2014 Challenge: 2X14 and Mt. TBR

2X14: A PERSONAL TBR CHALLENGE

CLOSE, BUT DIDN'T FINISH

I am doing the Mt. TBR Challenge again this year, but to give it a personal spin, I decided to read 28 books, one from each of the separate shelves of my TBR bookcases.  This means reading 21 fiction books and seven non-fiction. Instead of picking any book that looked good from each shelf, I picked the 14th book on each shelf.

This formulaic selection process yielded a random assortment of books. There are a couple of prize winners on the list, a few classics, some pop fiction, and a bunch of crazy stuff that tells me I either have diverse and wide-ranging taste or I need to clean out my TBR shelves!

These are the books in alphabetical order by author.  I am planning on reading them in this order, but I might switch things up as I go.  This isn't going to be a big book review year for me because I opened my own law practice in March so my time and attention are taken.

The Society Ball Murders by Jack Albin Anderson (FINISHED)

Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg (FINISHED)

Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy (FINISHED; reviewed here)

A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell (FINISHED)

Murder on Board by Agatha Christie (an omnibus edition with three complete novels: The Mystery of the Blue Train, Death in the Air (aka Death in the Clouds), and What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw (aka 4:50 from Paddington)) (FINISHED)

The Life of the Party by Irvin S. Cobb (FINISHED)

1939: The Last Season by Anne De Courcy (FINISHED)

The Glassblowers by Daphne du Maurier (FINISHED)

Sister Age by M.F.K. Fisher (FINISHED)

Nickel Mountain by John Gardner (on the BOMC Well-Stocked Bookcase list) (FINISHED)

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (FINISHED)

French Women for All Seasons by Mirabelle Guiliano (FINISHED)

Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen (FINISHED)

California’s Over by Louis B. Jones (FINISHED)

Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis (FINISHED)

A Man of Parts by David Lodge (chunkster) (FINISHED)

The Truth About Lorin Jones by Alison Lurie (FINISHED)

Saul Bellow: A Biography of the Imagination by Ruth Miller

Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosley (FINISHED)

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (chunkster) (reading now)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (FINISHED)

Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter (PEN/Faulkner winner)

If a Pirate I Must Be…: The True Story of "Black Bart," King of the Caribbean Pirates by Richard Sanders (FINISHED)

Delicious by Mark Haskell Smith (FINISHED)

The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan (FINISHED)

Towards the End of Time by John Updike

Captain Nicholas by Hugh Walpole (FINISHED)

For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance, edited by Victoria Zackheim

WANDERINGS

I've been working diligently through the above list, but I drifted often to other books on my TBR shelves that caught my attention with more force.

Style by Kate Spade

Summer Lightening by P. G. Wodehouse

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor

The Pearl Diver by Sujata Massey

Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs

Prague by Arthur Phillips

Daughters-in-Law by Joanne Trollope

Risk by Dick Francis

Bonjour, Happiness! by Jamie Cat Callan

The Principles of Uncertainty by Maria Kalman

A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh

Sinful Folk by Ned Hayes

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

In the Last Analysis by Amanda Cross

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith

The Rich Are Different by Susan Howatch

The Life of the Party by Irvin S. Cobb

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding

Snobs by Julian Fellowes

A Wanted Man by Lee Child

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

Deception by Philip Roth

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

One of Ours by Willa Cather

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

COMPLETED

I signed up at the Mt. Blanc level to read 24 books because that most closely corresponds with my personal goal, but I might make it to the Mt. Vancouver 36 book level. We'll see.

Well, as of November 17, I have more books to finish than I will get to for my personal 2X14 challenge, but I've read 50 books off my TBR shelf, which means I've already made it to the Mt. Ararat level of the Mt. TBR Challenge.  I guess I am proving to be a voracious but undisciplined reader this year.

UPDATED: December 31, 2014. I finished 23 of my 28 2X14 books and a total of 52 books off my TBR shelves.  So I fell short of my personal TBR challenge but climbed far higher on Mt. TBR than I thought I would. I plan to finish the remaining five book of my 2X14 list in 2015.