Karen's 2023 Finishing the Series Reading Challenge

Never. Say. Die!

This year I'm going to participate in the 2023 Finishing the Series Reading Challenge hosted by Celebrity Readers AGAIN. I'm all over the place with reading series, so this is OBVIOUSLY a true challenge for me to be more disciplined in my reading choices. I'm going to go for the "C-LIST" and hope for the best. Aim low, achieve high? Crossing my fingers.

I'm going to opt-in on the C-LIST SERIES FINISHER ⇒ COMPLETE 1 - 4 SERIES.

These are my target series this year.

(1) Jimm Juree series - Colin Cotterill (3 books) - 0 completed

(2) Shinobi Mystery series - Susan Spann (3 books) - 0 completed

(3) Bernie Rhodenbarr series - Lawrence Block (3 books) - 0 completed

(4) Kitty Pangborn series - Linda L. Richards (1 book) - 0 completed

(5) Ali Reynolds series - J.A. Jance (4 books) - 0 completed

(6) Thistle & Twigg series - Mary Saums (1 book) - 0 completed

(7) Melkor & Purity - Kim Faulks (1 book) - 0 completed

This is a total of 7 proposed series with 16 books. As of today, I have completed 0 of the 16.

#FinishingTheSeries2023

Guatemala Paula's Log for the 2023 Literary Escapes Challenge

 

Participation Log for my progress in  

Escape with Dollycas Into a Good Book's 

2023 Literary Escapes Challenge

To sign up just fill out this form.

Challenge Runs from January 1, 2023 - December 31, 2023

Challenge - Try to read 1 book set in each of the 50 states + the District of Columbia. (51 Points). If you complete the challenge you earn 50 Bonus Points. You also can earn Bonus Points for books set in Countries around the world. 1 Bonus Point for each country. (No repeats - only 1 point can be earned for each country.)

Your books can be fiction or non-fiction and can be in any format, print, digital, audio. 

So how do you decide what state a book is categorized under?

1.  In a fiction read it would be the State or Country that the book spends the most time in.  (Ie. If your main character is from Wisconsin but the book is all about his/her time in college in California – the books should categorize under California….)

2. Nonfiction reads categorize in whatever State or Country it is about (Ie…. a book about fly fishing in Colorado is a Colorado point, and a book about women in Afghanistan is an Afghanistan point.

3.  If the book goes from one state to another… go with the state that most of the time is spent.

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

District of Columbia

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Classics Club Reading Challenge - Spin #31: Results

On September 18, 2022, the Classics Club blog posted CC Spin #31, a random number from 1 to 20, and the selection was Number 2! As the challenge is to read and review whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List (see below) by the October 30, 2022, it looks like Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray will finally get its turn. Although the Classics Club has been at this for quite awhile (Spin #31!), this is only my 2nd time to participate.

Duration of Challenge: September 18 - October 30, 2022

Number selected for Spin #31 - #2

Spin List

1. Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1) – Sophocles

*2. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde*

3. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

4. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson, #2) – Rick Riordan

5. On the Road – Jack Kerouac

6. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

7. The Story of My Experiments with Truth – Mahatma Gandhi

8. Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1) – Stephen King

9. The Commitments – Roddy Doyle

10. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

11. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

12. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

13. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) – J.K. Rowling

14. The Martian – Andy Weir

15. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Captain Nemo, #1) – Jules Verne

16. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie

17. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

18. The Odyssey – Homer

19. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

20. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) – C.S. Lewis

RESULTS:

Wait for the next post!

#ccspin

Classics Club Reading Challenge - Spin #31

Here is my current "Spin" List of 20 books for the "Classics Club Reading Challenge." This list was developed from the poster "100 Essential Books" Scratch Off Bucket List. However, since I've already read and scratched off a number of the original books, my ending number is 72 (as of September 13, 2022.) This "master list" is shown below.

On September 18, 2022, the Classics Club blog will post their CC Spin #31, a random number from 1 to 20. The challenge is to read and review whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by the 30th of October, 2022. Although the Classics Club has been at this for quite awhile (Spin #31!), this is only my second time to participate. My first spin was Misery by Stephen King.

Duration of Challenge: September 18 - October 30, 2022

Number selected for Spin #31 - 2

Spin List

1. Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1) – Sophocles

2. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

3. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

4. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson, #2) – Rick Riordan

5. On the Road – Jack Kerouac

6. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

7. The Story of My Experiments with Truth – Mahatma Gandhi

8. Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1) – Stephen King

9. The Commitments – Roddy Doyle

10. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

11. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

12. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

13. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) – J.K. Rowling

14. The Martian – Andy Weir

15. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Captain Nemo, #1) – Jules Verne

16. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie

17. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

18. The Odyssey – Homer

19. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

20. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) – C.S. Lewis

The following is the Master List of what I have left to read on this poster. Some of the selections shown on the poster are actually whole series so I have listed the books in those series which I've not completed further down the page. As I complete a series book from the master list, I will replace it with the next one the series. In order to get my Spin List, I used a Table of Random Numbers to generate 20 numbers from 1 to 72 (the total number of books in the Master List.

