Hoarder Buddy Reads

In my Halfway Reading Wrap-Up, I mentioned our buddy read of Lonesome Dove. We chose to read it together after seeing so many posts of declaration of adoration by so many. Our decision was due in part to these many posts and videos and reviews, but also due to the fact that this beast of a book sat on both of our shelves. Reading it together meant we were going to commit to it, hold each other accountable, and give us the chance to work through it together since this book sat well outside our normal genre of reading.

To be honest, the buddy system worked out very well for this book because I originally bailed on it, but Elizabeth persevered, rooted on by a co-worker. She then finished the book and gave it 5-stars, so it challenged me to return to it and finish. Lonesome Dove ended up being a really wonderful story with an unforgettable cast of characters and one that continues to sit in our heads.

Building off that success, we’ve decided to buddy read a few more books – will we be able to read them all this year? Perhaps not, but for sure this one book below will be the first one we read together in our series of planned buddy reads. We’re not reading this one in order to “tackle” it like we felt we had to for Lonesome Dove. Instead, we’re reading this one together because we’re certain it will require a lot of emotional support. Fredrik Backman’s books have repeatedly had us working through our emotions through many, many text messages to each other, and we’re more than certain we’ll need each other during our time with My Friends. Perhaps all the more so, as Backman has hinted recently this may be his last book. We are most certainly not ready for that.

We’ve heard nothing but the emotional toll My Friends has taken on its readers. I mean, I’d be surprised if a Backman book didn’t achieve that – but will we be able to function following its final pages, knowing it may very well be the final one? (However, John Irving declared The Last Chairlift to be his final book, and he’s releasing Queen Esther this Fall, so there may be some hope?)

Following the success of Lonesome Dove and hearing how much McMurtry’s book (with its wildly different subject matter) wrecks its readers, we’re planning on buddy reading Terms of Endearment. The movie made us shed many tears of course, but rumours are this book will make you shed buckets of them. We all know the book is better than the movie! Now, getting our hands on copies of Terms of Endearment was quite a feat. Thank you to Hoarder Elizabeth for driving around town to many Barnes and Noble locations trying in vain to track down two copies, let alone two copies that weren’t in sad and beaten condition. In frustration, she had to order online and the plan is once we’ve recovered from My Friends, we’ll embark on Terms of Endearment.

Another book that is an absolute beast but also one we hear nothing but incredible praise for, and is considered to be an absolute “must read”, is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Elizabeth has had this version by Penguin Classics sitting on her shelf for a very long time, and I made sure I bought the same, but for my Kobo because this beast clocks in at over 1200 pages. Will we be able to get to it by the end of this year? Probably not, but it is one that we should probably tackle together for sure.

There are a many number of other books we both have and if we do successfully read The Count of Monte Cristo, perhaps we can also take on Bleak House by Charles Dickens. The story of Bleak House sounds very interesting to me so I’d love to take on this close to 1,000 page book too. I have this edition, the Oxford World Classics edition, and for my Kobo too. I think I may be pushing the limits of my Kobo with all of the big fat chunky books I’ve been adding to it lately. (But I do love this cover of Bleak House!)