August 2024 Goodreads TBR Shelf Clean-Up

Howdy, y’all! It’s time for my August 2024 Goodreads TBR Shelf Clean-Up. I wonder if this will help me reduce the number of books on my TBR. Who am I kidding? I’m a reader; of course, I will forever add books. In July 2024, I had 598 books. Today, I have 596. It’s not too shabby, as I’ve added a few books to my TBR in the past month. Will my August 2024 Goodreads TBR shelf clean-up help that number drop?

I saw this Goodreads TBR Clean-Up post at Megan’s Book Stacks and knew I had to try it. Megan found it over at MegaBunnyReads.

Click the titles to go to Goodreads.

How It Works:

• Go to your Goodreads want-to-read shelf.
• Use a random number generator to pick a number between 1 and however many books are on the list.
• Go to that book and look at the four after it for a total of 5.
• Read the synopses of the books.
• Decide: keep it or delete it?
• Discuss here.

Books To Be Read: 596

Starting Number: 287, it looks like I’m going through the books I added in December 2021.

Shelf Sorted: Date Added

Let’s get this August 2024 Goodreads TBR Shelf Clean-Up underway!

Under the Tulip Tree by Michelle Shocklee

Sixteen-year-old Lorena Leland’s dreams of a rich and fulfilling life as a writer are dashed when the stock market crashes in 1929. Seven years into the Great Depression, Rena’s banker father has retreated into the bottle, her sister is married to a lazy charlatan and gambler, and Rena is an unemployed newspaper reporter. Eager for any writing job, Rena accepts a position interviewing former slaves for the Federal Writers’ Project. There, she meets Frankie Washington, a 101-year-old woman whose honest yet tragic past captivates Rena.

As Frankie recounts her life as a slave, Rena is horrified to learn of all the older woman has endured―especially because Rena’s ancestors owned slaves. While Frankie’s story challenges Rena’s preconceptions about slavery, it also connects the two women whose lives are otherwise separated by age, race, and circumstances. But will this bond of respect, admiration, and friendship be broken by a revelation neither woman sees coming?

My Thoughts

This sounds like a really interesting read. Though I have cut way back on the historical fiction I’ve been reading lately, this sounds like one I should try to get my hands on.

KEEP

When We Were Young & Brave by Hazel Gaynor

China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth and those in her charge.

Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status. But when Japan declares war on Britain and America, Japanese forces take control of the school, and the security and comforts Nancy and her friends are used to are replaced by privation, uncertainty, and fear. Now the enemy and separated from their parents, the children look to their teachers – Miss Kent and her new Girl Guide patrol especially – to provide a sense of unity and safety.

Faced with the relentless challenges of oppression, the school community must rely on their courage, faith, and friendships as they pray for liberation – but worse is to come when they are sent to a distant internment camp where even greater uncertainty and danger await . . .

My Thoughts

This story is based on actual events. That kind of story can either draw and immerse me or leave me cold due to the lack of research and facts. Which one is this story?

KEEP

Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West

New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle’s alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy returns to those roots, re-examining beloved and iconic movies from the past 40 years with an eye toward the big questions of our time: Is Twilight the horniest movie in history? Why do the zebras in The Lion King trust Mufasa-WHO IS A LION-to look out for their best interests? Why did anyone bother making any more movies after The Fugitive achieved perfection? And, my god, why don’t any of the women in Love, Actually ever fucking talk?!?!

From Forrest Gump, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and Bad Boys II to Face/Off, Top Gun, and The Notebook, Lindy combines her razor-sharp wit and trademark humor with a genuine adoration for nostalgic trash to shed new critical light on some of our defining cultural touchstones-the stories we’ve long been telling ourselves about who we are. At once outrageously funny and piercingly incisive, Shit, Actually reminds us to pause and ask, “How does this movie hold up?”, all while teaching us how to laugh at the things we love without ever letting them or ourselves off the hook.

Shit, Actually, is a love letter and a break-up note all in one: to the films that shaped us and the ones that ruined us. More often than not, Lindy finds, they’re one and the same.

My Thoughts

This is a funny story about this book being on my TBR. I added it to remember the title so I could get the book for my husband. He enjoys watching movies way more than I do, and I thought this would be a fun book to get him for Christmas or some other gift-giving occasion. Guess what? I forgot that I had it on my TBR.

KEEP

Chinglish by Sue Cheung

It is difficult trying to talk in our family cos:
a) Grandparents don’t speak English at all
b) Mum hardly speaks any English
c) Me, Bonny and Simon hardly speak Chinese
d) Dad speaks Chinese and good English – but doesn’t like talking
In other words, we all have to cobble together tiny bits of English and Chinese into a rubbish new language I call ‘Chinglish.’ It is very awkward.

Jo Kwan is a teenager growing up in 1980s Coventry with her annoying little sister, too-cool older brother, a series of very unlucky pets and utterly bonkers parents. But unlike the other kids at her new school or her posh cousins, Jo lives above her parents’ Chinese takeaway. And things can be tough – whether it’s unruly customers or the snotty popular girls who bully Jo for being different. Even when she does find a BFF who actually likes Jo for herself, she still has to contend with her erratic dad’s behavior. All Jo dreams of is breaking free and forging a career as an artist.

Told in diary entries and doodles, Jo’s brilliantly funny observations about life, family, and char siu make for a searingly honest portrayal of life on the other side of the takeaway counter.

My Thoughts

Yes, I know this is a YA book, which has been hit-and-miss lately. But I also understand the feeling of not belonging and not quite fitting in. My experiences are different from Jo’s.

KEEP

No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib

Hadi and Sama are a young Syrian couple flying high on a whirlwind love, dreaming up a life in the country that brought them together. She had come to Boston years before chasing dreams of a bigger life; he’d landed there as a sponsored refugee from a bloody civil war. Now, they are giddily awaiting the birth of their son, a boy whose native language would be freedom and belonging.

When Sama is five months pregnant, Hadi’s father dies suddenly in Jordan the night before his visa appointment at the embassy. Hadi flies back for the funeral, promising his wife that he’ll only be gone for a few days. On the day his flight is due to arrive in Boston, Sama is waiting for him at the airport, eager to bring him back home. But as the minutes and then hours pass, she continues to wait, unaware that Hadi has been stopped at the border and detained for questioning, trapped in a timeless, nightmarish limbo.

Worlds apart, suspended between hope and disillusion as hours become days become weeks, Sama and Hadi yearn for a way back to each other and to the life they’d dreamed up together. But does that life exist anymore, or was it only an illusion?

My Thoughts

I’ve read Zgheib’s debut novel, The Girls of 17 Swann St. While it’s not an easy subject, I devoured it. I would love to read more by her.

KEEP

Wrap Up

And that is my August 2024 Goodreads TBR Shelf Clean-Up. It doesn’t look like I cleaned my shelf much! Out of the five books, I’m keeping five of them. But the one will be removed, if I ever remember to get it for my husband. LOL!

This was fun. I may do it now and then to help keep my shelf realistic. In the past, I just added books without really thinking about it. Will I stop doing that? Of course not! What kind of animal do you think I am?

What do you think? Have you tried doing something like this to see if you can get your TBR under control?

Are you looking for some more ideas to read? Check out my monthly reading wrap-ups.