I’ve completed my final reading challenge of 2008! The TBR challenge was a challenge to read 12 books I’d had hanging around for some period of time. We were allowed a main list, and a list of alternates. My main list was of books I actually had at home, and my alternate list was books I had on my Amazon wishlist that I hadn’t bought yet because they were available at the library.
Here’s what I read:
American Gods – Neil Gaiman – finished 7/9/08
Cordelia Underwood – Van Reid – finished 8/6/08
Coyote Blue – Christopher Moore – finished 8/28/08
The Stolen Child – Keith Donohue – Finished 1/31/08
Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny – finished 10/2/08
Idylls of the King – Alfred, Lord Tennyson – finished 6/23/08
Herodotus – The Histories – finished 12/19/08
Alternates:
Tam Lin – Pamela Dean – finished 9/9/08
The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield – Finished 3/21/08
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger – finished 7/26/08
Austenland – Shannon Hale – finished 8/21/08
On Writing – Stephen King – finished 11/29/08
I had one book I tried to start and just couldn’t get into (The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson). This was actually the only book I started and failed to finish this year.
At times, I had a hard time actually making myself read these books, especially the ones that were sitting around the house. I realized I operate on a surprisingly emotional level with my books, and I’m very wont to go seek something out to fit my mood, and the reason some of these books have sat around for so long is that they don’t easily fit into my reading cycles.
I also found this to be the most pressure of any of the challenges I did this year. I think it was the wide ranging nature of the books, and the fact that a couple of the ones I did read were rather weighty, and took some time to get through (Herodotus and Idylls of the King). When I wasn’t hitting my one book a month target, I got a little antsy.
For this reason, I’ve decided to sit out the 2009 challenge. I think if I do this more than once, it can’t be a regular yearly thing.