The TBR Challenge

Right now I am signed up for 6 challenges in 2010. I clearly need some way to curb my challenge joining, before it gets out of hand like it did this year and what could be a better way for me to stop joining challenges than to join another one right now...wait, this IS going somewhere.

Over at Telecommuter Talk’ there’s a new challenge called the TBR challenge. Basically it’s designed to get you to make twenty books from your massive TBR list a priority and curb your book buying by saying that you can’t buy anything new until you finish these books, unless you’re buying books for book clubs or read-a-longs. Some challenge participants are modifying that last bit, because going cold turkey is hard and I thought that if I messed around with it a bit I could use this challenge to keep me from joining twenty thousand other challenges in 2010. So my challenge rule is that I can buy books if I need them for challenges/read-a-longs (and for this one themed month I have planned in 2010), but I can’t join any new challenges until I finish these twenty books.

Now the book list:

Books from a long time ago

These are the books I saw (probably because they were getting high levels of publicity), bought in a fit of excitement and then never looked at again. They all sound appealing, but my fickle mind has decided they are not as cool as other shiny, new acquisitions.

‘The Concise Chinese to English Dictionary for Lovers’ – Xiaolu Guo
‘The Observations’ – Jane Harris
‘The Secret River’ – Kate Grenville
‘Winter in Madrid’ – C J Samson
‘Women’s World’ – Graham Rawle

Books from my parent’s bookshelves

Just a few of the books my parents are patiently putting by for me. I especially want to get moving on ‘Dark Echo’ because I have clearly lied about how I am ‘absolutely going to read this next’ a number of times now.

‘The Lollipop Shoes’ – Joanne Harris
‘Lullabies for Little Criminals’ – Heather O’Neil
‘Dark Echo’ – F G Cottam
‘Howard’s End’ – E M Forster

Newish books I can’t wait to break into

Look at the shiny! In order to stop these suffering the same long wait as the books in the top category I need to get on them now.

‘The Day the Falls Stood Still’ – Cathy Marie Buchanan (this is the book I’m starting with and I’m already quite enamoured with it)
‘The Silver Phoenix’ – Cindy Pon
‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ – R C Sherriff
‘Leviathan’ – Philip Hoare
‘The Throne of Jade’ – Naomi Novick
‘Funny How Things Change’ – Melissa Wyatt

Misc

I haven’t had these for long, but they’re not really shiny and new. I think I may have read too many Twilight parodies to resist ‘New Moon’ for much longer. I’m reading ‘The Buccaneers’ for the next Classics Circuit tour. Emma and Sea of Poppies have been in my house since the beginning of the year and somehow keep getting pushed to the back of the queue.

‘Emma’ – Jane Austen
‘New Moon’ – Stephanie Myer
‘The Buccaneers’ – Edith Wharton
‘Sea of Poppies’ – Amitav Ghosh
‘The Hearts of Horses’ – Molly Fox

Is anyone else planning to join?