I’ve never been one for setting New Years resolutions, reading or otherwise. While I like the idea of forming a loose reading goal—maybe I’ll get through 100 books this year, maybe I won’t—I usually find stress far outweighs any benefits when it comes to formulating a specific set of books to read in a certain timeframe. Why constrain myself to a rigid reading list when the ever-growing stack of books threatening to topple off my bedside table and onto my sleeping head provides enough motivation all by itself?
With that, a new goal has popped up out of necessity: 2021 is the year of culling my to-be-read pile. I’ve needed to do it for a while—around the time books stopped fitting on shelves and started taking up refuge on the floor would have been a good start. While I don’t have a specific number of these books I need to read or even a definitive deadline, I’d like to get through as many as possible this year … though I can’t promise I’ll limit the number of new books I bring in.
For this Top Ten Tuesday, I’m highlighting ten books plucked from the stacks around my house that have been waiting far too long for me to pick them up. Maybe I’ll have the chance to read them all.
The Birchbark House
Birchbark House #1
by Louise Erdrich
Goodreads
Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power
by Psyche A. Williams-Forson
Goodreads
A Dash of Trouble
Love Sugar Magic #1
by Anna Meriano
Goodreads
The First Rules of Punk
by Celia C. Pérez
Goodreads
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940
by George Chauncey
Goodreads
Learned Behavior
Higher Education #1
by Jayce Ellis
Goodreads
Nothing to Tell: Extraordinary Stories of Montana Ranch Women
by Donna Gray
Goodreads
Sal and Gabi Break the Universe
Sal and Gabi #1
by Carlos Hernandez
Goodreads
The Sunday Potluck Club
The Sunday Potluck Club #1
by Melissa Storm
Goodreads
We Believe the Children: The Story of a Moral Panic
by Richard Beck
Goodreads
Note: Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Be sure to check out her weekly post to find other participants.
Plucked from the Stacks 
I love Louise Erdrich books. I haven’t read The Birch Bark book yet. https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2021/01/ttt-2021-reading-goals.html
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I realized I haven’t read any of her work—which feels like a major oversight on my part. Really looking forward to this one.
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I hope you get to these! Looks like a nice mix. 🙂 I’m the same way with goals- I have to keep it simple since as a mood reader I bounce around all the time with what I want to read.
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Yes, that’s exactly the same with me! I bounce around too much to be so rigid.
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You have quite a variety there. I love having an eclectic TBR.
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It definitely makes it easier to find something to read.
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We Believe the Children caught my eye so I looked at the summary. What a bizarre and horrifying story – seems like something that bears investigating, as we enter into another welter of hysteria … I posted ten nonfiction books I’d like to read on my TTT this week, if you’re interested to check it out.
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Moral panics have always been fascinating to me, but this one in particular is absolutely horrifying. But, you’re right, considering where we are right now, it’s pretty appropriate reading…
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That is also my goal: Read more Books from my TBR pile and therefore I participate in several challenges.
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I’ve always been hesitant with challenges, but they might give me a reason to snatch up some books from my TBR pile. Good point!
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I know what you mean and I always think, no, not another one. But then I see a good list and get tempted. And it has helped me in the past to go back to my collection of books that I had overlooked in the past.
But whatever works for us is good, right?
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I cannot tell you how much I love the cover of A Dash of Trouble. Wow! I want to read that book and get it for all of the kids in my family before even knowing what it’s about.
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Oh, I totally agree with you! I absolutely love that cover.
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Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs sounds like a great read. And, yeah, I don’t do well with ambitious book reading goals either. I purposefully set mine ridiculously low so there’s no pressure.
My post.
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That’s a great way to do it! Why worry about so much stress when it comes to reading?
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Wow, so many of these sound amazing and I haven’t heard of half of them. Love the look of all the MG books especially 😃 Culling my TBR is always my goal every year but I think perhaps this year I’m gonna try to take it more seriously (and actually make it happen) 😂 Good luck and happy reading!
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Fingers crossed that we can actually work on our TBR piles this year! Of course, Top Ten Tuesday usually has me adding more books to it…
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I have a similar goal this year. At some point, you just have to get it done.
So many of these books look good. I would love to read Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs, Nothing to Tell, and We Believe the Children; though that last one sounds like a tough read.
Good luck getting to read all these.
http://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/2021/01/top-ten-tuesday-top-ten.html
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That’s a great way of putting it! Looking past all the excuses, sometimes you just have to read.
