For this week’s edition of Thursday 13 I’m taking a break from the alphabet – I’m mixing things up a bit, and beating a dead horse down, down into the ground* – and by dead horse I mean topic – and by that I mean I’m going to devote this post to BOOKS just so you all know ridiculously obsessed I am with reading – i.e. I have no life.

By now, I’ve told you all ad nauseum in various forms what my favorite books are, so to avoid boring you all to tears by telling you for the 800th time that Gone With the Wind is my all time favorite book, followed by Lamb by Christopher Moore; I’m going to list the THIRTEEN BOOKS I MOST WANT TO READ RIGHT NOW, in no particular order. Helping me in my mission will be goodreads.com, my favorite place to make lists of books that I’ve read, want to read, consider a favorite, borrowed from a friend, etc. and then see what my friends are reading so I can add those books to my list, too! With goodreads helping me, this Thursday Thirteen should be easy as pie… mmm… pie… Erm, ok, ready?

1. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer: It’s coming out in 1 days 16 hours and 2 minutes… not that I’m counting or anything… I won’t be getting it the day it comes out, but I am toying with the idea of going to the release party at my local Borders, which happens to be across the street from our apartment…
2. Ariel by Sylvia Plath: I’ve had this sort of obsession with Plath since reading the Bell Jar and not finding her all that emotionally confusing, i.e. I completely and utterly related to her main character and it scared the bejeezes out of me. Ariel is supposed to be one of her best works and apparently she churned out the poems in Ariel, “at the remarkable rate of two or three a day, and Robert Lowell describes them as written by “hardly a person at all … but one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines.” Even more remarkable, she wrote them during one of the coldest, snowiest winters (1962-63) Londoners have ever known.” Snowbound, without central heating, she and her two children spent much of their time sniffling, coughing, or running temperatures…” Which just makes me want to read it even more.

3. I Heart My In-Laws: Falling in Love with His Family–One Passive-Aggressive, Over-Indulgent, Grandkid-Craving, Streisand-Loving, Bible-Thumping In-Law at a Time by Dina Koutas Poch: One of the few examples in literature where the title really does say it all – what married woman wouldn’t want to read this?

4. Phantom by Susan Kay: This was my BFF’s description of this book, which made me want to read it so badly: “Phantom is a must read for anyone who has swooned over Phantom of the Opera and never known why. Susan Kay weaves a story that makes your heart fall in love with the Opera Ghost and makes it ache for his misfortune. There are only few discrepency’s between the stage production of Phantom of the Opera and the book. Mostly you will note a few differences in the performance in the recently made movie in 2006. The subtle differences are few but there. Such as the severity of OG’s deformity and how he gets to the opera house.”
5. Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews: I’ve always been intrigued by the lives of celebrities – and by that I mean their real lives, their life stories and what happens when the cameras are turned off. Julie Andrews being the phenomenal woman she is, is a perfect example of a woman I’d love to know more about. “Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world’s most famous nanny.”
6. The Constant Princess by Philipa Gregory: I loved the Other Boleyn Girl – as in, I ate, slept, dreamt, and drank the book – and the one character whom I admired but felt could have used a broader story was Queen Catherine of Aragon – the Constant Princess is her story – so you know I want to read it badly. I’ve read a couple of Gregory’s other books and wasn’t quite as in love with them, which is the reason I haven’t read this one yet, but it is always in the back of my mind as a must read soon book…
7. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky: I don’t know how many times I tried to beg, plead, and blackmail my book club into reading this book but it never quite caught on as a favorite – I still think it looks amazing. It tells the story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control, i.e. the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1940. “When Némirovsky began working on Suite Française, she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For sixty-four years, this novel remained hidden and unknown.” That alone is such an amazing story, I really want to read this novel someday…
8. Rumors by Anna Goderbsen: I won’t go into detail here as I’ve mentioned it in what seems like over half of my posts in the past week, but it’s the sequel to The Luxe for anyone who doesn’t know – The Luxe was a kind of historical mystery romance novel, and was just stunningly brilliantly amazingly [ insert more ly words here]. You should read it, and then read Rumors, but not before I do, or I’ll be jealous.
9. Rockabye: A Young Mom’s Journey from Wild to Child by Rebecca Woolf: The memoir of a young city girl who becomes unexpectedly pregnant – so many themes going on in this memoir that make me want to read about it, but really most parenting memoirs intrigue me, this one just has oodles of cool kid credits going along with it – and the cover is gorgeous.
10. The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry: About a family of women who can read the future in a bit of lace – this just sounds so cool and it’s getting rave reviews and you know I’m all about the band wagons.
11. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell: One of many books whose cover was what initially drew me in, this novel tells the story of a woman who seemingly vanishes, only to turn up 60 years later, after supposedly finally being let out of a mental facility, and showing up on the doorstep of her only living relative, who didn’t even know she was alive. Talk about a heavy hitter – this book just sounds amazing.
12. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen: I found this book RIGHT NEXT to The Vanishing Act, and want to read it pretty much just as badly. It scores one point immediately for the author’s middle name, which is on the top of our Girls’ Names List right now, with Rachel, Anna & Catherine (if you wanted to know); this book has nothing to do with my list of baby names though, it’s about the Waverley’s, an extraordinary family who tend to a  garden which bear a special kind of apple tree which gives the caretakers sort of “magic powers” … they also grow nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and pansies that make children thoughtful, and even snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of amorous neighbors… Yeah seriously, hello, shut up, I want to read it.
13. Last but certainly not least, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart: whose introduction is vaguely reminiscent of Harry Potter, but in a good way, not a “nobody has new ideas anymore” kind of way. And actually, okay, it really sounds nothing like HP at all, see?  “”Are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?” When this peculiar ad appears in the newspaper, dozens of children enroll to take a series of mysterious, mind-bending tests. (And you, dear reader, can test your wits right alongside them.) But in the end just four very special children will succeed. Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and resourceful children could complete.”

Okay, I’m done – man that was harder than I thought it would be; a quick browse through my goodreads account yielded well over 30 books from the 275 or so that I have listed as “to read” – and that was me being picky – then I had it down to a solid 23 which was solidly 10 too many, so I started weeding out some obvious ones like Pride and Prejudice, which by now everyone and their brother knows I’m going to be reading for the Classic’s Bookclub on 5 Minutes for Books; and a few other classics and “should read because people say so” books, and tried to focus on the ones that made me want to run across the street to Borders and buy all 13 right now… which I won’t do, because my husband would cry, but I’d like to, and that’s how I decided on my final 13. Neat, huh?

If you want to participate in Thursday Thirteen, just head over to the T13 Hub and join in!

*No dead horses were harmed in the making of this blog post. I swear.