TBR: What’s on Your To Be Read List?+ Amisha’s 5 Cool Books

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Beach reads… winter reads… and any season reads… any season is my time to read whatever catches my fancy! Lately, I fit book love into spare moments when I’m not querying literary agents to represent my novels (click here for more on my books). Daytime “book reads“ are better described as “audiobook listens,“ because any extra time I have to sit ends up with me behind my computer, researching and pitching agents.

The audiobooks I select for when I drive, wash dishes, do laundry, yadda yadda yadda, cover an expanse of fiction genres and non-fiction topics that interest me. Right now, I’m finishing up For the Love of Europe by tour guide extraordinaire, Rick Steves, and I’ve downloaded Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar to embark upon next.

Nighttime hardbacks are selected to neither potentially induce nightmares nor keep me up turning pages to see how their tale ends. How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley is currently filling the bill. When I can’t find something good-sleep-friendly, dear James Herriot and his short stories about being a vet in times of yore are always reliable.

Sometimes I review my reads, like here, and here, and here, and more when you select ‘books’ or ‘book review’ on this site’s categories list.

What’s on your TBR (To Be Read) list?

From India, Amisha Goel blogs, reads, and reviews. Glance at her book-loving site, and it makes perfect sense that she’s working toward a Masters in English.

To squeeze her impressive TBR’s among her textbooks — within only August?! — I envy her taste as well as how hella fast a reader she is!…

A Look at my TBR List for August by Amisha Goel

July was a lazy month. It’s summer. It’s hot. All you want to do is lie down and sip cold drinks all the time. But that’s not very productive, is it? August will be different. Maybe. I don’t usually make a TBR list because I like to pick books on a whim, but for this month, I have curated a list and I intend to follow it religiously. I have chosen five very different books. There’s a contemporary read, a classic read, a fun read, a play and a self-help book.

Take a look at my list:

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman: This is my contemporary read. It was part of Reese’s Book Club in June 2017 and the winner of Costa Debut Novel Award. It’s about loneliness and social anxiety. Eleanor is a social misfit and leads a simple life. She is happy and completely fine except when she isn’t. I’m excited for this read because it feels personal. Social anxiety and loneliness is a problem that needs to be taken much more seriously. It is being adapted into a film by the director who created Fleabag. I don’t need any other reason to read this book.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: For my classic read, I have chosen Don Quixote. I know this book is HUGE but I’m quixotic. Let’s prove chivalry is not dead. It’s considered to be the first modern novel and a founding work of Western literature. It has inspired lots of other works such as Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. The phrases ‘the pot calling the kettle black’ and ‘tilting at windmills’ are a contribution of this novel.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney: I have been reading these books since I was a kid and I still love them. There’s no need to point out that this is my ‘fun’ read. Kinney’s storytelling and illustrations are a delight. It’s a children’s book series, but for me these books will never get old or even slightly boring. They follow Greg Heffley, a middle-schooler who illustrates his daily life in a diary. He insists it is a journal. As easy as it seems, keeping a diary is a Herculean task. I could never keep up with the daily entries.

Buried Child by Sam Shepard: This play won the ‘Pulitzer Prize for Drama’ in 1979. It launched Shepard to national fame. It is a deeply complicated drama involving an American family and borders on grotesque. It breaks down all the notions of idealism and shows the crude and ugly reality. The New York Times have described it as “a wrenching family drama — part comedy, part tragedy, part mystery, part horror show.” I was confused about my choice of this play because it is pretty dark and messy. I don’t know how I will react to this play but I am choosing it because I want to try something new.

The Science of Self-Discipline by Peter Hollins: I chose this self-help book because I know motivation does not last long. The real power is self-discipline. This is something that we all struggle with, some more than others. Those who made it a habit have made leaps and bounds in their careers. I also wonder why some people have zero discipline in their life. I myself am guilty of being lazy and not meeting the set goals sometimes. That is why, I picked this book because self-discipline is something I want to internalize in my life.

So that was my TBR list. Whew! that’s a lot to cover in a month. I better start reading. Wish me Luck!

Got a sleep-friendly book to recommend?