Books Challenge

My friend Helene blogs about a books challenge where between now and the end of January you read five books of the collection of books that has been sitting on your shelf, unread. This is an excellent idea, given that I have almost 4 ft (1.12m) of bookshelf full of unread books. The question is, when to read them - the TV with lots of interesting German and French channels is very distracting... all those travels as well.

So anyway, I have picked five books, focussing particularly on hardbacks (which are more difficult to transport), though cheating slightly because I am not going to read Foucault or Che Guevara's biography or 'Managing Change and Transition' over my winter break. So I've picked:
Quasthoff's 'Die Stimme' (which I am told is not particularly well written)
'One Good Turn' by Kate Atkinson (a 'Jolly Murder Mystery')
'Shadow of the Silk Road' by Colin Thubron
'Stradivarius' by Tony Faber
A book by Yasar Kemal (I have two, but I have a feeling I might have read one of them in another language already....)

Given that I am also preparing for my music diploma (more of that later) that'll take plenty of time. Then again I read one whole book in one day, and when I was sick a couple of months ago I went through books like a dose of salts! And really, I have nothing much else to do over the next 10 -12 working days....