15. A book you've wanted to read for a long time

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Time to go dig in those TBR archives! You're looking for a book you've been wanting to read for a long time. How you define "long time" is up to you, but this book should have been on your radar for a while.

While this is a pretty personal prompt, we have compiled an ATY Listopia that may give you some reminders.

ATY Listopia: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2...

What did you pick, and how long has it been on your TBR?

[NancyJ]

Don't Let Me Go by Catherine Ryan Hyde - since 2016
The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin since 2017
The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni since 2018
The Murmur of Bees by Sofía Segovia since 2019
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood since 2019
Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau since 2021
Wellness by Hill since 2023
East of Eden by John Steinbeck since 2017 (but I don’t own it)
There There by Tommy Orange since 2018 (but I don’t own it)

[Dixie]

Well, the book that's been on my Goodreads TBR list the longest is Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales. That was added in 2015! Some added in 2017 are The Mill on the Floss, The Count of Monte Cristo, Shriver, Deathless, Gateway, and The Shadow of the Wind. So maybe one of those, or maybe during the year I'll remember something I wanted to read longer ago than that.

[Deborah]

Current possibilities:

Dog Days
Nightside City
Once Dead, Twice Shy

Library: An Unquiet History

Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth

[MJ]

This might be the year for Bleak House. It was one of the books on my mom's bookshelf that I remember. I always liked the cover, haha. I read Anna Karenina (another from her shelf) in my 20s but Dickens has always intimidated me.

So, Bleak House has been on my mind since the mid-1980s. I should really get on it already.

[Dixie]

MJ wrote: "This might be the year for Bleak House. It was one of the books on my mom's bookshelf that I remember. I always liked the cover, haha. I read Anna Karenina (another from her shelf) in ..."

In the past year or so I've read Pickwick Papers, which was really fun, and David Copperfield, which was very good. I started Bleak House a few months ago and couldn't get into it. The tone was a little more challenging than I wanted to deal with at that time. I'll try again - I own a copy, so it will keep staring at me from the shelf until I do.

[Denise]

I've wanted ot read these for a while:
Life of Pi Yann Martel
Smilla's Sense of Snow Peter Høeg
A Month in the Country J.L. Carr
Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion

[Angie]

This is a weird one for me. I have lots of books that have been on my TBR for a while, but they are still there because I'm apparently not that excited to read them.

I might do one of the new full-cast audiobooks of the Harry Potter series. They start coming out in November and will come out a month at a time. So that's a strong maybe. I've read the books but never these new full-cast versions. I've been interested since I heard about them.

[MJ]

Dixie wrote: "MJ wrote: "This might be the year for Bleak House. I started Bleak House a few months ago and couldn't get into it. The tone was a little more challenging than I wanted to deal with at that time ..."

I will pretend I didn’t read that. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m curious to see how I will fell about it. I’ve only read A Christmas Carol and I enjoyed it more than I expected. I really don’t know what it is about him that makes me avoid reading his books!

[Dixie]

MJ wrote: "I will pretend I didn’t read that. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m curious to see how I will fell about it. I’ve only read A Christmas Carol and I enjoyed it more than I expected. I really don’t know what it is about him that makes me avoid reading his books!..."

Hahaha yikes sorry! I was just thinking aloud, actually. I put off reading Dickens for most of my life, but I always remembered liking Great Expectations in school so was inclined to dip in again at some point. Last year I finally decided to give The Pickwick Papers a try because it was my father-in-law's favorite book, and I knew he thought it was funny. And I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it - laughed out loud more than once, which isn't usual for me while reading! So this year I picked up David Copperfield, mostly because I had a book titled The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep and didn't feel I could read that until I read the original Uriah Heep story. Well, I flew through those many, many pages with pleasure (and loved The Unlikely Escape afterward, too). So what I was trying to say was that, in my experience, there are some fun and relatively "easy" Dickens novels, in case you start Bleak House and find, as I did, that it seemed like a lot. I hope to read Oliver Twist in 2026, it fits several prompts. It was our high school play so I have an idea who the characters are and how the story goes, but I haven't read it before. And at some point I'll give Bleak House another try. I'm interested in Little Dorrit, too, since I understand it's based on his family's experiences when his father was in debtor's prison.

[Pam]

I hope to finally read The Lord of The Rings Trilogy in 2026.