Catherine's Shelf Clearing 2018 List

[Catherine]

I made a personal guideline that most if not all of the books I read next year will be ones that I already own or can get from a library, clearing up the massive stacks of half finished books in my house. That personal goal took precedence over the official topics, leading to me bending the guidelines here and there. Forgive me.

1. A book with the letters A, T, and Y in the title: Vanity Fair
2. A book from the first 10 books added to your To Be Read list: Love in the Time of Cholera
3. A book from the 2017 Goodreads Choice Awards: Personal override - The Idiot
4. A book linked by the 4 elements: Book #1 Earth: Paradise Lost
5. A book about or inspired by real events: Well-Read Women: Portraits of Fiction's Most Beloved Heroines
6. A book originally written in a language other than English: Candide
7. A Gothic novel: Carmilla
8. An "own voices" book: Invisible Man
9. A book with a body part in the title: The Heart and/or Heart of Darkness
10. An author's debut book: A Man Called Ove
11. A literary fiction: Dubliners
12. A book set in Africa or South America: One Hundred Years of Solitude
13. A book with a plot centered around a secret: The Secret History
14. 4 books linked by the 4 elements book #2 Fire: Pale Fire
15. A book with a unique format/writing structure: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
16. A narrative nonfiction: The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
17. A book you expect to make you laugh: The Martian
18. A book with a location in the title: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
19. A book nominated for the Edgar Award or by a Grand Master author: personal override -- Dandelion Wine
20. A book rated at least five stars by one of your friends: No friends lol so personal override -- The Quick and the Dead
21. A book written in first person perspective: White Oleander
22. A book you have high hopes for: American Gods or The Brothers Karamazov
23. A medical or legal thriller (sort of): Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
24. A book with a map: Gulliver's Travels
25. A book with an antagonist/villain POV: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
26. A book with a text only cover: Naked Lunch or The Divine Comedy (my copy of the latter is missing its dust jacket so is technically text only.)
27. A book about surviving a harship: The End of Miracles or as far into Gulag Archepelago as I can get
28. Books linked by the elements book 3: The Mill on the Floss or The Ocean at the End of the Lane
29. A book with a Clue weapon on the cover or title: personal override -- One-Eyed Cat and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
30. A short book: Daughters of the House
31. A book set in a country you'd like to visit but never have: Wise Child
32. An alternate history book: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
33. A book connected to a word "born" in the same year as you: The word I chose was "exogen", which is a phase in the cycle of hair growth. My copy of Tess of the D'Urbervilles has a woman with hair on it. Nope. Not reaching at all on this one, am I.
34. A suggestion from the AtY 2018 polls that didn't win but was polarizing or a close call (my pick: a book that features a plague): A Journal of the Plague Year
35. A book featuring a murder: The Moonstone
36. A book published in the last three years by an author you haven't read before: The Girl Who Drank the Moon
37. A women's prize for fiction winner or nominee: I'm waaaaay late on this one, but Gone Girl
38. A science book or a science fiction book: Brave New World
39. A book with a form of punctuation in the title: Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy
40. A book from Amazon's 100 books to read in a lifetime list: 1984
41. A book with an author with the same first and last initials: Notes from a Small Island
42. A book that takes place on, in, or underwater: The Water Babies
43. A book with a title that is a whole sentence: Things Fall Apart
44. A ghost story: The House of the Seven Gables and/or The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story
45. A book that scares or intimidates you: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (please pray for my soul that week)
46. 4 books linked by the 4 elements book #4, air: Cloud Atlas and/or Jonathan Livingston Seagull
47. A book where the main character (or author) is of a different ethnic origin, religion, or sexual identity than your own: Death of a Salesman and Pride and Prejudice (I assume the protagonists of both are straight)
48. A book related to one of the seven deadly sins: Inferno
49. A book from one of the Goodreads Best Books of the Month lists: Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
50. A book with a warm atmosphere: The Pickwick Papers
51. An award winning short story or short story collection: American Housewife and Best New Horror 15
52. A book published in 2018: TBD, will quite possible override.

[Stacey]

Nice (and very ambitious) list, Catherine. I loved your little comments, too. I hope you have better luck clearing the decks than I had this year. It was my goal, too, but unfortunately I wound up acquiring more books than I finished along the way.

[Catherine]

Thanks Stacey! To be honest there's a good chance I'll end up in the same boat as you did next year, but here's hoping.

[Elise]

Excellent selections! Good luck with the continued Proust journey. The Quick and the Dead is a 5-star book, and I'm always glad to see someone else pick it up.