Book Blogger Hop, Follow Friday and other memes

It's another Friday and it's time for me to start rejoining some memes because I've missed them!


Book Blogger Hop is hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer and Follow Friday is hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee. This week's BBH question is:

Do you think you will ever read every book on your TBR list?

Most definitely not. The list just keeps growing and expanding and has taken on a life of its own. Not only is there an actual pile and an actual list, there is also a mental list that grows by the minute. But I think I like it that way. I will never run out of books I want to read, books I can read and books I am looking forward to. I can't imagine how I feel when I've run out of books to read, but it has to be a pretty terrible feeling because what would I do with my life?


This weeks FF question only adds to my TBR pile:
What books are you looking forward to reading in 2014?

So many, it's ridiculous. But here are a random ten:

The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (I have already started it but this novel is so long it hardly counts)
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Watership Down by Joseph Adams
Candide by Voltaire
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Call of Wild by Jack London
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Paradise Lost by John Milton
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader and Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

This week I'm using All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque for these two memes. I just read and reviewed (review here)  it for my "serie" 'Literature of the First World War' which I'm doing until the 28th of June this year. It is also part of my 100 Classics.

BB:

'We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans. We are satisfied and at peace.'

I think this beginning is incredibly strong. Most people who start this book know that it is about the War and its effect on soldiers. These first three sentences are both simple and almost cruel. The narrator is happy when his stomach is full and he is at rest, but it is the last time in the novel he is satisfied or at peace.

F56:

'We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial--I believe we are lost.'

This is a very good example of the honesty of the novel. The narrator and author are convinced that these soldiers are partially ruined by the war, alienated from their families and ordinary life and lost. It moved me to tears.

So, how about you? Do you think you'll ever be done with your TBR pile?