Down the TBR Hole #11

From an idea by  Lia @ Lost in a Story and as my tbr on Goodreads is still toppling over it’s time to do some more de-cluttering!

Anyway, it works like this:

Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.

• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

The Books

The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman is at her electrifying best in this fairy tale for grown-ups. The story begins with a little girl who makes a wish one snowy night and ruins her life. She grows up with a splinter of ice in her heart until one day, standing by her kitchen window, she is struck by lightning.

Instead of killing her, this cataclysmic event sparks off a new beginning. She seeks out Lazarus Jones, a fellow lightning survivor. He is her opposite, a burning man whose breath can boil water and whose touch scorches. As an obsessive love affair begins between them, both are forced to hide their most dangerous secrets – what turned one to ice and the other to fire.

The Ice Queen is a haunting story of passion, loss, second chances and the secrets that come to define us, if we’re not careful.

I’ve had a copy of this on the bookshelf for ages but I never pick it up plus I’ve got so many other books to read. Verdict: Remove

 

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so compelling, and with an emotional charge so perfectly controlled, that you sense at once that this is the real thing – a literary experience to relish, a book to lose yourself in, and a name to watch.

Here is a gorgeous, slow burning story of families growing up and tearing each other apart in rural Northern Ontario, where tragedy and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. Centre stage are the Morrisons whose tragedy is insidious and divisive. Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt’s protegee, her curious fascination for pond-life fed by his passionate interest in the natural world. Now a zoologist, she can identify organisms under a microscope, but seems blind to the tragedy of her own emotional life. She thinks she’s outgrown her family, who were once her entire world – but she can’t seem to outgrow her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.

Even though I own a copy, I still remember the story when it was serialised on the radio years ago. Verdict: Remove

 

A Pinch of Love by Alicia Bessette

With a little bit of flour and a pinch of love, anything is possible… Rose-Ellen “Zell” Carmichael Roy doesn’t cook, but she wears her late husband Nick’s camouflage apron every day. That’s her widow style. It’s been more than a year since Nick’s tragic death during a post- Katrina relief mission in New Orleans, but Zell can’t bring herself to move on. Then, a postman’s error spurs her to enter a baking contest in the hopes of donating the grand prize to the hurricane survivors in Nick’s memory. After Zell’s first attempt at baking goes embarrassingly awry, she meets Ingrid Knox-her motherless nine-year-old neighbour and the two forge an unlikely friendship that will alter both their lives forever.

I still love the sound of this, plus that cover is gorgeous! Verdict: Keep

 

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

 

Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Its unsavoury origins – which lie in white greed – contain the seeds of its demise. Here, everybody is connected – by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history.

I like the cover by synopsis doesn’t draw me in at all. Verdict: Remove

 

 

 

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

A breathtaking and magical novel from master storyteller Neil Gaiman.
Life moves at a leisurely pace in the tiny town of Wall – named after the imposing stone barrier which separates the town from a grassy meadow. Here, young Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the beautiful Victoria Forester and for the coveted prize of her hand, Tristran vows to retrieve a fallen star and deliver it to his beloved. It is an oath that sends him over the ancient wall and into a world that is dangerous and strange beyond imagining…

Anyone book I own but have been ignoring for ages but I don’t enjoy fantasy. Verdict: Remove

 

Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue by Lynn Knight

150 Station Road, Wheeldon Mill, a short stride across the Chesterfield Canal in the heart of Derbyshire, was home to the Nash family and their corner shop, which served a small mining community with everything from Brasso and Dolly Blue to cheap dress rings and bright sugary sweets. But just as this was no ordinary home, theirs was no ordinary family. Lynn Knight tells the remarkable story of the three adoptions within it: of her great-grandfather, a fairground boy given away when his parents left for America in 1865; of her great-aunt, rescued from an Industrial School in 1909; and of her mother, adopted as a baby in 1930 and brought to Chesterfield from London.

Another one that doesn’t interest me anymore.     Verdict: Remove

 

The Rose City: Stories by David Ebershoff

From the author of THE DANISH GIRL comes David Ebershoff’s first collection of short fiction, THE ROSE CITY, seven finely crafted stories about young men finding a place in the world. Set in contemporary California and Boston, the stories each recount a moment in their protagonist’s life when the world begins to shift beneath him: the boy who breaks into a gay man’s house to see how he lives; the shy teenager who tries to starve himself away; the tennis tutor who learns too much about the family for whom he works; the strange boy named Chuck Paa who finds employment among the dying. The title story is about an unemployed actor at the end of his youth whose life in Southern California is filled by delusion, and a perpetual search for love.

A lovely cover but it doesn’t interest me anymore.  Verdict: Remove

 

Sweets from Morocco by Jo Verity

Tessa and Lewis are unnerved by the arrival of baby brother Gordon. He has disrupted their perfect childhood and something must be done. Secretly they construct an effigy of the interloper and transport it to a phone box at the edge of town. They don’t wish the baby dead, just gone, but when Gordon does disappear, it blights the lives of the whole Swinburne family. Coming to terms with the past doesn’t get any easier with the years and the ties binding Tessa and Lewis grow tighter and tighter as their secret stalks them into middle age.

Love the cover, but the reviews are mixed, so I’m going to be ruthless. Verdict: Remove

 

The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood.

After losing her only child, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle to fill the empty days. The other women welcome her into their circle despite her reluctance to open her heart to them. Eventually, through the hours they spend together, Mary is able to tell her own story of grief and, in so doing, face some new truths.

I love the cover and I enjoy knitting, but I’m not good with books about grief. Verdict: Remove

 

 

The Collaborator by Margaret Leroy

Guernsey, 1940. Vivienne de la Mare’s husband is fighting on the front line and the façade of being the perfect wife is cracking. Her new life is one where the enemy lives next door. Small acts of kindness from one Nazi soldier feel like a betrayal. But how can you hate your enemy when you know his name?

I don’t remember adding this, but I do like the look of it. Verdict: Keep

 

 

 

Wow I can’t believe I’ve removed 8 books this time. Do you agree with my decisions? Should I have removed more or maybe kept some instead?