It’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by the folks at the Broke and the Bookish. It’s time not just for another top ten Tuesday, but for a top ten Tuesday rewind. That’s right! This week we’re allowed to choose a former topic we’ve never done…or a topic we’ve done but would like to do some more of. I looked at the list, considered number 4 (most intimidating books) but stopped with a smile when I saw challenge 37 from March 2011–Top Ten Books I Just HAD To Buy…But Are Still Sitting On My Bookshelf

That’s me in a nutshell. I complain I have to much to read…then I head on out to the used bookstore or library book sale. Now, I have made a dent in my reading pile…but here are 10 books I pounced on (when I saw them at a discount…I HAD to…) but that I haven’t yet cracked a cover on!

1. American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld. A hardcover acquired for a dollar at a library book sale. I had bought Wife, Prep, and Man of My Dreams at various used bookstores/library sales. I finally read Prep a few months ago, and it will be a while before I get to AW.

2. How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, by Kaavya Viswanathan … Another library book sale acquisition…I definitely want to read it but I had to buy it because it was withdrawn from the market after the author (a 19 year old Harvard freshman) was accused of taking passages from other authors’ books.

3. The Lemon Jelly Cake, by Madeline Babcock Smith. Guess where I got this one? You got it, library book sale (it’s so easy to buy books when they’re so cheap). Basically, I got it because I liked the cover…and it sounded like a pleasant, gentle read.

4. Moral Disorder and Other Stories, by Margaret Atwood. “Great!” I said when I saw this at a used book store. “I love Margaret Atwood!” We put it with the other Atwood books and I totally forgot I’d ever bought it…until we bought another Atwood (a decent copy of The Handmaid’s Tale…mine was pretty shredded) and put that on the shelf.

5. Penguin by Design, by Phil Baines. I asked for this as a Christmas 2010 present since I have a fondness for Penguin paperbacks and thought a book about their covers/designs would be cool. Still haven’t opened that one’s cover though (but I plan to!)

6. Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe, by Jenny Colgan. The cover of this just called to me on a 2011 trip to the U.K. It looks like such fun I keep thinking about picking it up…but then I don’t.

7. The Devil in Music, by Kate Ross. I mention Ross pretty frequently in these posts. She only wrote four books in her mystery series before passing away…I’ve held off on reading the last one since I know it will be the last one. I own it (again, I think it was bought at a used bookstore), just haven’t read it.

8. The Joy Diet, by Martha Beck. I am a sucker for a certain brand of self-help…the kind that’s meant to show you how being a better person will make you happier and how being will be a better person…so I picked this up when I spied it in the Barnes and Noble bargain section. It would probably help if I….read a page or two maybe?

9.  Fashion for Dummies, by Jill Martin and Pierre A. Lehu… I listed this as one of the books I hoped to read in 2012. So far it hasn’t happened..but I thought it would be a fun and interesting book to have when I ordered it from Amazon.

10. Pretty much the last book in every mystery series I follow. As I indicated in the other week’s “series I haven’t finished” post, I’m just perennially behind on these…because of all these other “I meant to read…” hanging out in my pile.

So, do you have a lot of (or even a few)”had to have/have not read” books?