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.
If you perused my previous “2022 Reading Challenges” post, you know that I’ve actually challenged myself to clear 24 books (12 fiction, 12 non-fiction) from my TBR pile this year. I made that decision well before seeing RoofbeamReader’s announcement on his blog that he’s reinstating the 12 book TBR Challenge he started over a decade ago. Since RBR offers raffled prizes for anyone who completes his challenge, I decided I needed to participate. But upping my list of books from 24 to 36 feels like I’d be setting myself up for failure on all counts. SO, I’m considering RBR’s TBR Challenge to be a subset of my own challenge – all the books below can be found on my larger list as well.
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 but the basic rules (other than how to enter) are: Choose 12 books that have been on your bookshelf or “To Be Read” list for AT LEAST one full year. This means books with a publication date of 1/1/2021 or later are ineligible; books published in 2021 or earlier qualify as long as they’ve been on your TBR Pile/List. Then choose two (2) alternate titles, just in case one or two of your original twelve end up in the “did not finish” bin.
Per the rules of the Challenge, I’ll be coming back to this post to link to individual book reviews and to show progress. I’ll do this by italicizing the books I’ve read and adding “completed on [date]” to the entry.
MY 2021 ROOFBEAMREADER TO BE READ CHALLENGE LIST:
1. The Tricky Part: One Boy’s Fall from Trespass into Grace, by Martin Moran (2005) (Finished June 28, 2022)
2. Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth’s Surface, by David Standish (2006) (Finished July 19, 2022)
3. Letters to the Pumpkin King, by Seanan McGuire (2014) (Finished November 30, 2022)
5. Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula, by David J. Skal (2016) (Finished November 8, 2022)
6. Comic Book Implosion: An Oral History of DC Comics Circa 1978, by Keith Dallas and John Wells (2018) (Finished July 23, 2022)
7. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, by R.A. Dick (pseudonym of Josephine Leslie) (1945, reissued in 2014) (Finished November 28, 2022)
8. Excalibur! By Gil Kane and John Jakes (1980) (Finished September 11, 2022)
9. Slights, by Kaaron Warren (2009) (Finished on February 13, 2022)
10. Lord Tyger, by Philip Jose Farmer (1970) (Finished August 30, 2022)
11. Untamed Shore, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) (Finished September 27, 2022)
12. A Summer Beyond Your Reach: Stories, by Xia Jia (2020) (Finished December 22, 2022)
Alternates
1. Horror Fiction in the 20th Century: Exploring Literature’s Most Chilling Genre, by Jess Nevins (2020) (Finished December 20, 2022)
2. The Red Lamp, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1925, reissued in 2018)