Top Ten Tuesday: spring cleaning freebie

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly blog hop hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl–don’t forget to link up and check out the other participating bloggers every Tuesday!

This week is a spring cleaning freebie, so I thought  I’d share about a few of the books I’ve cleaned off my TBR recently. (I still have over 1400 books on this list, but hey, this is a start!)

These are books I’m finally reading after many many years, books I stopped reading and finally moved to my DNF shelf, or books I added to my TBR years ago and just realized I no longer had an interest in reading at all. So, let’s dive in!

The Map of Time, by Felix J. Palma. I’ve been meaning to re-read this one for some time and finally did so in January. I still need to finish re-reading book #2 in the series and then read book #3!

The Fold, by Peter Clines. I’ve had this book on my shelf for about six years and somehow never got around to reading it. I finally binge-read it this winter and loved it! I’ll add a link here once I post a full review.

Any books by Paulo Coelho. After years of seeing quotes from this author, I finally read The Alchemist last year. And…I didn’t love it. It isn’t because it was offensive, or anything overtly terrible…it just didn’t really hold my attention. I think maybe I enjoy Coelho’s thoughts as short quotable blurbs but not in long book form. If you’ve read another Coelho book that you liked better than The Alchemist please comment and give me your recommendation!

Revenge Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger. I took this one off my TBR without a second thought. The movie version of The Devil Wears Prada was really just okay, and the book itself was atrocious. There’s no way I’ll be picking up a sequel!

The Girl Before, by J.P. Delaney. I read this several years ago but have been meaning to re-read and review it. I finally did so last month–you can find the review here.

The Freedom Broker, by K.J. Howe. Okay, so I’m *super* on the fence about this one. I’ve had an e-ARC on my Kindle for years and never got around to reading it. I finally picked it up but DNF’d about halfway through. I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t love it enough to keep reading. Anyone else read this series? Did you like it or no? Should I give it another shot?

The Friday Night Knitting Club, by Kate Jacobs. I started reading this a looooooon time ago–like, October 2019! It’s an okay story, cute but slow, nothing super compelling. I put it down at some point, and even though I’m about two-thirds finished, I realized I just didn’t care enough to pick it up again. It’s a pretty straightforward plot with no twists so it’s not like I don’t know the story ends…

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, by D.T. Max. I’ve had this on my TBR list forever, along with David Foster Wallace’s assorted writings. A friend sent me this biography for Christmas and I dove in almost immediately. I think DFW is one of those authors I just find very intimidating for some reason so I’m hoping reading a book about his life and work will somehow make it easier to segue into this books.

The Harry Hole series, by Jo Nesbo. I added all of these to my TBR back when I was new to Nordic crime and totally hooked. But I’ve tried reading a couple of the books over the years and just never enjoyed them the way I’ve enjoyed other Nordic authors like Henning Mankell or Stieg Larsson. So, these went onto the spring cleaning list as “not gonna bother”, lol.

Shadow and Bone, by Leigh Bardugo. I hear so much hype for this series, and I’ve meant to read it for some time, but now that it’s being made into a TV show I decided to just watch it instead of reading. I just don’t see myself finishing the books before the TV show drops and I rarely read the books after seeing the TV show/movie, so…

What books are on your “spring cleaning” list? Do you ever add a book and later remove it without reading it, or do you at least give it a try?