BookCrossing.comAnd here we go with a new year and a new set of reading challenges. Not to be taken too seriously, but it's always useful to have 'a plan' and a set of guidelines to work to. Besides, I just love organising stuff...
1001 books you must read before you die
I managed a rather impressive 100 books off the list last year. Well I was impressed, anyway. Unfortunately, my TBR pile of non-1001 books grew to a rather alarming size while I was concentrating on the 1001 books, so I'm downsizing my efforts this year.
This year's challenge is to read 4 books per month from the list.
If I read more than 4 one month, that doesn't let me off the hook for the following month, so how many it'll be over the year is anyone's guess. Fun, huh?
The result: There were two months when I only read three books from the list but otherwise I met my target. In fact, I met the target with books to spare and read a grand total of 100 books from the 1001 list in 2010. I think that'll do.
The Big Read
Last year I planned to complete the first fifty books on this list. I needed to read 21 to do it, I read 26 but most of them were not in the top fifty so I didn't complete the challenge. So, I'm trying again but this time I'll be making a plan so that I don't leave all the reading until the last quarter, which was the problem last year.
This year's challenge is to complete the top seventy-five.
In order to do this I need to read 18 books. I have 11 of those in the house at the moment. One is on order from the library and one has been promised by a fellow BookCrosser. That leaves two kid's books and three Terry Pratchett's which I should be able to get my hands on. Now, I just need to go and work out that plan...
The result: I still haven't read the top seventy-five. The top fifty is complete now but I'm four books short of the top seventy-five. I did however read thirty-six books in total from the Big Read list which leaves me only sixty left to read from the top two hundred. Not the result I was looking for but I'm happy with it nonetheless.
Mount TBR
My 'to be read' books are supposed to be all on one bookcase. Currently they're overflowing onto another bookcase and are showing no sign of slowing down their takeover of the living room. This is not good. Including 1001 books, Big Read books, and anything else readable, on Jan 1st 2010 there are 203 books waiting to be read.
This year's challenge is to reduce the size of Mount TBR.
Oh yes. If I can just read more books from the TBR bookcase than I buy to put on it, that'll do the trick. By keeping the other challenges more do-able, it might be possible. We'll see. For the purposes of this challenge I'm counting anything that isn't a bookring/library book/1001-library book.
The result: I've just added up the results from each month and I'm really wishing I hadn't. On the plus side, I managed to read an encouraging 132 books from Mt TBR this year. Whoo! But, unfortunately, I also managed to add a rather worrying 164 books to the bookshelves. Now, this would at least explain why I've just had to completely rearrange a couple of the bookshelves again in order to get books onto shelves and off desks. Sigh.
Targets in black, books read in blue
January
1001 books - target met
1. A tale of a tub - Jonathan Swift
2. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
3. Quicksand - Nella Larsen
4. Embers - Sandor Marai
Big Read - target met
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
TBR - target met
Added - 13
Read - 15
(9,17)(9,23)
February
1001 books - target met
1. I'm not scared - Niccolo Ammaniti
2. The siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell
3. Mother's milk - Edward St Aubyn
4. Timbuktu - Paul Auster
Big Read - target met
A prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Gone with the wind - Margaret Mitchell
TBR - oops
Added - 17
Read - 9
(17,34)(17,40)
March
1001 books - target met
1. Vanity fair - William Thackeray
2. The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas - Gertrude Stein
3. Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee
4. The Green Man - Kingsley Amis
Big Read - target met
Great expectations - Charles Dickens
TBR - Oops again
Added - 19
Read - 13
(26,51)(29,58)
April
1001 books - target met
1. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
2. What a carve up - Jonathan Coe
3. The book of laughter and forgetting - Milan Kundera
4. Blood and guts in high school - Kathy Acker
Big Read - target met
Emma - Jane Austen
Good omens - Terry Pratchett
TBR - target met
Added - 7
Read - 9
(34,64)(39,78)
May
1001 books - target met
1. Felicia's journey - William Trevor
2. Portnoy's complaint - Philip Roth
3. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
4. Absolute beginners - Colin MacInnes
Big Read - target met
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
TBR - target? what target?