Master List

1. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Captain Nemo, #1) – Jules Verne

2. Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1) – Sophocles

3. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin – Benjamin Franklin

4. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes

5. Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare

6. The Story of My Experiments with Truth – Mahatma Gandhi

7. The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X

8. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson, #2) – Rick Riordan

9. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

10. Sophie’s World – Jostein Gaarder

11. A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking

12. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

13. A Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mandela

14. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie

15. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

16. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

17. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

18. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) – J.K. Rowling

19. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

20. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

21. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

22. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells

23. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

24. Macbeth – William Shakespeare

25. The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1) – J.R.R. Tolkien

26. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle

27. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

28. Ulysses – James Joyce

29. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

30. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

31. The Commitments – Roddy Doyle

32. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

33. Dracula – Bram Stoker

34. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) – C.S. Lewis

35. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

36. The Odyssey – Homer

37. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

38. 438 Days – Jonathan Franklin

39. How to be Champion – Sarah Millican

40. The Romanov Sisters – Helen Rappaport

41. The Martian – Andy Weir

42. A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1) – Deborah Harkness

43. Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1) – Stephen King

44. Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1) – Pierce Brown

45. Hamilton: The Revolution – Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jeremy McCarter

46. The Fireman – Joe Hill

47. The Radium Girls – Kate Moore

48. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

49. The Shipping News – Annie Proulx

50. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy

51. Play It As It Lays – Joan Didion

52. The Painted Bird – Jerzy Kosiński

53. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

54. Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs

55. Go Tell It On the Mountain – James Baldwin

56. A Death in the Family – James Agee

57. Blindness – José Saramago

58. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

59. Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett

60. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

61. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

62. Little Town on the Prairie (Little House, #7) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

63. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

64. On the Road – Jack Kerouac

65. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

66. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

67. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

8. Watership Down – Richard Adams

69. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

70. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle

71. The Stranger – Albert Camus

72. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Series books to add as needed. (34)

Replaces #1 - The Mysterious Island (Captain Nemo, #2) – Jules Verne

Replaces #2 - Oedipus at Colonus (The Theban Plays, #2) - Sophocles

Replaces #2 - Antigone (The Theban Plays, #3) – Sophocles

Replaces #8 - Percy Jackson and the Stolen Chariot (Percy Jackson, #2.5) – Rick Riordan

Replaces #8 - The Titans Curse (Percy Jackson, #3) – Rick Riordan

Replaces #8 - Percy Jackson and the Bronze Dragon (Percy Jackson, #3.5) – Rick Riordan

Replaces #8 - The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson, #4) – Rick Riordan

Replaces #8 - Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades (Percy Jackson, #4.5) – Rick Riordan

Replaces #8 - The Demigod Files (Percy Jackson, #4.5) – Rick Riordan

Replaces #8 - The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson, #5) – Rick Riordan

Replaces #12 - Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee

Replaces #18 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) – J.K. Rowling

Replaces #18 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3) – J.K. Rowling

Replaces #18 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4) – J.K. Rowling

Replaces #18 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5) - J.K. Rowling

Replaces #18 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6) – J.K. Rowling

Replaces #18 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7) – J.K. Rowling

Replaces #25 - The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2) – J.R.R. Tolkien

Replaces #25 - The Return of the Kind (The Lord of the Rings, #3) – J.R.R. Tolkien

Replaces #34 - Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia, #2) – C.S. Lewis

Replaces #34 - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3) – C.S. Lewis

Replaces #34 - The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia, #4) – C.S. Lewis

Replaces #34 - The Horse and His Boy (Chronicles of Narnia, #5) – C.S. Lewis

Replaces #34 - The Magician’s Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia, #6) – C.S. Lewis

Replaces #34 - The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia, #7) – C.S. Lewis

Replaces #41 - Artemis – Andy Weir

Replaces #42 - Shadow of Night (All Souls, #2) – Deborah Harkness

Replaces #42 - The Book of Life (All Souls, #3) – Deborah Harkness

Replaces #43 - Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #2) – Stephen King

Replaces #43 - End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #3) – Stephen King

Replaces #44 - Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2) – Pierce Brown

Replaces #41 - Artemis – Andy Weir

Replaces #62 - These Happy Golden Years (Little House, #8) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

Replaces #62 - The First Four Years (Little House, #9) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

List of completed Spins!

