Mountains of Books

Saw the idea for this post over at Zac's Blog, and promptly decided to steal it!

There is a singular difficulty in the life of a book-wyrm. If you are a fellow voracious reader, you already know what this problem is, and while your problem will be unique to you, it is also in many respects exactly the same as mine and every other book-loving-fiend.

The problem is as follows:

All. The. Books.

Seriously, all of them. The cry of the reader is that of one happily drowning in an ocean far too vast to span or buried within a mountain surrounded by a truly dragonish hoard comprised solely of books... worth more than the Arkenstone itself. Why are we in this plight? Because there are always more books to read than we have time to read them in. Perhaps, once upon an era long ago, there were not so many written words available. But that time is long past. We live in a time when there is a plethora of stories to read, more stories than we ever could read. We need never fear running out of reading material. (This is, perhaps, the most compelling argument I can make for being perfectly content to live in THIS era).On goodreads I have 129 books on my To-Read pile. 129!! And that's just books I KNOW of that I want to read. And it's not counting all the books that I would love to re-read at some point. Or all the books that I know may be coming in the future but aren't available yet... or various sequels in series because I've only tagged the first book in a series until I know whether or not I like the book or the author.Don't worry, I'm not going to go through all the books on my list... just the most notable ones!Let's start with the books I already own but haven't gotten around to reading yet:Look at that tower. Eeeeep! I'm not even sure that's all the books I own that I haven't read... there may be a few I couldn't find, or some in the storage unit, as well. Okay, technically I've read all the stories in "Fantastic Creatures" but not the finished versions! All of these are definitely on my REALLY WANT TO READ pile, so don't think that just because I haven't gotten to them it means I don't want to!The Wingfeather Saga I NEED to read these books. They have been recommended by multiple sources, and the titles themselves intrigue me. Despite knowing a rather unfortunate and enormous spoiler due to last year's Silmarillion Awards (we are fixing that error this year), I still want to read them. Just haven't gotten around to it yet.Everything by H.L. BurkeYou'll see that Spellsmith and Carver is in that stack above, but I also NEED to finish the Dragon and Scholar series!A Branch of Silver, A Branch of Gold by Anne Elisabeth StenglI had a copy of this, and then decided to gift it to someone. So now I need another copy!!!! I mean, one of my favorite authors tackling one of my favorite fairy tales? This is a MUST READ!The rest of the Trelian TrilogyI loved the first book, and seriously need to read the rest of the series.The Out of Time series by Nadine BrandesI know, I know, I really missed the boat on this series. A couple years back it was all anyone in the blogosphere was talking about. Well, I still haven't read them, but I very much want to.Anything by Timothy Zahn I haven't read yet... Particularly THRAWN because... I mean... it's Thrawn! What more is there to possibly say?All the series I've started and haven't finished!!!Most notably the Thursday Next series, The Dragonback series, The Ender's Shadow series (there's one book I haven't read yet), The Defenders of Shannara, The Bright Empires Series, the Dragonfriend series, The Ilyon Chronicles, the Cendrillon Cycle, the Queen's Thief series, Firethorn Chronicles... probably others I'm forgetting.And then there's all the new books I want to read by people in the Fellowship of Fantasy group. I haven't been disappointed by that group yet!There are also a few that my blogging friends have recommended so enthusiastically that I really feel I will be missing out if I don't read them. The ones that stand out most are these: And that's all I really have time for today... the more I talk about books, the more my mountainous TBR pile appears to grow. How many books are on your TBR mountain? What book are you MOST anxious to read, but haven't gotten around to yet? What title has sat on your list the longest? Does anyone else own books they want to read but haven't had a chance to yet (possibly for a ridiculous amount of time)? Come on, fess up! I'd love to hear about your leaning towers of books!