Added - 14
Read - 7
(43,85)(48,95)
June
1001 books - target met
1. A pale view of hills - Kazuo Ishiguro
2. All quiet on the western front - Erich Maria Remarque
3. The glass key - Dashiell Hammett
4. Crash - J. G. Ballard
Big Read - target met
Night watch - Terry Pratchett
Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
A tale of two cities - Charles Dickens
TBR - Target? Cue hysterical laughter...
Added - 25
Read - 12
(51,102)(56,120)
Halfway through they year and the 1001 and Big Read challenges are going splendidly. The reduce Mt TBR challenge however, is not. I solved the overflowing problem temporarily by buying more bookcases. This was not in the original plan but it did do the trick. A new plan is needed though, and one has been found. Enter the SIY challenge. Details are on this post. The progress page, designed and maintained by Ibis3 is here.
Also adding the Everything Austen II challenge, just 'cause you can never have too many challenges...
July
1001 books - target met
1. Silk - Alessandro Baricco
2. Measuring the world - Daniel Kehlmann
3. The Bell - Iris Murdoch
4. The Waves - Virginia Woolf
Big Read - target met
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
TBR - Almost, almost...
Added - 14
Read - 14
SIY - target met
Hogfather - Terry Pratchett
The Children's book - A. S. Byatt
The mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
Geisha of Gion - Mineka Iwasaki
Shout at the devil - Wilbur Smith
The Beach - Alex Garland
The shipping news - Annie Proulx
Everything Austen II - target met
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
(60,119)
August
1001 books - target met
1. Schindler's Ark - Thomas Keneally
2. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
3. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
4. Chess - Stefan Zweig
Big Read - target met
Middlemarch - George Eliot
TBR - bit of a mishap in The Works...
Added - 20
Read - 13
SIY - target met
Behind the scenes at the museum - Kate Atkinson
Jude the obscure - Thomas Hardy
Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
Midnight's children - Salman Rushdie
Cry wolf - Tami Hoag
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Everything Austen II - target met
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
(68,136)
September
1001 books - target met
1. Erewhon - Samuel Butler
2. Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture - Apostolos Doxiadis
3. Story of the eye - Georges Bataille
4. The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Big Read - target carried over to October
Crime and punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
TBR - close...
Added - 14
Read - 12
SIY - target met
Ruined city - Nevil Shute
Lorna Doone - R. D. Blackmore
August is a wicked month - Edna O'Brien
Tender is the night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The last September - Elizabeth Bowen
The English patient - Michael Ondaatje
The picture of Dorien Gray - Oscar Wilde
Everything Austen II - target carried over to October
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
(77,153)
October
1001 books - Not quite, but I have been on holiday
1. The heart of the matter - Graham Greene
2. Wise children - Angela Carter
3. Don't move - Margaret Mazzantini
4.
Big Read - must try harder...
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The BFG - Roald Dahl
TBR - Sigh...
Added - 12
Read - 8
Everything Austen II - Target met
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
(85,170)
November
1001 books - Didn't quite make this again
1. Great apes - Will Self
2. Atonement - Ian McEwan
3. Love in the time of cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
Big Read - Target failed
The BFG - Roald Dahl
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
TBR - Could have been worse
Added - 8
Read - 8
Everything Austen II - Ummm
Mr Darcy, Vampyre - Amanda Grange
Sense and Sensibility and Sea monsters - Ben H. Winters
(94,187)
December
1001 books - Target met
1. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
2. The music of chance - Paul Auster
3. The secret History - Donna Tartt
4. Love in the time of cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Big Read - Target met
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
TBR - Target met
Added - 1
Read - 12
Everything Austen II - Target failed
Vampire Darcy's desire - Regina Jeffers
Mr Darcy, Vampyre - Amanda Grange
Sense and Sensibility and Sea monsters - Ben H. Winters
(102,204)
Apparently, you can have too many challenges, as I failed miserably at the Austen one, with only three books read. I just didn't feel like reading the Vampire Austen books that I'd got ready at the time when I was supposed to read them. I need to be in the right mood for those.
