TBR Declutter! – Down the TBR Hole #19

Credit, as always, goes to the wonderful Lia @ Lost in a Story for this decluttering idea! I’ve been doing this for a while now and I have a load of fun doing it each week.

The aim is to declutter your tbr shelf. To do this:

• Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

---

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Synopsis: Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth… but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville’s blood.

By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

How long can one man survive like this?

I don’t really know a lot about the storyline to this, as I never watched the film edition, and obviously haven’t read the book yet, but it is something I’d like to give a read at some point.

Verdict: keep 

 

The Entity by Frank De Felitta

Synopsis: Carlotta Moran, a young single mother with three children, suddenly has her life turned upside down when she begins to be attacked in her bed each night, violated by a spectral rapist. This brutal unseen force makes attempts on her life and terrorizes her children, but the worst part is that no one believes her. Among the skeptics is psychiatrist Dr. Sneidermann, who believes Carlotta is psychotic, a danger to herself and her children who should be committed. But two graduate students in parapsychology have a different theory: that Carlotta is being tormented by a powerful entity from beyond our reality, outside space and time. The tension builds to an electrifying conclusion, and the truth may be far more frightening than any of them ever imagined …

Hell yeah, ghost stories! Apparently the guy who created The Conjouring & the guy who created The Ring are making this into a film, so it would be cool to see how it compares to the book. Also, this is apparently based on true events … 🙄

Verdict: keep

Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg

Synopsis: Big-band frontman Johnny Favorite was singing for the troops when a Luftwaffe fighter squadron strafed the bandstand, killing the crowd and leaving the singer near death. The army returned him to a private hospital in upstate New York, leaving him to live out his days as a vegetable while the world forgot him. But Louis Cyphre never forgets. Cyphre had a contract with the singer, stipulating payment upon Johnny’s death—payment that will be denied as long as Johnny clings to life. When Cyphre hires private investigator Harry Angel to find Johnny at the hospital, Angel learns that the singer has disappeared. It is no ordinary missing-person’s case. Everyone he questions dies soon after, as Angel’s investigation ensnares him in a bizarre tangle of black magic, carnival freaks, and grisly voodoo. When the sinister Louis Cyphre begins appearing in Angel’s dreams, the detective fears for his life, his sanity, and his soul.

This sounds like it could be good but I’m not really feeling it right now. 

Verdict: remove

 

Cows by Matthew Stokoe

Synopsis: Mother’s corpse in bits, dead dog on the roof, girlfriend in a coma, baby nailed to the wall, and a hundred tons of homicidal beef stampeding through the tube system. And Steven thought the slaughterhouse was bad…

This is supposed to be one of the most brutal, disturbing, grotesque, violent novels ever… I’m too intrigued to get rid of it.

 

 

 

 

Verdict: keep

 

The Terror by Dan Simmons

Synopsis: Their captain’s insane vision of a Northwest Passage has kept the crewmen of The Terror trapped in Arctic ice for two years without a thaw. But the real threat to their survival isn’t the ever-shifting landscape of white, the provisions that have turned to poison before they open them, or the ship slowly buckling in the grip of the frozen ocean.

The real threat is whatever is out in the frigid darkness, stalking their ship, snatching one seaman at a time or whole crews, leaving bodies mangled horribly or missing forever. Captain Crozier takes over the expedition after the creature kills its original leader, Sir John Franklin.

Drawing equally on his own strengths as a seaman and the mystical beliefs of the Eskimo woman he’s rescued, Crozier sets a course on foot out of the Arctic and away from the insatiable beast. But every day the dwindling crew becomes more deranged and mutinous, until Crozier begins to fear there is no escape from an ever-more-inconceivable nightmare.

This sounds horrific and scary… I love it!! This is a big beast of a book at over 700 pages but I like the sound of it so I’m definitely keeping it on my list for the future.

Verdict: keep

 

The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs by Jack Gantos

Synopsis: On an unseasonably warm Easter Sunday, a young girl named Ivy discovers a chilling secret in the basement of the Rumbaugh pharmacy across the street from the hotel where she lives with her mother. The discovery reveals a disturbing side to the eccentric lives of family friends Abner and Adolph Rumbaugh, known throughout their small western Pennsylvania town simply as the Twins. It seems that Ab and Dolph have been
compelled by a powerful mutual love for their deceased mother to do something extraordinary, something that in its own twisted way bridges the gap between the living and the dead. Immediately, Ivy’s discovery provokes the revelation of a Rumbaugh family curse, a curse that, as Ivy will learn over the coming years, holds a strange power over herself and her own mother.

This sounds good and I probably added it just for the cover, but it’s a YA book and I’ve promised myself that I won’t give YA a chance anymore, because I always end up DNF’ing it.

Verdict: remove

 

The Quiet Ones by Betsy Reavley

Synopsis: What if you didn’t know where you came from?

Who am I?

This is the question Josie asks herself when a mysterious letter arrives. Then a brutal murder turns her world upside down.

To make sense of the present, Josie must go back to the start.

But who can she trust when no one knows the truth?

And who is the sinister stranger obsessed with her life?

The past is catching up with Josie and the consequences will be fatal…

This has reasonably good ratings, but I have so many books like it that I’m not really interested in keeping it.

Verdict: remove

 

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

Synopsis: What would happen if the world were ending?

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .

Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

I remember seeing this one in Waterstone’s and being really interested by it. But now, it’s not doing anything for me…

Verdict: remove

 

Psycho by Robert Bloch

Synopsis: It was a dark and stormy night when Mary Crane glimpsed the unlit neon sign announcing the vacancy at the Bates motel. Exhausted, lost, and at the end of her rope, she was eager for a hot shower and a bed for the night. Her room was musty but clean and the plumbing worked. Norman Bates, the manager, seemed nice, if a little odd.

Yes, this is the psycho. I haven’t watched the film but I know the story. I’m definitely going to keep this on my list!

 

 

 

Verdict: keep

 

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin

Synopsis: Dorothy meets a handsome young man with an eye for her inheritance while she is in her sophomore year. They are to be married and her life will be blissful; but Dorothy is pregnant and her fiancé’s plans are ruined, for Dorothy would be disinherited if her father discovered the truth. So the young man provides his bride to be with some pills that will solve the problem. Soon there will be no baby – and perhaps no Dorothy either…

After reading Rosemary’s Baby earlier in the year, I’m definitely going to try and read the rest of his stuff!

 

Verdict: keep

---

Definitely not my best week, but I also removed 4 Chuck Palahniuk novels behind the scenes, because I didn’t want this list being mainly his work, so I skipped them all out for this post.

How many of these books do you know and want to read? Do you disagree with any of my verdicts? Let me know!