I came across this meme on Stephen Lang’s site (yes, it does appear I only get memes from people called Steve) who had found the From the Stacks Reading Challenge on the Overdue Books bookblog.

And what you’re expected to do is quite simple:

If you are anything like me your stack of purchased to-be-read books is teetering over. So for this challenge we would be reading 5 books that we have already purchased, have been meaning to get to, have been sitting on the nightstand and haven’t read before. No going out and buying new books. No getting sidetracked by the lure of the holiday bookstore displays.

The time frame would be Nov. 1st until Jan. 30

From The Stacks Rules

Well, why not. It looks like a larf, and it gives me the opportunity to have some reviews ready for Revish, when that’s ready to launch.

So, what books am I going to read, then? I decided to trawl through my shelves in search of books which I’ve meant to read on at least one occasion but got sidetracked from (normally by buying a different book) in order to come up with my list.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lionel Shriver)

This has been sitting on my shelves for a while. It won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005, I remember hearing it being raved about and yet I’ve never made it past the first chapter before, having found the first chapter rather mundane and dreary. This time, I’m going to finish it.

Achilles In The Quantum Universe (Richard Morris)

This is a non-fiction book which purports to tell us “The Definitive History of Infinity”. Again, it’s another one where I’ve never made it past the first chapter, but I think this is because the book has some magical spell on it. I’ve read the first chapter at least three times, and have enjoyed it each time, but for some reason have never made it any further into the book.

Conqueror’s Moon (Julian May)

I’ve been a fan of Julian May for a long time, back to when I first borrowed my Dad’s Saga of The Exiles quartet (The Many-Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King and The Adversary), through interconnected part prequels (despite happening thousands of years later) of Intervention, Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask and Magnificat. Then I enjoyed the more recent series set on the Rampart Worlds – Perseus Spur, Orion Arm, and Sagittarius Whorl.

So I have no justification whatsoever for allowing the paperback of Conqueror’s Moon, the first in her latest series, to have sat gathering dust on my shelves without actually being read.

Sahara (Michael Palin)

I’ve always enjoyed Michael’s travelogues, having listened to many of them in audiobook format, and seen many an episode of the various TV series associated with them, but for some reason the only one I own in book format is Sahara. And I still haven’t read it, despite not having heard this on audiobook and only seeing one of the TV episodes of this series. Sorry, Michael, I’ll get this one read.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Sir John Mandeville)

I’ve already touched on this in an earlier books meme where I list a book about this book as one of my all-time favourites.

This book purports to be actual travelogue of a mediaeval English knight from St Albans who travelled the world between 1322 and 1350; the book I recommended (the Riddle and The Knight) demonstrates that at least some of the content demonstrate travels in Asia Minor at the time Mandeville claimed, because the book has — because of its fantastical nature in parts — been dismissed as entirely fictitious.

The original text was written in Anglo-Norman French and was first published around 1360. I will therefore obviously be reading a translation of the original.