are coming up with.!

When I was looking at the shelf, I knew I'd choose to read the The Hate U Give, which I've heard wonderful things about. But now that I'm looking at the shelf and your ideas, I think I need to add Americanah to my list, too.

And for any of you who haven't read any Octavia Butler, I strongly recommend Kindred. It's an amazing mix of scifi/time travel, fantasy, and historical fiction. I gave it 5 stars, which I'm very stingy with.

I was intrigued by what Karin said about the numbers of shelvers going down very quickly, so I thought I'd look at the last page and see which books only one person shelved. And it's very weird. There are supposedly 100 pages, right? But trying to go to page 100 (or even to page 26) gets a "not found" message. So page 25 appears to be the last accessible page. And yet, the books on that page were all shelved by 5 people. Where are the books shelved by 4,3,2, or 1 person? Also, it says that page shows books 1201-1250 of 14,624. So where are the other 13,000+ books?

Is this what everyone else sees? Is anyone else able to access the rest?

I hadn't noticed this before I named it, or I would've chosen another shelf where the books are actually all there to be seen. I hope everyone is still able to find something they're happy with.

I just checked out the "abandoned" shelf for comparison. There, too, the last page I can see is page 25. GR must be having some memory problems showing everything. That means that, for future shelves we pick, we can only count on seeing 1250 books, regardless of how many books are supposedly on the shelf. Unless something changes, of course. I don't know if this is a long-term or short-term bug. Very bizzare!

Oh, Susan, I didn't notice that. I usually only see books till page 20, if I can't find anything on the first few pages. This must be a bug, indeed.

The "page 26" issue has been reported in the Goodreads Feedback in this thread and brought to the attention of the devs, so it may eventually get fixed...

Susan wrote: "Wow, great ideas people are coming up with.!

When I was looking at the shelf, I knew I'd choose to read the The Hate U Give, which I've heard wonderful things about. But now that I..."

I definitely second Susan's recommendation of Kindred . One of the best books I have ever read.

Wow, I have never realized that, but apparently it is a problem that people have been trying to get some attention for quite a while. I guess I just always either find something or give up before page 20.

At any rate, since we are not really strict about the shelves for the monthly reads, if you find something that you think should fit, go ahead and have at it. It is the challenges were we are totally strict about it being on a shelf.

Also - I wonder if the book is shelved that way it it will show up on the book page if you go to its top shelves page. HMM. I'm just thinking in the case of our challenges. If you have a book that you want to use for a certain shelf on a challenge.

Karin wrote: "I am not sure what I'll read yet, but there are 100 pages of this!!! Not a shelf I ever use when shelving books. I'll find out; I am 100 percent positive something I read will fit, as I have a scif..."

I don't tend to use it, either, Karin. I think it is because diversity is such a buzz word these days. I prefer to use something else. But I never really thought about it.

Lyn (Readinghearts) wrote: "Also - I wonder if the book is shelved that way it it will show up on the book page if you go to its top shelves page. HMM. I'm just thinking in the case of our challenges. If you have a book that you want to use for a certain shelf on a challenge."

Lyn, yes, it does show up on the top shelves page. On the right hand side there are the "Genres", and under that "See top shelves" - if you click there you can see all the ways in which the book has been shelved. Here is an example for The Analects of Confucius: https://www.goodreads.com/work/shelve...

Marina wrote: "Lyn (Readinghearts) wrote: "Also - I wonder if the book is shelved that way it it will show up on the book page if you go to its top shelves page. HMM. I'm just thinking in the case of our challeng..."

Thanks Marina. I also tried it by shelving a book I had as diversity and it did show on the top shelves page. :)

And in doing all of this checking, I found another book that I have wanted to read on the list....on page 25 no less....Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

Susan wrote: "Wow, great ideas people are coming up with.!

When I was looking at the shelf, I knew I'd choose to read the The Hate U Give, which I've heard wonderful things about. But now that I..."

Kindred looked interesting. I wanted to read that for a little while.

Well, so far the link shared by D.G. last month (in this post) to check whether a book is in a certain shelf or not has proved very useful!

I'll probably read one of these:

Elvenn wrote: "Well, so far the link shared by D.G. last month (in this post) to check whether a book is in a certain shelf or not has proved very useful!

I'll probably read one of these:

[bookcover:The Left Ha..."
I recommend Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Elvenn wrote: "Well, so far the link shared by D.G. last month (in this post) to check whether a book is in a certain shelf or not has proved very useful!

I'll probably read one of these:

[bookcover:The Left Ha..."

I second the recommendation for Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Midnight at the Garden of Good and Evil is also a recommendation if you like true crime books.