“Hi my name is Sophia and I’m addicted to buying books!!”

Honestly is there a Book Hoarders anonymous  support group i can join because I seriously have a problem! This year I have decided to minimize the amount of books i purchase. I wont say that I wont purchase books because that would be a bold face lie! But, I really want to try to read some of the books on my bookshelf that are just there collecting dust.  Eventually, I’ll take you guys on a bookshelf  tour and do a count of how many unread books are on there for me to read ( I fear the number will be astronomical :))

However , I have chosen 10 books off of my shelf that I plan to read before the conclusion of 2015. I’m sure I’ll read other books in the midst but these are the ones I really want to conquer this year. Hope I’ll inspire a few of you to join me on this reading journey!

1. And the Mountains Echoed: By Khaled Hosseini- This book begins simply enough, with a father recounting a folktale to his two young children. The tale is about a young boy who is taken by a div (a sort of ogre), and how that fate might not be as terrible as it first seems—a brilliant device that firmly sets the tone for the rest of this sweeping, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting novel. A day after he tells the tale of the div, the father gives away his own daughter to a wealthy man in Kabul. What follows is a series of stories within the story, told through multiple viewpoints, spanning more than half a century, and shifting across continents. The novel moves through war, separation, birth, death, deceit, and love, illustrating again and again how people’s actions, even the seemingly selfless ones, are shrouded in ambiguity. ( amazon.com)
2. Love Anthony:By Lisa Genova-After 14 years of marriage and three children, Beth Ellis discovers her husband is having an affair with a local waitress. Feeling heartbroken, rejected, and alone, Beth wants to recapture the independent, creative spirit she used to be and finds the inspiration to pick up pen and paper once again. What emerges is a startling new voice, one that will become a balm for her wounded soul. Newly separated Olivia Donatelli has just moved into her family’s rental cottage. Struggling to understand the unraveling of her marriage, she is also desperate to make sense of her eight-year-old autistic son Anthony’s short life and accidental death. A chance encounter between these two women develops into an unexpected and meaningful friendship, giving one writer the opportunity to find her voice and a grieving mother a chance to finally understand her son
3. Roots:By Alex Haley A classic I’ve never been able to finish because the content was too strong. I feel I’m ready now.:)
4. Half of a Yellow Sun: By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:a magnificent novel in which the dreams and tragedies of 1960s Nigeria are filtered through the minds and experiences of stupendously compelling characters. From page 1, an unbreakable bond is forged between the reader and Ugwu, a bright and kind young teen who has left his barebones village to serve as houseboy to Odenigbo, a robust and radical professor full of hope for newly independent Nigeria in spite of ingrained ethnic divides and colonialism’s deleterious aftereffects. Ugwu becomes devoted to Odenigbo’s beautiful and cultured lover, Olanna, as Odenigbo’s treacherous mother plots against her, and her estranged twin sister, tough and sardonic Kainene, takes up with a gentle Englishman. The momentous psychological and ethical pressures Adichie engineers could support an engrossing novel in their own right, but her great subject is Nigeria’s horrific civil war, specifically the fate of Biafra, the doomed breakaway Igbo state.(Booklist.com)
5. 12 years a slave: By Solomon Northrup:.This is the true story of Solomon Northrup, who was born and raised as a freeman in New York. He lived the American dream, with a house and a loving family – a wife and two kids. Then one day he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in the deep south. These are the true accounts of his twelve hard years as a slave – many believe this memoir is even more graphic and disturbing than the film. His extraordinary journey proves the resiliency of hope and the human spirit despite the most grueling and formidable of circumstances.( amazon.com) I began reading this before the movie came out and then got distracted and just watched the movie instead, I feel i should finish it lol.
6. The Pearl That Broke It’s Shell: By Nadia Hashimi. In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters.But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way.Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age? Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride, how will she survive? (amazon.com)
7. Any Known Blood: By Lawrence Hill ( Author of the Book of Negroes) The son of a black man and a white woman, the down-and-out narrator of Hill’s substantial, historically inflected novel, struggles to determine his identity in racially polarized Canada and within his own well-educated, upwardly mobile family. At 39, Langston Cane V is divorced, childless, uprooted, and a failed writer. Prompted by an elderly mentor to write about his forebear’s illustrious past, Langston decides to investigate the family lore that claims the first Langston Cane died fighting alongside John Brown at Harpers Ferry in 1859. His research takes him to Baltimore, where half the family lives?among them his tough-talking, corpulent Aunt Milly, who’s kept her distance from Langston’s side of the Cane clan since Langston’s parents’ marriage. As he pieces together the puzzle of the past through Milly’s stories, diary entries, newspaper clippings, letters and ephemera, Langston’s own life appears in sharper focus. His Virgil in urban education is Yoyo, an entrepreneuring Cameroonian illegal immigrant. Langston survives a drive-by shooting, experiences a sexual rejuvenation with a young woman from Milly’s church and discovers an old scandal involving his aunt (publishersweekly)
8. 72 Hour Hold :By Bebe Moore Campbell ( a book a started years ago and really loved but got distracted and put down :)) Trina is eighteen and suffers from bi-polar disorder, making her paranoid, wild, and violent. Frightened by her own child, Keri searches for help, quickly learning that the mental health community can only offer her a seventy-two hour hold. After these three days Trina is off on her own again. Fed up with the bureaucracy and determined to save her daughter by any means necessary, Keri signs on for an illegal intervention known as The Program, launching them both on a terrifying journey.
9. What on Earth am I Here For: By Rick Warren . ( a revamp of The Purpose Driven Life) a 40 day Devotional. The spiritual premise in The Purpose-Driven Life is that there are no accidents–God planned everything and everyone. Therefore, every human has a divine purpose, according to God’s master plan
10. I know Why the Caged Bird Sings: By Maya Angelou ( a re-read) Maya Angelou’s debut memoir.

So that’s my TBR ( to be read) ❤

What I’m currently reading this week: The Invention of Wings By Sue Monk KIdd and 1 John (bible)

Happy Reading

XOXO

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Happy Reading

XOXO