2013 Challenge: Three TBR Challenges

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

For the TBR Pile Challenge, my books are here, with links to reviews:

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

The two alternates will be:

• Son of Holmes by John Lescroart
• Winterkill by Craig Lesley

The other fiction books from my randomly selected shelf are:

• Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
• The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman
• Perfect Happiness by Penelope Lively
• Small World by David Lodge
• Death at the Chateau Bremont by M. L. Longworth
• The Christmas Carol Murders by Christopher Lord
• On the Edge by Peter Lovesey

Other fiction books from any of my TBR shelves:

• Death in the Truffle Wood by Pierre Madnan (finished; not reviewd yet)
• A Prefect's Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse (finished; not reviewed yet)
• The Gathering by Anne Enright (finished; not reviewed yet)

Non-fiction books I've read 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 (finished but not reviewed)
• Childhood by Anthony Burgess (finished but 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)

NOTE

Updated on May 18, 2013. So far, I've read 19 books from my TBR shelves.