Defeating the To Read pile

I’ve spent most of this afternoon sorting out my books, and making a pile of the unread ones. It turns out I have 84 unread books. Over the next six weeks it looks like I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands, unless a new job or a large chunk of money magically presents itself, so I’ll try to get through a good chunk of these.

Here is a list of the books, arranged alphabetically by author:

Moon Over Soho– Ben Aaronovitch
Americanah– Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
Pelagia and the White Bulldog- Boris Akunin
Chernobyl Prayer– Svetlana Alexievich
Tuck Everlasting– Natalie Babbitt
Pompeii– Mary Beard
SPQR– Mary Beard
Les Milieux Libre: Vivre En Anarchiste à la Belle Epoque– Céline Beaudet
Don’t Point That Thing At Me– Kyril Bonfigioli
Off the Map– Alaistair Bonnet
The Cornish Coast Murder– John Bude
The Sussex Downs Murder– John Bude
Into the War– Italo Calvino
Le Città Invisibili– Italo Calvino
Mr Palomar– Italo Calvino
What a Carve Up!- Jonathan Coe (had read years before)
London Belongs to Me– Norman Collins
Islands: A Trip Though Time and Space– Peter Conrad
Patrick Leigh Fermor– Artemis Cooper
Catherine, Called Birdy– Karen Cushman
Otter Country: in search of the wild otter– Miriam Darlington
Tam Lin– Pamela Dean
Balthazar– Lawrence Durrell
Mountolive– Lawrence Durrell
Atgofion Hen Wanc– David R Edwards
A Visit from the Goon Squad– Jennifer Egan
The Stockholm Octavo– Karen Engelmann
The Book of Strange New Things– Michel Faber
Then We Came to the End– Joshua Ferris
Education for Critical Consciousness– Paulo Freire
Edith Sitwell biography- Richard Greene
Autobiography of a Corpse– Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Hangover Square– Patrick Hamilton (have read before, but a long time ago)
The Go-Between– LP Hartley
The Glass Bead Game– Herman Hesse
The Reason I Jump– Naoki Higashida
The Sea Inside– Philip Hoare
Millennium– Tom Holland
The Line of Beauty– Alan Hollinghurst
May We Be Forgiven– AM Homes
The Secret of the Blue Glass– Tomiko Inui
The Buried Giant– Kazuo Ishiguro
At Your Own Risk– Derek Jarman
Gone to Ground– Marie Jalowicz Simon
The Establishment– Owen Jones
Snow Country– Yasunari Kawabata
I Love Dick– Chris Kraus
Il Casello Magico (Italian translation of the Phantom Tollbooth)- Norton Juster
Tales From the Black Meadow– Chris Lambert
Independent People– Halldór Laxness
Dissident Gardens– Jonathan Lethem
ll Sistema Periodico– Primo Levi
The Old Ways– Robert Macfarlane
Abbitte (German translation of Atonement) – Ian McEwan
Berlin– Rory Maclean
Things Near and Far– Arthur Machen
The Magic Mountain– Thomas Mann
Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation– Martin Millar
Pure– Andrew Miller
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee– Rebecca Miller
The Bone Clocks– David Mitchell
Complete Works– Nancy Mitford
Bosie– Douglas Murray
Catherine the Great and Potemkin– Simon Sebag Montefiore
I Am A Cat– Soseki Natsume
A History of Ancient Britain– Neil Oliver
La Fabrique des Mots– Erik Orsenna
The Perilous Gard– Elizabeth Pope
Where I’m Reading From– Tim Parks
The Shepherd’s Life– James Rebanks
American Interior– Gruff Rhys
For Two Thousand Years– Mihail Sebastian (2 copies!)
The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof– Annie M.G. Schmidt
Inspector Cadaver– Georges Simenon
The Fly Trap– Fredrik Sjöberg
The Living Mountain– Nan Shepherd
Public Library– Ali Smith
How to Be Both– Ali Smith (have read the first half)
Genie and Paul– Natasha Soobramanian
Written in Stone– Brian Switek
Do Not Say We Have Nothing– Madeleine Thien
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog– Dylan Thomas
Prince biography– Matt Thorne
Stoner– John Williams