What’s On Your Nightstand? The Semi-Regular Feature Continues…

If you’re reading this, there’s a chance you’ve been reading my various blog iterations for a while — loyal readers are the only kind I have. All two of them! I should call my blog readers “The Few, The Proud, The Patient.” Sometimes I go months without blogging. So far, since 2004, I haven’t gone years without blogging, but never say never…

One of the first blog “features” I “invented” was a regular post called “What’s On Your Nightstand?” I had just become the Books Editor at AOL, and we were trying to gently pull AOL users out of the message board chat rooms and into the light of blogginess. (Upshot: What a mess! There was a reason those chat rooms were popular; they were the true precursor of Facebook and Twitter. But that’s another story for another day.) While I wasn’t then and remain sadly less community-minded than I should be, I did want a blog spot in which I could hear about what other people were reading, wanted to read, looked forward to reading, recommended to others…

Yeah. I totally napped while others invented Goodreads etc. That brings back painful memories of an AOL interview in which one of the company’s enfants terribles repeatedly snapped the fingers of both hands in succession in front of my face while barking “What’s the killer app for books? What. is. the. killer. app. for. books?” They hired me anyway. AOL no longer has a Books Channel. Res ipsa loquitur.

So OK, so all right, I’m not an Internet visionary. I accept that. What I am is a woman with great taste in books and a certain amount of writing talent, which is why after AOL gave me the boot I blogged for two years for Publishers Weekly (when they stopped paying bloggers, I stopped blogging; that’s also another post for another time, and in no way reflects on the current Publishers Weekly as they are now independent and heading towards a bright future), and then was given a wonderful opportunity at WETA-PBS here in the DC area which is my current gig, The WETA Book Studio.

I love posting things on The Book Studio, but it’s a different animal altogether than this sad, neglected Still Life with Book Maven blog. No longer! I’m filled with new purpose and energy and would like to channel it into something more productive than scrubbing the crevices in my kitchen with Simple Green and a putty knife. Whoops, TMI…

So: What IS on your nightstand? Share one title, share twelve. This is different from my Tweetmeme #fridayreads. Friday Reads is all about what you’re actually reading. WOYN is all about your TBR stack. The more titles, the merrier. 

As for my own TBR pile, it includes the following titles, all of which are in different stages of Being Read: 

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

The Marrowbone Marble Company by Glenn Taylor

Serena by Ron Rash

Bloodroot by Amy Greene

Amandine by Marlena di Blasi

Oh the shame…but really, that’s what this feature is all about: Confession. Which books are you neglecting? Which books are you struggling with? Which books are the ones you can’t put down? Tell me, lads and lassies. I’m listening.