Back in November last year, I did my first “Cleaning Up the TBR” post, something I first saw over on Fictionophile, who had seen it on Lost in a Story, and thought it was a really good idea. I know I’m not the only one who thought the same as I was seeing it everywhere so I am glad to jump on the bandwagon. Hopefully no one will mind 🙂

The idea is you take your Goodreads TBR list, sort by ascending date added, and look at the oldest five to ten items on your list. If you haven’t read them by now, are you likely to? Why or why not? If you want to keep them, make the case. This is my fourth visit to the list so far, with the last one in March. Here’s what’s next on the list…

When We Were Friends by Tina Seskis

It had always been the six of us.

Since we met at university twenty-five years ago, we’d faced everything together. Break-ups and marriages, motherhood and death. We were closer than sisters; the edges of our lives bled into each other.

But that was before the night of the reunion. The night of exposed secrets and jagged accusations. The night when everything changed.

And then we were five.

Should it stay or should it go? I put this book on the list after reading One Step Too Far which I really enjoyed.  I thought Seskis wrote well and the story was compelling. I‘ve burnt out a little on this sort of story at the moment so I think I’m going to say goodbye to it.  It goes.

The Confessions of a Monopolist by Frederic Clemson Howe

The narrative by Frederic C. Howe, entitled “The Confessions of a Monopolist [1906],” tells the story of an American business man who exploits special privilege and makes society work for him, and so gains great power and becomes a United States Senator. This story draws strong statements from the press. It is ” the deadliest text-book of practical politics that ever was printed “; “a masterpiece of cold-blooded satire “; “the condensation of all the recent muckraking”; “as racy as any romance”; etc.

In introducing his book, the author writes:

“Here is the confession of a monopolist. It is the story of no one monopolist, but of all monopolists. It shows the rules of the game. The portrait presented is not the portrait of any one monopolist Senator; it is the composite of many, and the setting may be laid in any one of the Northern States. For the United States Senate is the refuge of monopoly.”

Should it stay or should it go: This is supposed to be a brilliant, if slightly dated, satire and I still quite fancy it.  It reminds me of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. It stays.

The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favourite Board Game by Mary Pilon

The Monopolists reveals the unknown story of how Monopoly came into existence, the reinvention of its history by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man’s lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game’s questionable origins.

Most think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvanian who sold his game to Parker Brothers during the Great Depression in 1935 and lived happily–and richly–ever after. That story, however, is not exactly true. Ralph Anspach, a professor fighting to sell his Anti-Monopoly board game decades later, unearthed the real story, which traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and a forgotten feminist named Lizzie Magie who invented her nearly identical Landlord’s Game more than thirty years before Parker Brothers sold their version of Monopoly. Her game–underpinned by morals that were the exact opposite of what Monopoly represents today–was embraced by a constellation of left-wingers from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression, including members of Franklin Roosevelt’s famed Brain Trust.

A fascinating social history of corporate greed that illuminates the cutthroat nature of American business over the last century, The Monopolists reads like the best detective fiction, told through Monopoly’s real-life winners and losers.

Should it stay or should it go: While I still like the sound of this, I don’t think I’ll every get round to reading it.  It goes.

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

Li Lan, the daughter of a respectable Chinese family in colonial Malaysia, hopes for a favourable marriage, but her father has lost his fortune, and she has few suitors. Instead, the wealthy Lim family urges her to become a “ghost bride” for their son, who has recently died under mysterious circumstances.

Mean Streak by Sandra Brown

Dr. Emory Charbonneau, a pediatrician and marathon runner, disappears on a mountain road in North Carolina. By the time her husband Jeff, miffed over a recent argument, reports her missing, the trail has grown cold. Literally. Fog and ice encapsulate the mountainous wilderness and paralyze the search for her

While police suspect Jeff of “instant divorce,” Emory, suffering from an unexplained head injury, regains consciousness and finds herself the captive of a man whose violent past is so dark that he won’t even tell her his name. She’s determined to escape him, and willing to take any risks necessary to survive.

Unexpectedly, however, the two have a dangerous encounter with people who adhere to a code of justice all their own. At the center of the dispute is a desperate young woman whom Emory can’t turn her back on, even if it means breaking the law. Wrong becomes right at the hands of the man who strikes fear, but also sparks passion

As her husband’s deception is revealed, and the FBI closes in on her captor, Emory begins to wonder if the man with no name is, in fact, her rescuer from those who wish her dead – and from heartbreak.

Should it stay or should it go: I put this on because I have never read anything by Sandra Brown and I thought I should because I know a lot of people like her.  I don’t think I’m ever going to get round to it though – plus I have another Sandra Brown book on the shelves that I’m more likely to get to.  It goes.

So five books, four going.  I feel lighter already.  What do you think – did I make the right choices?

Emma