Hello, reader!
It’s time for a new round of Down the TBR Hole! This is where I go through my Goodreads ‘Want to Read’ shelf and do a bit of cleaning up. If you want to see the full description of what this post is all about, check out my first round HERE.
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve done a Down the TBR Hole post, hasn’t it? And you know what that means. My Goodreads Want to Read shelf has gotten quite a few additions 😅 I ended my last post with 625 books on the TBR. Where am I currently sitting? *cough668bookscough* I mean… I’m proud of myself for not breaking into the 700s! There’s that 😂 But I’m still in the part of my Want to Read shelf that I added when I first joined Goodreads, so there’s a fair chance I’ll be able to pare this down a bit this round.
With that being said, let’s jump in to round nine!
Woman with a Blue Pencil by Gordon McAlpine
Starting off with a tricky one! The premise of this one sounds intriguing, if potentially confusing. We are following a Japanese character who has been written out of a story but is still trying to finish it! We also get snippets of the editor’s letters to the author, who is a Japanese-American imprisoned at an internment camp during WWII, urging him to make his story more “patriotic”. And that’s where my hesitation lies because this was written by a white, contemporary author. I’m not saying he can’t do a wonderful, nuanced job of capturing the emotions surrounding the circumstances. But it’s just not the same as someone of actual Japanese or Japanese-American descent telling this story, in my opinion. Perhaps future-me will change her mind, but, for now, it’s off the TBR.
Verdict: Remove
Hellraisers by Alexander Gordon Smith
This is a YA paranormal dystopian/horror and I haven’t been a fan of YA dystopian books in ages. Not saying that this couldn’t pull me back into the fray, but it was published around the time when I fell out of love with dystopian novels in general. Beyond that, the premise doesn’t sound like anything spectacular. It’s about a teen gaining massive demonic powers to help save the world at great peril to himself and probably those closest to him. It just doesn’t capture my interest anymore, so off it goes!
Verdict: Remove
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
For someone who claims that her favorite bookish trope is “books about books”. this one has been on my TBR for an embarrassingly long amount of time 😅 I mean, it’s set in a potentially magical bookstore! It sounds like something I would genuinely love, so of course it gets to stay. Now I just need to make time to read it!
Verdict: Keep
Kerri McBookNerd 