Whether it be a towering stack on your night table like mine, its own pristine bookshelf in your library, or a haphazard list in the back of your planner, what you read next can be a hard choice. In this week’s episode, I let you in on my future choices, and then we get to see if I actually get to those books or if i get sidetracked by new shiny ones beckoning me from my local indie.

Let me know what’s on your TBR list, so I can add it to mine.

x A

Links referenced in this episode:

• Let Go and Begin

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Seattle Wave Books

Hi and welcome to the Literary Sipper.

I'm Amber Dede Hill, your host and today we are going to talk about my current TBR pile.

And to the uninitiated, TBR just stands for to be read.

And for some people, they handle their TBRs in a lot of different ways.

Some people keep lists in the back of a book or notebook and just anytime someone mentions a book, they put it in their notes app or in the this list.

And then when they have time for a new book, they just go and get it in whatever form they want, get it from their library, on their E reader, buy it at a bookshop, whatever it may be.

I know some people who have entire bookcases where they only keep books that they haven't read and they get rid of books that they have read.

This feels very, very foreign to me, but there are people who do this.

I'm a nightstand TBR pile, teetering precariously and often think that I should have a different system.

Of course, I do have lists upon lists on my phone and in notebooks of all the books that people tell me to read or I should read or that I'm reading for research for one thing or another.

And I take books out of the library and when the due date comes around, I frantically skim as much as I can.

But the ones that house themselves on my night table are the ones that I do use as sort of the guiding post for the coming year.

And so I wanted to talk about a few of those.

I mean, we are in March.

We are heading into a new season which begins on the 20th.

Today is St.

Are you taking advantage of whatever goal that you set, whether it was to take more books out of the library or to read a certain number of books or to read outside of your genre or to add more poetry or small press publications to do a deep dive into one author's work.

Whatever your reading goal is, March is a good time to sort of check in and say, am I accomplishing it or am I simply reading what I always read or doing what I always do?

And not that there's anything wrong with that, as I spoke about last week in the episode on romance novels, in this sort of fraught landscape that we find ourselves living in, sometimes comfort reading is valuable.

Sometimes rereading things is a valuable practice because it's soothing and it allows us to escape and not be Scared of what the next page might bring up for us.

And so it might be time to sort of revisit old friends, as it were, rather than trying something new.

But I am a firm believer that you need to push yourself and try to find new voices or new experiences or new types of reading because they might be new friends for you when the time comes.

And you really need that story or that poem to speak to you in times like these.

So mine are, you know, my goals are every year are pretty standard.

I want to read at least 25 books.

I have always pushed myself to read more nonfiction, preferably even more historical nonfiction because I tend to read a lot of craft books or books about meditation or books about yoga for my non fiction.

But this year, for example, I read Endurance, which, which is an older book from the 50s about Shackleton's journey to the North Pole.

And I loved it.

I loved it.

And we'll talk about that more in another episode.

But it is important as I sit here and think about my overflowing night table, to keep your TBR pile in check and to try to take from that pile versus getting seduced by whatever new book is on the front table at your local bookshop.

And one way I keep mine in check is of course having an e reader.

So you have books online waiting for you when you're ready to use that.

And in my library app, of course, I have books that I have favorited so that when I'm ready and I need that sort of electronic version of reading that I have already made some decisions about those books.

But with the shelf and my night table, they're real physical copies of books that I have collected or have been gifted to me over, you know, the course of probably two to three years.

I don't get to every book on that night table every year and then go to some sort of point zero empty space that doesn't happen when you're a reader.

People gift you a lot of books and that is a beautiful thing.

I love being gifted books because it's always fascinating to see what other people may think that you like.

And I am here to of course giving you give you permission to start a book and not finish it.

That's okay.

I know some people can't do that, but it is okay to do.

And so if you are gifted a book that you don't find that exciting or start to wonder why did I read this book or want to read this book ever, you know, just put it away, you can donate it, you can give it to a friend.

