When Life Imitates Art

If you haven't been living under a rock you've probably heard about the major oil spill in the gulf (how's that "going green" campaign working now, BP?) and how it might just be the worst environmental disaster EVAR (dum dum DUM!).  While that's all good and depressing, the really important part is that this echoes a scene in a book almost exactly.

How creepy is that?

In M.T. Anderson's book Feed (a must read if you haven't already) one of the precipitating events is a major oil spill.  Not that the Gulf of Mexico spill is the first oil spill to ever happen, but there is something eerie about an event in real life happening after reading it in a book.  So, that of course got my little brain to thinking...what books would I never, ever, ever want to come true?  I came up with the following:

1.  The Hunger Games series (Suzanne Collins):  You know that part at the beginning of the games where like four people bite it in the first few minutes?  Yeah, that would be me.  I'm not very fast, and I'm not very strong, and I can't use any weapons. My face would most definitely be in the sky after the first day, and Katniss probably wouldn't even know my name *sniff*.

2.  The Last Survivors books (Susan Beth Pfeffer):  What's worse than a free for all to the death?  The moon.  Seriously.  In these books the moon is hit by an asteroid and forced closer to the Earth, setting off a series of tidal waves, earthquakes, and every other natural disaster you can think of.  The survivors try to eek out an existence, but how do you live in a world gone wrong?  Answer: not very well!

3.  The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Carrie Ryan):  ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!  Enough said.

So, I guess the question is, what book would you NOT want life to imitate?

My TBR Pile is Trying to Kill Me

Don't move too quickly.  If you do it'll know you're watching, and then we're all doomed.  What am I talking about?  My TBR pile.

What is a TBR pile?  It's an affectionate shortening of the term To-Be-Read Pile.  You know that stack of books you keep around to read when there's nothing else occupying your attention?  Well, I've recently learned the hard way that pile can be DEADLY!

Although I have a Kindle that I am madly in love with, I still buy regular books as well.  Why?  Well, sometimes new release books just aren't available in electronic format for awhile (ahem, I'm looking at you Egmont, and you, too, Scholastic).  So I buy the books when I see them because, well, I have zero patience.

But back to the TBR Pile trying to kill me.

I had just walked into the room where I store my TBRs, a room affectionately referred to as the fish tank room in my house (it has a fish tank, duh) when the attack happened.  I was reaching up to grab a book from the shelf (a borrowed book, not even one I owned) when the pile attacked.  Twenty books, stacked haphazardly (I'm not the neatest person in the world) all came crashing down upon my head!

But that's not the worst part.  That was the SMALL pile!  That pile upset a larger pile of about thirty books, which knocked over a stack of library books I was supposed to return.  Al of these books came crashing down off of a high shelf onto my enormous head.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

If I Stay

An Abundance of Katherines

Soulless

Need

Leviathan

City of Bones (hey, I didn't know I had that)

Compound

...all came crashing down onto my head. 

I screamed in dismay, not because I was about to be killed by several dead trees pressed into attractive pages (This is why you should embrace the ebook, people!!!  Trees are evil!!!) but because my lovelies were falling onto the floor.  Noooo!!!!  My Precious!!!  OH THE HUMANITY!!!!

Gasp, gasp, gasp.

It wasn't until the dust had cleared and I had a knot on my head (well played, Incarceron, well played) that I realized my TBR pile was trying to kill me. 

I wasn't sure why my TBR pile would try to kill me, but then it slowly dawned on me:  I have too many books in my TBR pile.  How many books does the average person keep on hand?  I have about fifty.  Partly because I buy almost every book that looks even a little good, and partly because I have a real, serious problem:

Not enough time.

I'm not mad at the books, though.  The way I see it, it was most likely a cry for help (why do you need those books from the library, you have US), and I have learned my lesson. 

Less stacking of my books on high shelves.  Oh, and no more buying new books until I read the ones I already have.

Unless it's for the Kindle.  My Kindle still loves me (so many samples....pretty, pretty books...)

So...what's in your TBR pile???