From this week’s Booking Through Thursday challenge:

“So here today I present to you an Unread Books Challenge. Give me the list or take a picture of all the books you have stacked on your bedside table, hidden under the bed or standing in your shelf – the books you have not read, but keep meaning to. The books that begin to weigh on your mind. The books that make you cover your ears in conversation and say, ‘No! Don’t give me another book to read! I can’t finish the ones I have!’ “

I own lots of unread books. Long before I had a stash of yarn, I owned a stash of books, acquired as gifts, souvenirs, and library book sales. After moving to D.C., my job periodically required me to attend the American Library Association’s annual conference, where they give away books — for free. So each time I went, I’d come home with a suitcase full of novels and other books.

So for ease of writing tonight (and for future post fodder), I decided to consult only one shelf tonight. In the reading nook, the following books remain unread*:

The top shelf, which, admittedly, is a bit light on books compared to those below gave me false hope. Only two books hadn’t been read:

• The Scotch by John Kenneth Galbraith
• The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald

The second shelf down, which houses a large portion of my knitting book collection also didn’t look too bad, although only the last item has anything to do with knitting:

• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• Into the Wild: Warriors 1 by Erin Hunter
• The Last Dragon by Silvana de Mari
• Subject to Debate by Katha Pollitt
• A Woman’s Education by Jil Ker Conway
• Thinking Out Loud by Anna Quindlen
• No Idle Hands by Anne Macdonald

Third shelf down and we start to see the results of randomly shoving books onto the shelf in a frenzy of cleaning. This shelf is supposed to hold poetry, but now seems to equally hold fiction:

• The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
• Reading like a Writer by Francine Prose
• The Open Door by Steven Gilbar
• The 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
• Rules by Cynthia Lord
• The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
• Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (I’ve read a couple of the sequels, but not the original.)
• The Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine
• Grace and Gravity: Fiction by Washington Area Women

Bottom shelf. This is supposed to hold literature compilations, as well as books from college. It seemingly also holds piles of fiction I couldn’t fit elsewhere:

• Forgiveness by Jean Brashear (I entered a contest to win yarn on the author’s website and she sent me inscribed copies of four of her books)
• Mercy by Jean Brashear
• Coming Home by Jean Brashear
• Live Is Lovelier by Jean Brashear
• The Illustrated Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
• The Bilingual Edge by Kendall King and Alison Mackey (Ummm… I have no idea why I picked this one up at the last ALA conference I went to…)
• Foundling by D.M. Cornish
• Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
• Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filipovic (I started this one but it was depressing and I abandoned it in favor of less warlike reading.)
• The Name of This Book Is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
• Claiming Georgia Tate by Gigi Amateau
• The Whole Sky Full of Stars by René Saldaña, Jr.
• The Book of Time by Guillaume Prévost
• The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty
• Making Money by Terry Pratchett (Can I tell you? I looked at the title of the book and thought, “Why in the world did I get a book on that?!?”)

Admit it: aren’t you glad I only tackled one shelf?

Any recommendation for books in the shelves that should shift toward the top of the to be read pile?

* Some of these books mentioned above were gifts from friends that I have yet to read. Please don’t feel that your present was unappreciated. I’m just savoring our connection for even longer than usual.