You can just don't throw it away.

Find a little library or something, because for somebody, that may be the book they need at that moment and there is a little bit of kismet magic in the selection of your next book.

And I know many of you listen to what Should I Read Next?

Which is a very popular podcast that I adore.

And I am often a person that people write to and say, what should I read next?

And we talk a little bit about what they have liked and haven't liked and give each other choices, and it usually works out well.

But for me, I'm trying to challenge my reading life consistently.

So I don't always pick up the bestseller until a couple of years.

And in that way, I do feel like the hype kind of dies down around a book and you're able to enter into it without any preconceived notions.

Almost as if the.

The spoilers are, are no longer in your purview and you can actually enjoy it versus being told whether or not you should for whatever reason.

You know, the Internet can just be this sort of echo chamber consistently, especially when it comes to books.

And sometimes it's nice to have your own experience with something and at a time when not everybody seems to be engaging with the material the way you are.

And so I do read sort of bestsellers later on sometimes.

Sometimes I read them right away.

I mean, I read James as soon as it came out because its subject matter is important to me.

And I love Huckleberry Finn and I love Percival Everett.

And anytime Colson Whitehead puts something out or Zadie Smith, I'm.

I buy it right away.

It doesn't mean I get to it right away, but I buy it right away.

And so I wanted to just tell you a little bit about what's on my TBR pile.

What is up next, as it were, what I'm currently reading and what's waiting for me on my night table.

And so what I'm currently reading right now is Kindred by Octavia Butler, which was published in the 70s and it is widely considered the first science fiction written by an African American woman.

And then she goes back home into LA in the 70s, when her life is.

Her own life is in danger, then she will go back to the 70s, where no time has passed at all.

And I'm in the middle of it right now.

And it is fascinating as a historical piece right now, the time travel trope feels like it happens a lot, but I can imagine in the 70s, this was an amazing structure.

And also the topic and the way people thought about slavery and the way people thought about interracial relationships was as a subtext to this novel is what makes it particularly powerful.

It's a very easy read in the sense that the language is easy, it's a lot of dialogue.

But it's difficult to read in terms of the subject matter, but not so difficult that it would shock you in a sense.

If you have any cognizance about slavery and the slave trade, then you have seen this before.

You've seen the violence before.

And in that respect, I think it could be a great introduction.

I can imagine, like a 9th and a 10th grader really enjoying.

Enjoying is probably not the right word, but really getting into this book, this idea, because the time travel allows some distance from it, so the violence feels historical, but at the same time, the main character, Dana, is forcing you to engage with the atrocity.

And I think it's a great book.

I think it's especially great knowing Octavia Butler's career and knowing how she transformed a genre and forced the genre to have a new way of telling a black story.

So I'm really enjoying it, but I'm not done with it.

So it is a to be read, but it's in the middle of being read right now.

The book that I began on my nook just recently is absolution by Alice McDermott, which I never read.

And I.

It's.

I'm about two chapters in.

So that is my TBR, you know, to be finished, I guess.

TBF maybe, but it is a set in Vietnam, but told through the lens of a white wife and of a husband who is an engineer in Saigon at the time of the deepening of the war.

So in the early 60s.

And the other women who are there as well.

So that's about all I can tell you, except that the opening scenes about a Barbie doll are quite interesting and very feminine.

And I remember seeing the COVID of this book on tables and thinking, oh, that that might be a good one.

And I just thought of it when I got my nook.

I was like, oh, I'll read that.

That'll be my book.

I read at night.

When I don't want to be looking on my phone, but I need to have the lights off, you know, so.

And the book that I had just begun as well, and this is my physical copy book.

So I read, generally speaking, three books at a time.

I read an audiobook, I have a book on my nook, and then I have a physical book.

The physical book I'm reading is Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock, which has been around forever, but I never read.

So as you might expect, it's a brilliant book.

She's a brilliant person.

