Jenny: 30 Books in 2017

I (Jenny) do not know about y'all, but my To Be Read pile is borderline ridiculous. And when I say pile, I  mean an actual, physical pile of books. I cannot seem to figure out the reading:purchasing ratio. Honestly, I think it stems from the movie The Day After Tomorrow and all the books that are lost due to the new ice age. I feel compelled to buy books just in case they stop being available. And if a book has a beautiful cover? It is impossible for me to walk away from it.

All that being said, my focus this year is to knock out some of those books that have been in the pile for way too long. I have chosen 30 books that I have to read in 2017. The majority are books that I have owned for at least a year; some are books that were recent purchases and want to prioritize; the last are a few books that are new releases in series that I love and it would be silly to act like I might read another book ahead of them.

• Augustine of Hippo: A Biography by Peter Brown
• The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
• Sainted Women of the Dark Ages by Jo Ann McNamara
• Reading Reconsidered by Doug Lemon
• The Book of Genesis by Joy A. Schroeder 
• The Church in the Early Middle Ages by G.R. Evans
• Kierkegaard: A Single Life by Stephen Backhouse
• The Land of the Green Man by Carolyne Larrington
• Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church edited by Preston Sprinkle
• Four Views on Hell edited by Preston Sprinkle

• The Iliad by Homer
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Decameron by Giovanni Bocaccio
• The Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot
• The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
• Middlemarch by George Eliot

• Horns by Joe Hill
• Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
• The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
• A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
• Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs
• A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab
• The Gap of Time by Jeannette Winterson
• Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson
• Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
• The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman
• A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
• White Hot by Ilona Andrews

As you can see, I am being pretty ambitious. Some of these books I have started to read and then did not finish them. Rather than trying to read a certain number of books this year, I am hoping to read these certain books. Of course I will read more than these but these will be my focus. Wish me luck. I am going to need it!