Spin #30 - Misery by Stephen King (August 9, 2022)

#ccspin

Classics Club Reading Challenge Spin #30 - Results

On June 12, 2022, the Classics Club blog posted CC Spin #30, a random number from 1 to 20, and the selection was Number 5! As the challenge is to read and review whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List (see below) by the 7th August, 2022, it looks like Stephen King's Misery will finally get its turn. Although the Classics Club has been at this for quite awhile (Spin #30!), this is my first time to participate.

Duration of Challenge: June 12 - August 7, 2022

Number selected for Spin #30 - #5

Spin List

1. A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1) – Deborah Harkness

2. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

3. The Commitments – Roddy Doyle

4. The Odyssey – Homer

*5. Misery – Stephen King

6. The Martian – Andy Weir

7. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) – J.K. Rowling

8. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

9. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

10. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes

11. Watership Down – Richard Adams

12. Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee

13. How to be Champion – Sarah Millican

14. A Death in the Family – James Agee

15. Go Tell It On the Mountain – James Baldwin

16. Little Town on the Prairie (Little House, #7) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

17. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson, #2) – Rick Riordan

18. The Romanov Sisters – Helen Rappaport

19. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy

20. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) – C.S. Lewis

RESULTS:

Wait for the next post!

#ccspin

Classics Club Reading Challenge - Spin #30

Here is my current "Spin" List of 20 books for the "Classics Club Reading Challenge." This list was developed from the poster "100 Essential Books" Scratch Off Bucket List. However, since I've already read and scratched off a number of the original books and some "books" were actually series of books, my ending number is 106 (as of June 6, 2022.) This "master list" is shown below.

On June 12, 2022, the Classics Club blog will post their CC Spin #30, a random number from 1 to 20. The challenge is to read and review whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by the 7th August, 2022. Although the Classics Club has been at this for quite awhile (Spin #30!), this is my first time to participate.

Duration of Challenge: June 12 - August 7, 2022

Number selected for Spin #30 - ??

Spin List

1. A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1) – Deborah Harkness

2. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

3. The Commitments – Roddy Doyle

4. The Odyssey – Homer

5. Misery – Stephen King

6. The Martian – Andy Weir

7. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) – J.K. Rowling

8. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

9. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

10. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes

11. Watership Down – Richard Adams

12. Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee

13. How to be Champion – Sarah Millican

14. A Death in the Family – James Agee

15. Go Tell It On the Mountain – James Baldwin

16. Little Town on the Prairie (Little House, #7) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

17. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson, #2) – Rick Riordan

18. The Romanov Sisters – Helen Rappaport

19. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy

20. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) – C.S. Lewis

The following is the Master List of what I have left to read on this poster. Some of the selections shown on the poster are actually whole series so I have listed the books in those series which I've not completed. In order to get my Spin List, I used a Table of Random Numbers to generate 40 numbers from 1 to 106 (the total number of books in the Master List. The first number, 67, corresponded with A Discovery of Witches and became the first book on my list of 20 (and so on.)

One problem for me is I don't like to read series' books out of order, hence the 40 random numbers generated. If a number generated led me to a book in the middle of the series, I substituted whichever book in the series was first on the list. So when the random number was 34 which corresponded to Harry Potter and the the Deathly Hallows, the 7th book in the series, I substituted the first unread book in that series, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone. If that book's list number, 28, had come up, I planned to skip it and go on to the next random number. Complicated enough? Only to explain.

Anyway, on to the Master List!

Master List

1. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Captain Nemo, #1) – Jules Verne

2. The Mysterious Island (Captain Nemo, #2) – Jules Verne

3. Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1) – Sophocles

4. Oedipus at Colonus (The Theban Plays, #2) - Sophocles

5. Antigone (The Theban Plays, #3) – Sophocles

6. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin – Benjamin Franklin

7. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes

8. Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare

9. The Story of My Experiments with Truth – Mahatma Gandhi

10. The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X

11. The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson, #2) – Rick Riordan

12. Percy Jackson and the Stolen Chariot (Percy Jackson, #2.5) – Rick Riordan

13. The Titans Curse (Percy Jackson, #3) – Rick Riordan

14. Percy Jackson and the Bronze Dragon (Percy Jackson, #3.5) – Rick Riordan

15. The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson, #4) – Rick Riordan

16. Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades (Percy Jackson, #4.5) – Rick Riordan

