Saturday, December 13, 2014

2015 CHALLENGE: 2X15 & Mt. TBR -- COMPLETED!


COMPLETED!

2X15: A PERSONAL TBR CHALLENGE


Like I did last year, I am combining the Mt. TBR Challenge with my own, idiosyncratic TBR challenge. I am going to read 30 books for this part of the challenge, one from each of the separate shelves on my TBR bookcases – 23 fiction books, and 7 non-fiction books. Instead of picking any book that looked good from each shelf, I picked the 15th 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! I like this goofy method of picking the books for my TBR challenge because it gets be reading the books that have sat on my shelves for too long.

These are the books in alphabetical order by author. I was planning on reading them in this order, but decided to mix them all up instead.

I also swapped a couple from the original list. Instead of Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which I found impossible, I read The View from Castle Rock and became a late but stalwart Alice Munro fan. Instead of The Mansion, which I didn't realize was the final book in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy, I am going to read The Marriage Plot.

THE 2X15 LIST

Difficulties with Girls by Kingsley Amis FINISHED

Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius by Barbara Belford FINISHED

A Bromfield Galaxy by Louis Bromfield (Early Autumn, The Green Bay Tree, A Good WomanFINISHED

Getting It Right by William F. Buckley Jr. FINISHED

Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens FINISHED

I was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley FINISHED

Oh. Play that Thing by Roddy Doyle FINISHED

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides FINISHED

The Book of Jonah by Joshua Max Feldman FINISHED

The Whole World Over by Julia Glass FINISHED

The New York Stories by Elizabeth Hardwick FINISHED

Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month is Enchanted by Annie Hawes FINISHED

Fling: Short Stories by John Hersey FINISHED

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala FINISHED

Southern Ladies & Gentlemen by Florence King FINISHED

Nice Work by David Lodge FINISHED

Wickford Point by Marquand FINISHED

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious FINISHED

A Writer’s House in Wales by Jan Morris FINISHED

The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro FINISHED

Collected Stories by Dorothy Parker FINISHED

Silent Joe by T. Jefferson Parker (Edgar winner) FINISHED

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman FINISHED

A Thousand Bells at Noon: A Roman Reveals the Secrets and Pleasures of His Native City by G. Franco Romagnoli FINISHED

The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth FINISHED

Duplicate Keys by Jane Smiley FINISHED

Felicia’s Journey by William Trevor FINISHED (Costa BOTY)

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall FINISHED

Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard FINISHED (reviewed here)

On Writing Well by William Zinsser FINISHED

I hope to get through many more TBR books, but hit or miss, whatever catches my fancy. I’ll list those here as I go along.

OTHER MT. TBR BOOKS

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (chunkster)

For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance, edited by Victoria Zackheim (2014 TBR Challenge)

Portrait of a Woman in White by Susan Winkler (reviewed here)

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (chunkster; 2014 TBR Challenge)

Skios by Michael Frayn

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (chunkster)

Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi (chunkster; Erica Jong)

The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies

Night Fall by Nelson DeMille (chunkster)

The Untouchable by John Banville

How to be Good by Nick Hornby

Comeback by Dick Francis

The Treasure Principle: Discovering the Secret of Joyful Giving by Randy Alcorn

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

The Butcher's Boy by Thomas Perry (Edgar winner)

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie

Cat Chaser by Elmore Leonard

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

The Charm School by Nelson DeMille (chunkster)

Promised Land by Robert B. Parker

The Spire by William Golding

Big Money by P. G. Wodehouse

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates



UPDATED: December 26, 2015