And embracing a little more Buddha in my heart in these times is probably a good thing.

And, and I wish more people would.

And I wish I had the Buddha nature to accept the moral structure of some people in our world right now.

And that's a very hard thing for me to do.

So I'm.

I'm reading a book about it and hopefully going to internalize some of her writing.

Radical acceptance, not passive acceptance, don't get me wrong, active acceptance in terms of being able to stay true to right mind and right.

And right heart.

But the books that are sitting on the shelf.

So my books have two sort of ways.

They, they live on the bottom shelf.

And then I select a few to like, come to the top shelf.

And those are definitely the next ones I'm going to read.

And the ones that are there right now are Forever Amber by Kathleen Winslow, which I Winsor.

Excuse me, which I never read, even though my name is Amber.

And everybody has said, oh, Forever Amber all my life.

And I never read it.

And I came across a copy at a vintage shop and didn't buy it.

And I was like, why didn't I buy that book?

I took a picture of it, but I didn't buy it.

It was a beautiful copy.

And then, and I kind of berated myself a little bit about it.

And one of my old friends from high school wrote on a post, responded my post and just said, go on ebay, go get another copy.

You need that book.

And I didn't do that.

But what I did do is the next time I went to a vintage store, I happened upon another one.

And so I didn't let that one go by.

And now I figure it's time to read it.

So that's moved to the top of the night shelf.

The other one that has moved to the top is Transcendent Kingdom by YA Gyasi.

And she wrote Homegoing, which is one of my favorite books.

So I wanted to read Transcendent Kingdom, which is her follow up to that book, and the third book is a book of poetry called Olio by Tahimba Jess.

But what's interesting about this book is it was published by a small press called Seattle Way of Books.

And for them, this was the first time any of their poetry publications had even made it to the shortlist or the long list.

And so I was at the Seattle Art Book Fair for Mother's Day last year and that Small Wave Press was there, or Seattle Wave Books was there.

And I got us to speak with the owner and talk about this book and what made it such a powerful moment for them as a small press to have this selection.

And I, I got a signed copy and I was so happy for them.

And I was so happy, of course, for the author and how it's described is blues on a page.

There's 16 traditional poems, two illustrations, and there are, there are various illustrations throughout the book, but two major illustrations.

So I'm very excited to read that book and to support small press anytime we can.

And definitely if you've never been to the Seattle Art Book Fair, I highly recommend it.

There are so many small presses out there and small zines, writers doing and artists putting together these beautiful books.

And I just think anything we can do to support more art in the world and more independent art in the world, because as the publishing companies get smaller and smaller and layoffs are happening, they're concentrating themselves into, I don't know, like four now big presses and with these little imprints, but it's all still housed under the one big over overseeing eye.

And I think the independent presses and these small presses, especially in poetry, are going to be where the interesting avant garde changes are going to occur.

And I don't want to miss them.

So again, that book is Olio by Tyhimba Jess.

If you are curious about it, I can't tell you how it is because I haven't read it.

It is on my tbr.

And so that is, those are kind of the books that are coming down the pike.

So you might hear me talking about those six things coming up here pretty quick and I might get sidetracked.

You don't know.

I mean, anything can happen.

And I'm always curious about what you're reading and what's on your TBR and how you handle your tbr.

Are you a night table overflowing kind of person?

Are you a bookshelf dedicated to your TBR kind of person?

Are you a list maker.

Tell me what you are, tell me what's next, and tell me what you're currently reading.

And for those of you who are looking for something to jumpstart your spring and to reconnect to your body and to reconnect to your creative self, Tanya and I are offering our spring workshop on April 3 this year.

Registration is open at Let Go and Begin, and we encourage you to come on over and do that.

And I hope you're well and I'll talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening to the Literary Sipper.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and learned something new if you did.

Please subscribe and leave a rating and review if you're thinking feeling especially generous.

Until next time, keep reading, keep writing, and keep putting your voice in the world.

It's waiting for.