2013 Challenge: Three TBR Challenges

COMPLETED!

I am signing up for three TBR challenges for 2013 that I am going to tackle with a personal twist.  I hope to chew through a batch of my TBR list by participating in the Mt. TBR, Off the Shelf, and TBR Pile Challenges.

 

I signed up for the Mt. TBR Challenge at the Mt. Vancouver level to read at least 36 books and the Off the Shelf Challenge at the Make a Dint level to read at least 30 books.  The TBR Pile Challenge involves a commitment to a specific 12 books (noted below), with two alternates.

The personal twist is that I plan to read the books from a particular shelf.  According to my LibraryThing tags, there are 1,421 books on my TBR shelves. Even though I read good number of books every year, I never seem to make visual progress through my TBR books.

So I have latched onto the idea that I want to read all the books on at least one shelf. I want to see a gap grow on the shelf as I finish book after book. I have a wall of TBR fiction books so I picked one shelf from it at random and plan on reading all the books from that shelf in 2013, with the one limitation that I am only going to read one book by each author on that shelf. From the shelf I picked, that means reading 21 books in 2013.

I also picked one of my non-fiction TBR shelves at random with the goal of reading 10 books off that shelf in 2013.

There are other books from my TBR shelves that I plan to read in 2013, either for other challenges or on whim, which will count for the other books in these TBR challenges.


It is going to be an interesting experiment because the reasons a books makes it to my TBR shelves are far broader than the reasons I would typically chose a book to read.  I am going to end up reading several books that would probably sit on my shelves for many more years given the natural course of things. 

BOOKS

I read a total of 53 books from my TBR shelves in 2013 -- 41 fiction and 12 non-fiction.  These are all books that have been on my TBR shelves since at least last year, some since the 1980s.

For the TBR Pile Challenge, I finished all the books I pre-selected.  My books are here, with links to reviews:

• What a Piece of Work I Am by Eric Kraft (reviewed here)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (reviewed here)
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Pulitzer winner; reviewed here)
• She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb (reviewed here)
• Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik (reviewed here)
• The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie (reviewed here)
• Independent People by Halldor Laxness (Nobel winner; reviewed here)
• Smiley's People by John Le Carre (not reviewed)
• Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin (reviewed here)
• Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane (reviewed here)
• Blood From a Stone by Donna Leon (not reviewed)
• Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard (not reviewed)

In addition, I read one of the two alternates and skipped the other:

• Son of Holmes by John Lescroart (finished; not reviewed)
• Winterkill by Craig Lesley (skipped; didn't read)

In addition, I read another six books from my randomly selected shelf:

• Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (Pulitzer winner; not reviewed)
• The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman (not reviewed)
• Perfect Happiness by Penelope Lively (not reviewed)
• Small World by David Lodge (not reviewed)
• Death at the Chateau Bremont by M. L. Longworth (not reviewed)
• On the Edge by Peter Lovesey (not reviewed)

I rounded out the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf Challenges with other fiction books from my TBR shelves:

• Death in the Truffle Wood by Pierre Madnan (not reviewed)
• A Prefect's Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse (reviewed here)
• The Gathering by Anne Enright (Booker winner; reviewed here)
• Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin (not reviewed) 
• The Tin Drum by Günter Grass (reviewed here)
• Beast in View by Margaret Millar (reviewed here)
• The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy (reviewed here)
• Flying Finish by Dick Francis (not reviewed)
• What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies (reviewed here)
• A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym (not reviewed)
• Bootlegger's Daughter by Margaret Maron (Edgar winner; not reviewed)
• The Rector's Wife by Joanna Trollope (not reviewed)
• Forfeit by Dick Francis (Edgar winner; not reviewed)
• Parachutes & Kisses by Erica Jong (reviewed here)
• The Child in Time by Ian McEwan (not reviewed)
• The Great Leader by Jim Harrison (not reviewed)
• The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch (not reviewed)
• Enduring Love by Ian McEwan (not reviewed)
• The Conscience of the Rich by C. P. Snow (not reviewed)
• The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (not reviewed)
• A Taste for Death by P. D. James (not reviewed)
• The Vicar of Nibbleswicke by Roald Dahl (not reviewed)

And several non-fiction books from my TBR shelves:

• Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer by A. J. Liebling (reviewed here)  
• Personal History by Katharine Graham (reviewed here)
• The Perfect Martini Book by Bob Herzbrun (not reviewed)
• Childhood by Anthony Burgess (not reviewed)
• The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto by Bernard DeVoto (reviewed here) 
• Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee (reviewed here)  
• A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (reviewed here)
• Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason by Nancy Pearl 
• The Art  of Fiction by David Lodge (not reviewed)
• Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore (reviewed here)
• Because He Could by Dick Morrison (not reviewed)
• The CEO of the Sofa by P. J. O'Roarke (not reviewed)

NOTE

Updated on December 26, 2013.  I will finish The Dean's December by Saul Bellow before the end of the year, bringing my total TBR Challenge reading to 54.