Saturday, December 17, 2011

2012 TBR Pile Challenge

And finally, I have over-ambitiously signed up for a third reading challenge. Am I setting myself up for failure? Time will tell, but I hope not!

TBR PILE CHALLENGE

This challenge is hosted by Roof Beam Reader, and it is actually a necessary and compelling challenge. I always feel so guilty about the books that sit on my shelves unread. It makes me sad, like I am hurting their feelings by ignoring them. I used to have an entire separate shelf (ok, two full shelves) of TBR (to be read) books, but the books just sat there, judging me. So I integrated all of them into the rest of my library, separating them out by putting a green sticker on the spine. Now sometimes I think I can hear the green stickers sneering at me as I walk past my bookshelves on my way to the living room to watch TV.

The challenge is to read one TBR book a month for all of 2012 - for a total of 12 books. The books must have been on the TBR shelf for more than a year, meaning they all must have a publication date earlier than 1/1/11, and I must have had the book for longer than a year. This shouldn't be a problem. Also, I have to pick my 12 books now, but I can pick 2 alternates in case I can't (or don't want to) finish one from my original list. Here are my picks (in no particular order, except the last two are my alternates):

1. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant;
2. The House of Sand & Fog by Andre Dubus III;
3. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett;
4. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen;
5. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson;
6. City of God by Paulo Lins;
7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy;
8. Animal Farm by George Orwell;
9. The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve;
10. Bloody Mary by Carolly Erickson;
11. The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir;
12 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe;

My Two Alternates:
13. A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr;
14. The snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway.


So yeah, this is going to be tough because surely if I was excited to read all of these, I would have done it long ago, right? But these are all books worthy of being read, so I'm going to at least give it a go.

I will be updating this list throughout the year as I read and write reviews of these books. I'll post a link here to the review for each book and a link on each review back to this original post. Let the removal of green stickers commence!

2 comments:

  1. Glad you're joining us for the 2012 TBR Pile Challenge!

    Animal Farm is fantastic - Orwell is one of my favorite writers. A lot of the other books on your list could have made it on mine, too (I own most and have for a while...but haven't yet read them!). Looking forward to your reviews!

    Good luck!

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  2. Thanks again! I have been meaning to read Animal Farm for years. I read 1984 last year and really liked it, so it only makes sense to read another. I'm looking forward to everyone's reviews too - I kind of prefer reviews about older books to reviews of all the new stuff, and this is a great way to encourage those conversations!

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