I'm one of those people who loves collecting books way more than reading them, mainly because I bloody love the hunt. I research books through and through, I find the most random places where I can buy them used at a very cheap price and I like piling those boxes up only to open them once they're way too much that I can't even see my furniture. It's an obsession, a passion, like good old Lorelai Gilmore would say, it's a lifestyle.
Despite the excitement of the chase, there's only one down side of this hoarding madness: my conscience keeps telling me to read those books before even daring to look into yet another one to add to the collection and buy if it's right. I'm a mood reader so buying books is like doing my future self a favor; if one day she wakes up desperate for a fantasy novel to disappear into, she'll have plenty to pick from, that's why I do it, for her or at least that's what I like to tell myself while I add yet another book into my cart.
Knowing that there's a book for me ready to me read whenever I feel like it, does something to my heart, it makes me sleep better, it certainly makes me feel giddy and excited to go through my bookshelves - which are already overflowing - but it also makes me feel like a toddler who gets a new shiny toy and forget everything about the ones she already has. This is why I've decided to participate to the 24 in 2024 challenge, not only to read more but to read more of what I already have so my conscience can also shut up, finally.
For the challenge I only picked books from my physical stacks because it would have been way too brutal to also pick from my Kindle and randomly selected 24 titles to read this year (and cross them off this list once I do)
Here what my list looks like:
1. A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini
3. The Flood - Blackwater I by Michael McDowell
4. Two for Joy by Amy McCulloch & Zoe Sugg
5. The Spirit Engineer by A.J. West
6. Piers of the Homeless Night by jack Kerouac
7. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
9. Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
10. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
11. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
12. The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
13. Different Class by Joanne Harris
14. Withering Heights by Emily Bronte
15. Inferno by Dan Brown
16. Ocean State by Stewart O'Nan
17. The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
18. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
19. The Swallows by Lisa Lutz
20. Possession by A.S. Byatt
21. The Selfless Act of Breathing by J.J. Bola
22. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
23. Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
24. Daisy Miller and other Stories by Henry James
What's on your 24 in 2024 list?