Top Ten Books Gathering Dust

Not every book purchased gets read immediately, despite our best intentions. This week the Broke and the Bookish are revealing the identities of long-term residents of the To-Be-Read piles, stacks, and mountains hiding in their homes.

1. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe

I only bought this book last week, so strictly speaking it shouldn't count -- but I've been "meaning to" read this book for well over a year now, because one of the characters quotes repeatedly from Marcus Aurelius and has been the inspiration for some people to study Stoicism.  I've been going to the W's and pondering this book once a month or so for many months now, and every month I find that the book is still big and is still set in the business world.  Last week I noticed it had been discarded, and so snapped it up.

2. Stiffed, Susan Faludi

I heard about this book in sociology class, specifically in my "Gender Roles and Culture" class....then I saw it in the library's bookstore and picked it up. I've read the first few pages several times.

3. Asimov's Guide to the Bible, Volume II: The New Testament (Isaac Asimov)

I read the first volume in this series in the summer of 2008, I think, and purchased this in the fall of 2009. Still haven't gotten around to reading it, but I certainly don't regret buying it -- as with many other rare Asimov books in my collection, the price for finding a copy has risen sharply.  I say carpe diem and buy the books whenever I spy a good opportunity.

4 Marcus Aurelius: A Life, Frank McLynn

Purchased this in the spring of 2010, intending to read it over the summer. Hasn't happened yet but it will: I'm particularly interested in Aurelius' philosophical life.

5. Triangle, Isaac Asimov

My used copy was purchased without a dust cover, but this appears to be from the same edition.

Triangle contains the original Empire trilogy. I purchased it in...oh, the fall of 2008, and in the years since I've read a third of it. I want to finish the Empire series this year, though, so it may be stricken from the list at some point this year.

6. The Captain's Table anthology

This book collects...four or five books into one very BIG book. I bought it because at $2, it was a bargain on Amazon. Never read it, though, nor even started to. I would've, but last year I started getting back into Trek literature and reading dozens of standalone novels set in the new shared continuity.

7. A People's History of the World, Chris Harman

I bought this in the spring of 2010, thinking it to be a summer read.  Since then it's sat on my shelf, though I read the first couple of chapters alongside Will Durant's Our Oriental Heritage.


8. ....that Michael Crichton anthology containing several novels which I also picked up in the library discard bookstore and can't even FIND now.
I can't remember its title, or any of the books in it. But I paid .50 cents for it, and it's...somewhere in my bedroom, hiding under stacks of books.


9 & 10. Various Isaac Asimov science books.

I bought a dozen or so paperback science texts by Asimov last summer and haven't gotten around to them yet.  I mostly bought them because I'm an...Asimovophile and seeing several shelves full of Asimov books all arranged in a neat row pleases me. I do intend on reading one of them soon, though -- "The Wellsprings of Life", which I purchased with birthday money.