17. The Demigod Files (Percy Jackson, #4.5) – Rick Riordan

18. The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson, #5) – Rick Riordan

19. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

20. Sophie’s World – Jostein Gaarder

21. A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking

22. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

23. A Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mandela

24. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie

25. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

26. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

27. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

28. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) – J.K. Rowling

29. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) – J.K. Rowling

30. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3) – J.K. Rowling

31. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4) – J.K. Rowling

32. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5) - J.K. Rowling

33. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6) – J.K. Rowling

34. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7) – J.K. Rowling

35. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

36. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

37. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

38. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells

39. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

40. Macbeth – William Shakespeare

41. The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1) – J.R.R. Tolkien

42. The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2) – J.R.R. Tolkien

43. The Return of the Kind (The Lord of the Rings, #3) – J.R.R. Tolkien

44. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle

45. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

46. Ulysses – James Joyce

47. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

48. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

49. The Commitments – Roddy Doyle

50. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

51. Dracula – Bram Stoker

52. Misery – Stephen King

53. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) – C.S. Lewis

54. Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia, #2) – C.S. Lewis

55. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3) – C.S. Lewis

56. The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia, #4) – C.S. Lewis

57. The Horse and His Boy (Chronicles of Narnia, #5) – C.S. Lewis

58. The Magician’s Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia, #6) – C.S. Lewis

59. The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia, #7) – C.S. Lewis

60. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

61. The Odyssey – Homer

62. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

63. 438 Days – Jonathan Franklin

64. How to be Champion – Sarah Millican

65. The Romanov Sisters – Helen Rappaport

66. The Martian – Andy Weir

67. A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1) – Deborah Harkness

68. Shadow of Night (All Souls, #2) – Deborah Harkness

69. The Book of Life (All Souls, #3) – Deborah Harkness

70. Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1) – Stephen King

71. Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1) – Pierce Brown

72. Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2) – Pierce Brown

73. Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee

74. Hamilton: The Revolution – Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jeremy McCarter

75. The Fireman – Joe Hill

76. Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #2) – Stephen King

77. End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #3) – Stephen King

78. The Radium Girls – Kate Moore

79. Artemis – Andy Weir

80. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

81. The Shipping News – Annie Proulx

82. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy

83. Play It As It Lays – Joan Didion

84. The Painted Bird – Jerzy Kosiński

85. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

86. Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs

87. Go Tell It On the Mountain – James Baldwin

88. A Death in the Family – James Agee

89. Blindness – José Saramago

90. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

91. Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett

92. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

93. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

94. Little Town on the Prairie (Little House, #7) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

95. These Happy Golden Years (Little House, #8) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

96. The First Four Years (Little House, #9) – Laura Ingalls Wilder

97. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

98. On the Road – Jack Kerouac

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

101. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

102. Watership Down – Richard Adams

103. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

104. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle

105. The Stranger – Albert Camus

106. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

#ccspin

Karen's List for THE OFFICIAL TBR PILE CHALLENGE

I was intrigued to discover that there is a fun, do-able challenge out there to encourage reading from your TBR pile. Like you need that kind of encouragement, right? Well, yeah, I do. And apparently I am not the only one because Roof Beam Reader’s official TBR Pile Challenge is back for its NINTH YEAR! This challenge started when they realized they had some MAJOR issues with buying books but never reading them (not because they don’t read – but because they have such a book buying problem!) Year after year, books would sit on their shelves untouched, and they would end up reading newer ones first. Just like me, they realized they was missing out on a lot of great books because they let them sit there gathering dust instead of reading them as when they were purchased.

The Goal: To finally read 12 books from my “to be read” pile (within 12 months).

Specifics:

1. Identify 12 books from your TBR pile/shelf, or in my case, storage unit. (I picked a random box.)

2. Each of the selected 12 books (from my box) must have been on your bookshelf/box or “To Be Read” list/box for AT LEAST one full year. This means the book cannot have a publication date of 1/1/2021 or later (any book published in the year 2020 or earlier qualifies, as long as it has been on your TBR pile).

3. Caveat: Two (2) alternates are allowed, just in case one or two of the books ends up in the “did not finish (DNF)” pile.

So, on to the random pile of 14 (in no particular order) that I grabbed from the box that met the above criteria:

1. A Grave Issue by Lillian Bell

2. Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

3. On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis

4. The Burn by Kathleen Kent

5. Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

6. The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber

7. Across the Void by S.K. Vaughn

8. Dogstar Rising (Makana, #2) by Parker Bilal

9. Betrayal at Iga (Shinobi Mystery, #5) by Susan Spann

10. Y.T. by Alexey Nikitin

11. The Ghost Runner (Makana, #3) by Parker Bilal

12. Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1) by Jonathan Maberry

13. Trespasser (Mike Bowditch, #2) by Paul Doiron

14. Duel to the Death (Ali Reynolds, #13) by J.A. Jance

#TBR2022RBR