Most avid readers have a “to be read” pile, in our office or near our bed: books we bought intending to read, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Some of us have “to be read” bookcases. This year, book blogger RoofbeamReader is re-instituting his To Be Read Challenge after a two year hiatus. (The first year RBR didn’t run the challenge, I challenged myself and succeeded; in 2016, not so much.)
You have to go to RBR’s website to officially sign up for the challenge if you want to be entered to win a gift card to Amazon or the Book Depository at year’s end: https://roofbeamreader.com/2017/11/07/announcing-the-official-2018-tbr-pile-challenge/ but the basic rules (other than how to enter) are:
The Goal: To finally read 12 books from your “to be read” pile (within 12 months).
Specifics:
1. Each of these 12 books must have been on your bookshelf or “To Be Read” list for AT LEAST one full year. This means the book cannot have a publication date of 1/1/2017 or later (any book published in the year 2016 or earlier qualifies, as long as it has been on your TBR pile). Caveat: Two (2) alternates are allowed, just in case one or two of the books end up in the “can’t get through” pile.
2. Crossovers from other challenges are totally acceptable, as long as you have never read the book before and it was published before 2017!
*Note: You can read the books on your list in any order; they do not need to be read in the order you have them listed. Audiobooks count. Graphic novels count. Poetry collections? Essay collections? All good! As you complete a book – review it, go to your original list and turn that title into a link to the review. This will keep the comments section here from getting ridiculously cluttered. For an example of what I mean, Click Here.
MY 2018 TO BE READ CHALLENGE LIST:
1. THE LADY OF THE SHROUD, Bram Stoker (1909)
2. THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, Lawrence Block (1965, reissued 2011)
3. IRONCASTLE, Philip Jose Farmer and JH Rosny (1976)
4. GIOVANNI’S ROOM, James Baldwin (1956)
5. WHO FEARS DEATH, Nnedi Okorafor (2010)
6. THINGS FALL APART, Chinua Achebe (1958)
7. SOLACERS, Arion Gokmakani (2012)
8. THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, Grace Zaring Stone (1932, reissued 2014)
9. BECOMING NICOLE, Amy Ellis Nutt (2016)
10. THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, Junot Diaz (2008)
11. SOFT APOCALYPSES, Lucy A. Snyder (2014)
12. INVISIBLE PLANETS, translated/edited by Ken Liu (2016)
ALTERNATES:
A. REVENGE: Eleven Dark Tales, Yoko Ogawa (Stephen Snyder, translator) (2013)
B. BUTCHER ROAD, Lee Thomas (2014)
I have a few other reading challenges that I’m setting myself for 2018 that will overlap partially with this. I’ll be posting about those over the next few weeks.