These are the books in my house that I have to read before I can buy another book. Have to. Check them out, and give me some guidance about what to read first, which to gird my loins before I read, and what I should save for the last. You have two cents, right? And I don’t want to hear any crappy comments about why I chose these books to begin with. Come on….Help me out.

Starred books are those I have begun at some point or another, and have stopped reading.

A strike through indicates that I have finished one of the books since creating this list.

Any book I have read that was not originally on this list has added at the bottom and is in bold type — even though I said I wouldn’t procure additional books. Sorry. Can’t help it.

1. *The Way the Crow Flies by Anne-Marie MacDonald
2. *The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle
3. Drop City by T.C. Boyle
4. The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
5. Any Human Heart by William Boyd
6. *I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots by Susan Straight
7. *The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
8. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
9. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (6/07)
10. Skipping Christmas by John Brisham
11. Naked by david sedaris
12. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
13. *The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
14. *The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
15. How to be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward
16. The Whore’s Child by Richard Russo
17. Inamorata by Joseph Gangemi
18. The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmell
19. Islands by Anne Rivers Siddons
20. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (7/07)
21. Consider the Lily by Elizabeth Buchan
22. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
23. Blessings by Anna Quindlen
24. Her by Laura Zigman  (2/08)
25. So Far From God by Ana Castillo
26. The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
27. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
28. Capturing Paris by Katherine Davis (11/07)
29. Three Junes by Julia Glass
30. The Jane Austin Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
31. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
32. Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott
33. Cold Mountain by Charles Frasier
34. This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann
35. *The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
36. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
37. *Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks
38. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
39. The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr
40. The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich
41. The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
42. Tomcat in Love by Tim O’Brien
43. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
44. Independence Day by Richard Ford
45. *Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
46. Seabiscuit by Laura Hittenbrand
47. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
48. Intrusions by Ursula Hegi
49. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
50. An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
51. I Don’t know How She Does It by Allison Pearson
52. Mister Posterior and the Genius Child by Emily Jenkins
53. *To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
54. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
55. The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman
56. *Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett
57. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
58. How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medwed (6/07)
59. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (8/07)
60. Goodbye, Jimmy Choo by Annie Sanders (9/07)
61. Angel Falls by Nora Roberts (11/07)

Update:  April, 2008.  My reading has come to nearly a complete halt.  It wasn’t going at lightning speed, anyway.  It’s gotten to the point that I know I’ll be nodding off before I’ve read three pages, so for the last week, I’ve not even picked up the book lying on my nightstand.