Down the TBR Hole was the brain child of Lost In A Story. The idea is to reduce the length of your Goodreads TBR.

How it works:

• Go to your Goodreads want to read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added
• Take the first 5 or 10 books.
• Read the synopses of the books.
• Decide: keep it or should it go

Time for another sort through the TBR list as I have added a few books recently so I should get rid of some as well.

1. An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott

It was first serialised in the Merry’s Museum magazine between July and August in 1869 and consisted of only six chapters. For the finished product, however, Alcott continued the story from the chapter “Six Years Afterwards” and so it ended up with nineteen chapters in all. The book revolves around Polly Milton, the old-fashioned girl who titles the story. Polly visits her wealthy friend Fanny Shaw in the city and is overwhelmed by the fashionable and urban life they live–but also left out because of her “countrified” manners and outdated clothes.

I love Little Women, Jo’s Boys and Little Wives and I would love to read more of Alcott’s work so this stays on the list.

KEEP

2. Can you Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

Alice Vavasor cannot decide whether to marry her ambitious but violent cousin George or the upright and gentlemanly John Grey – and finds herself accepting and rejecting each of them in turn.

Increasingly confused about her own feelings and unable to forgive herself for such vacillation, her situation is contrasted with that of her friend Lady Glencora – forced to marry the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser in order to prevent the worthless Burgo Fitzgerald from wasting her vast fortune.

In asking his readers to pardon Alice for her transgression of the Victorian moral code, Trollope created a telling and wide-ranging account of the social world of his day.

To be honest I have a lot of Trollope on my TBR list so I think I will remove this one incase my TBR list becomes mainly books by Trollope as he did write a lot of books.

GO

3. Jonny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett

Sell the cemetery?

Over their dead bodies . . .

Not many people can see the dead (not many would want to). Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell can. And he’s got bad news for them: the council want to sell the cemetery as a building site. But the dead have learnt a thing or two from Johnny. They’re not going to take it lying down . . . especially since it’s Halloween tomorrow.

Besides, they’re beginning to find that life is a lot more fun than it was when they were . . . well . . . alive. Particularly if they break a few rules . . .

Well it is a Terry Pratchett book so it stays put and that is final.

KEEP

4. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Far from the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy’s first major literary success, and it edited with an introduction and notes by Rosemarie Morgan and Shannon Russell in Penguin Classics.

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and tragedy ensues, threatening the stability of the whole community. The first of his works set in the fictional county of Wessex, Hardy’s novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life and landscapes, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships.

I own several copies of this book because I just cannot resist pretty book covers so I really should read it.

KEEP

5. Lady Susan/ The Watsons/ Sanditon by Jane Austen

Together, these three works – one novel unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments – reveal Jane Austen’s development as a great artist.

Lady Susan, with its wicked, beautiful, intelligent and energetic heroine, is a sparkling melodrama which takes its tone from the outspoken and robust eighteen century. Written later, and probably abandoned after her father’s death, The Watsons is a tantalizing and highly delightful story whose vitality and optimism centre on the marital prospects of the Watson sisters in a small provincial town. Sanditon, Jane Austen’s last fiction, is set in a seaside town and its themes concern the new speculative consumer society and foreshadow the great social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution.

This is the only book I have not read by Austen so it will stay on the list as well.

KEEP

Just five books today and only one off the list but that does mean the TBR is one book shorter. I know, I know I must try harder. Next time I will do ten books I promise.

Happy Reading.