TBR | Dawn of books

Although I generally fail when it comes to TBRs, I enjoy the thrill of selecting books and curating a list of books that sound interesting or have been recommended to me. For my 20 books of summer project I read a total of 10 books from the selected 20, but instead of beating myself for it, I’ve decided to start afresh. Recently I’ve come across bloggers and vloggers making seasonal TBRs that cover several months instead of making set lists of books that they try to complete in 30 days. Inspired by this, I’ve compiled my own list of ten books that I’m excited about and that I believe will be perfect for the upcoming autumn months. Autumn is the time when I usually get back into classics and pick up heavier books, both in size as well as subject matter. Hence my autumn picks are divided into three genres:

Autumn2016C

Classics
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – I’ve owned my copy now for over 2 years, and have been putting the book on my TBRs for approximately a year. I shall read this. It is decided.
2. Anna Karenina – My big book for the summer that I, unfortunately, had to put down. But since I got to the half way point during summer, there’s still hope that I’ll finish this by the end of the year. I just need to commit to it.
3. Stoner – It’s a bit odd to call this a ‘classic’ seeing that it surged in popularity only recently. However, based on what I’ve read so far, this seems like the perfect autumn read.
Crime
1. Career of Evil – Sadly, there were no beaches for me this summer, so my beach read of the summer will have to become a late-night-with-tea-and-quilts read.
2. In the Woods – I bought this just recently, and I want to delve into Tana French’s writing. I’ve heard great things, and if I enjoy it, I’ll have five more books to go in this Dublin Murder Squad series.
3. The Secret History – I won’t be returning to uni this autumn, so I’ll need my fix of university literature.
Contemporary fiction
1. The Vegetarian – I have it. I want to read it. QED.
2. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – I love me some Tim Burton, and seeing that the film adaptation of this book is coming out soon, I want to know what to expect.
3. Oneiron – Oneiron was one of the first books I purchased in the beginning of the year and, like A Little Life, one that I had been waiting to get my hands on for some time. It was the winner of last year’s Finlandia prize and in general one of the most hyped, loved and criticised book of the year. Now that the hype is gone, it should be the perfect time to read this.
4. Uprooted / Remains of the Day / Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow / The Trial – Okay, so I have too many books that I want to read and cannot decided which one to add as my tenth pick. I’m hoping to get to at least one of these, better yet maybe two or three. Uprooted has peaked my interest with its Polish setting and interesting heroine, Ishiguro is on my 2016 TBR, Miss Smilla a book that I’ve owned almost since the beginning of my studies in university and The Trial a book in German that I’ve been meaning to get to (plus its short and a classic).
What are you planning on reading this autumn? Do your tastes change with the seasons or am I the only one affected by this? I’d love to hear about you’re reading in the comments! x

I am a big fan of book list. Everytime I see a “100 must reads” headline, I pause to read all of the names on the list and write down books that I haven’t heard of. And since I’m starting this book blog, I might as well publish a list that has all the books I plan on reading (some day). Naturally I plan to read also books that are not on the list because reading the ultimate classics of all time will be quite a challenge.

I searched the Internet for a good list and found several lists that seemed to have the right mix of books. I don’t want to focus on a single culture alone (for example the 100 Best British books), but on the other hand I’d like to have a few Finnish classics on the list too. However, every nationality tends to evaluate their own works of literature higher than the others. The Norwegian Book Club‘s list seemed to me the most varied in terms of culture, but then again – I’m a sucker for texts written in their native language. BBC compiled a list in 2003 of books their listeners thought you needed to read – hence BBC The Big Reads list. The only problem with this list is that for some reason I can’t find anything new or surprising on the list – which doesn’t mean I’ve read all of them. The Finnish list (the page is in Finnish only!) features several books that have been mentioned in the earlier lists, but also an array of books I’ve never heard of which is definitely a plus.

So I was almost at the point of flipping a coin to decide which list to choose when I came upon this: http://fiktiivi.blogspot.fi/p/100-kirjaa_21.html. A wonderful person had experienced the same dilemma and combined the three lists! The joy! Only drawback might be that instead of 100 books, the list has 254 titles – but at least I have enough books to read to last a lifetime.

UPDATE: 20 titles added 22.01.2015