Gonna Regret This

As you may know or have gathered, my to-read list is out of control.  And based on the way I acquire books, it's pretty outrageous.  There are literally hundreds of unread books on my kindle.  I currently  have a dozen novels out from the library in print, not counting the comics or the "chapter books" to read to my son.  My Goodreads to-read is over 1300 books long--and I have a B-list consisting of another 1500 books.  If writers stopped writing tomorrow, I'd still be set for life.

But the length of this list means that things I am incredibly excited to read and have been pushed at me for ages never percolate to the top.  And it kind of kills me, especially when my friends are all reading books that I recommended and I haven't read their recommendations yet.

So I'm going to try something.  I'm usually reading a bunch of books at a time, and sometimes I manage the load by assigning a slot to a specific category.  I'm usually reading at least one ARC and one library book at a time, even while I'm reading other things.

New category: recommendations!  One at a time, of course; I will take more suggestions as I go, but one from each person should make a short list that I can use while still balancing the types of books with other things I'm reading.

My plan to start off:

Welcome to the God Damn Ice Cube, by Blair Braverman. After seeing the excellent play Franklin this weekend (doomed Arctic expeditions for the win!), I'm about to enter a spell of novels about freezing to death or nearly so, and this memoir is where I'll start. It's about a woman who unexpectedly finds herself living in and falling in love with the Arctic and becoming an accomplished sled dog racer.  Recommender: Lily.

A Darker Shade of Magic, by V.E. Schwab. There are actually a ton of Schwab books that I want to read, but this is the beginning of a trilogy that just ended, and two separate people have called it a Must Read.  When the person who pushed me to read Fifth Season says a book is amazing, I take her word for it.  Recommenders: Sarah and Elizabeth. (Two for one!)

That's actually all I've queued up so far--not really much of a list.  BUT: I would like to solicit choices from the other book recommenders in my life, especially the ones that I've been ignoring for so long.  Brenda, Curse of the Chalion, do you think? Or do you have another vote? You moved a bunch of stuff to the front page of my kindle a few weeks ago. Lianna, which of your favorites have I forgotten? Linden, do you want to put a pick on the table?

Now that I think about it, this reminds me of the Forcening, an event on the Reading the End podcast where each Jenny picks a book that she's wanted to the other to read and they read it together.  (Damn I love that podcast.)  So, help me, friends! Bring on the Forcening!