And I know exactly what you mean about We Believe the Children. I’ve been fascinated by moral panics for a long time, but they’re hard to read about.
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WE HAD THE SAME TOPIC TODAY! That is so cool since it wasn’t actually the topic. 🙂 I chose 10 books from the depths of my kindle that I’m going to read this year. I hope you get to all of these.
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Ha! Great minds and all that. Here’s hoping we can actually get around to all of them before the year is up.
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I’m hoping. I already knocked on off and now am on my second. I was thinking one a month.
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Great list! I need to work on getting my TBR down (theres definitely some that’s been there for more than two year! Oops.) and you’ve made me add gay New York to my wtr pile pahaha. I’d already done this prompt in another post so I had a go at my top ten favourite albums lol. You seem like you’d have good taste in music, what are yours? Here are mine 😊 https://hundredsandthousandsofbooks.blog/2021/01/12/ttt-12-1-top-ten-albums/
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Oh, that’s a good question! My music tastes are kind of all over the place at the moment, but I’ve been stuck on Broadway cast recordings at the moment. Grab any show from the past 70 years and I’ve probably had it on repeat at some point. Hope you enjoy Gay New York!
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Good luck tackling your list! I did the now-defunct (I think) Mount TBR challenge for several years, and always failed to read the ten books I said I would read. I stopped joining challenges for a while, but then tried Big Book Summer. Didn’t get very many books read from my TBR, but it was fun to join the challenge again!
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Challenges can be a ton of fun, but I’ve always struggled finding the motivation to totally complete them. It’s like the act of signing up for them basically drains me of all motivation to actually take part in them.
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Exactly! 😉
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Love the way you did this list! I feel you, I have soooo many books that have been sitting on my shelves for eons basically. I haven’t read any of these myself, but I do hope you are able to get to them this year!
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It’s so easy to grab a book here and there and, next thing you know, they’re piling up around you! Here’s hoping this is a year of clean shelves.
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I’ve been hearing great things about A Dash of Trouble. I hope you like it!
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Fingers crossed it’s as good as it sounds!
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You always amaze me with the breadth of your reading interests! We Believe the Children sounds completely fascinating, and I’m so intrigued by that era of moral panic in the 80s/around Satanism, etc. I think I might have to try that one. I hope you can finally make some progress on tackling these, I find it so hard to do too! There’s just always too many books…
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I hope you get the chance to read all of these books! I am hoping to read more of my older books as well that have been sitting on my shelves for years! Sal & Gabi is one of the ones that I really hope I can read this year too.
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Fingers crossed! It’s so easy to let older books fall back in favor of newer ones and ARCs, but I’m looking forward to making a little progress with them this year.
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I thrive on goals, and lists, and expectations, but I’m always jealous of those who can mood read. It sounds lovely. 😉
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I haven’t heard of any of these, although I’ll certainly be looking more into the middle school series. I’m always looking for more of those to add to my never-ending TBR. I feel attacked here, haha. The TBR threatening to topple down is all too real… the stacks in my floor got about 5 feet tall, so I ended up getting another small bookcase last week. I’m hoping I’m also able to go through a majority of my TBR this year. Best of luck in getting through yours!
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But really! The one big book lover stereotype that I embody is having stacks of books all over the place. It’s a mess. And I’m always hesitant to buy new shelves because I also donate most books after reading them. But if things keep going this way, I might have to take a page out of your book and invest in another bookshelf. Happy reading!
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Culling the TBR seems like a perfect goal! It’s something I’d definitely like to get done as well. A Dash of Trouble looks adorable!
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I’m so looking forward to A Dash of Trouble. That cover alone! So great.
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Sal & Gabi is going to make you laugh out loud so much. That was such a fun book, I hope you enjoy!
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Love hearing that! Cannot wait to finally get around to it.
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I do a weekly Tackling the TBR and if enough people are interested I was thinking of doing a linky for it so we can all encourage each other to keep working on those TBR stacks
https://allthebookblognamesaretaken.blogspot.com/search/label/Tackling%20the%20TBR
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I love that idea! I would totally participate. I think that would put a little pressure on me to at least consider looking at my TBR pile every week.
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I have the Sunday Potluck Club on my TBR as well. Several on here that look interesting though.
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Sunday Potluck Club has been hanging out on my TBR pile for way too long. I remember reading an excerpt a few months before the book released and really enjoying it.
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As always, your list is so diverse and so fun!
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I really, really appreciate that. I always try to keep my reading a little broad, which makes it fun to share.
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