I Have Book Guilt

Yeah, you heard right. Book guilt. What a great way to start off the year, huh? I've heard of a lot of readers getting this, but until now I've never experienced it myself. It doesn't feel good.

Basically book guilt is when you have a ton of books that you own but have never read and/or have a ton of books that you have plenty of time to read but totally ignore instead. I, unfortunately, am suffering from both types right now. I currently have 11 books that I own but have not read (gradually accumulated through various trips to bookstores and gifts from friends). I've also had this ENTIRE WINTER BREAK to plow through most if not all of them, and yet...

I have only read one book in this entire three-week period. I am a horrible person.

With school starting back up in a little over a week (for us college types) and me choosing to take THREE lit classes this semester, I am probably not going to have time to read for pleasure hardly at all in the next few months. I'll be too busy reading for school. The good news is that I WILL be reading, and adding books to my Goodreads goal for this year, but the bad news is that these 11 books that are sitting in a pile in my room right now will probably look exactly the same by the time I graduate in May. (Actually, it will probably be bigger...who knows how many Billings trips will be made between now and graduation?)

So what I'm going to do in an effort to help myself feel better about this situation that I have placed myself in is make a list of the books that I own but have yet to read (my TBR) and possibly explain why I am excited to read some of them so that if I happen to get a spare moment between lit books to read something for myself, I can choose one and go for it.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Friend or Foe?
• Really short...I have no excuse for not having read this yet. -//-
• Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher
• Carrier of the Mark by Leigh Fallon
• Once upon a time there was this online writer's community called "Inkpop" (which has since turned into "Figment.") Inkpop's primary sponsor was HarperCollins Publishing, and every now and again editors and agents for the company would browse through stories on the site and - on extremely rare occasions - offer authors they liked a publishing deal on the spot. This is what happened to Carrier of the Mark. Ever since then I've wanted to read it.
• Of Metal and Wishes by Sarah Fine
• Steampunk meets Phantom of the Opera. Seriously.
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Eye of Cat by Roger Zelanzy
• This is the fourth book that we were going to read in my sci-fi class last semester but never got around to. I'd still like to read it, though.
• The Search for WondLa by Tony DeTerlizzi
• Given to me by a friend. It looks really interesting and totally up my alley as far as stories that I enjoy.
• A Frozen Heart by Elizabeth Rudnick
• If my roommate ever reads this she's going to facepalm so hard, because when I first saw this book in Walmart I was dying to get my hands on a copy and almost went through a disaster in order to obtain one. (She was present for this near-disaster.) I was obsessed with Frozen for two weeks afterwards. And now here I am, a couple of MONTHS later, and I still haven't read it...
• Bright Lights, Dark Nights by Stephen Emond
• A modern take on an interracial love story.
• A Whole New World by Liz Braswell
• The story of Aladdin...if he hadn't found the lamp.
• Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
• I cannot even begin to explain the total and utter excitement I felt when I learned that this book was on its way. It's kind of a long story if you haven't read Rowell's Fangirl, but I've been stoked about reading this monster of a book for months and finally got a copy at the Christmas Stroll a while back. I will read this! I promise!

There you have it! Those are the 11 books currently on my TBR. My goal is to get at least a couple of them read before school starts. If nothing else I can cop-out and read the three short ones (less than 200 pages each) and be like, "Yeah, I've read three books already this year. No big deal."

Ha.

I suppose I should stop writing this blog and A) go to sleep because it's 2:40am and B) get started on that reading, huh? Yeah...probably.

Welcome to the year 2016 on Endless Possibilities, everyone! If my astounding laziness and procrastination are any indication of what lies in store for the rest of the year, then it's going to be an interesting one. See you next time!