Too Many Choices

The ARCs continue to arrive.  The pile growns and along with it, my frustration mounts.  Which one to read next? ARC stand for Advance Reader Copy.  They are pre-publication books sent to bookstores in the hope that booksellers will read the book and promote it when the final copy is available.  Some I request, others just magically arrive.  If I were to count the number of ARCs currently stashed around the store I'd say we have eight, ninety...well over one hundred.  We can't sell them but I am happy to pass them on when I get one by a customer's favorite author. Donations to our favorite charities...the Humane Society and Gumby's Club Fore a Cure will get you an ARC of your choice.  Still I have hundreds tempting me each day.  

The struggle to choose may seem silly, but it's real.  I am torn between what I should read to remain current, and what I want to read for enjoyment.   I'm a slow reader and so I have to choose carefully. I'm just not sure where to go next.

Help me out, please.  Which of these would you read next? (Descriptions taken from the book back)

That Kind of Mother by Rumann Alam - I am an Indian man married to a white man and together we are fathers to two black children.  Just your average American family!  (Those are facts from the author's life which he fictionalized for this novel)

Until Tomorrow Mr. Marsworth by Sheila O'Connor - (young adult novel) When eleven-year-old Reenie Kelly's mother passes away, she and her brother are shipped off to live with their grandmother. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Reenie is determined to save her brother from the draft -and gets help from an unlikely source.

House of Rougeaux by Jenny Jaeckel - For Abeje and her brother Adunbi, home is the slave quarters of a Caribbean sugar plantation. Under the watchful eye of their African mother, they thrive despite what threatens to break them, After a night of brutality changes their lives forever, it is their strength and extraordinary bond that carries them through.

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles - based on a true WWII story of the heroic librarians of the American Library in Paris, this is an unforgettable story of romance, friendship, family and the power of literature to bring us together...

And finally....

we speak in storms by Natalie Lund - It's been more than fifty years since a tornado tore through a drive-in movie theatre in tiny Mercer, Illinois, leaving dozens of teens - a whole generation of Mercerites - dead in its wake.  So when another tornado touches down in the exact same spot on the anniversary  of this small town tragedy, the town is shaken. (Young adult novel)

...oh, then there's my book discussion book little fires everywhere, and the first in a mystery series a customer introduced me to.  Time for me to skedaddle and open a book....perfect way to spend a sort of snowed in day.

Thanks for stopping by.