Mount TBR Checkpoint

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Bev at My Reader's Block is requiring a challenge check-in.  She says:

For those who would like to participate in this checkpoint post, I'd like you to do two things:
1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).  If you're really ambitious, you can do some intricate math and figure out how the number of books you've read correlates to actual miles up Pike's Peak, Mt. Ararat, etc.

I started off at the basic Pike's Peak level of 12 books, and completed that a little while ago, so I moved up to Mt. Vancouver--25 books.  I've completed 14 books and am almost done with the 15th.  Here they are:
  1. The Story of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner
  2. The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
  3. The Book of Beasts, trans. T. H. White
  4. Mr. Dixon Disappears, by Ian Sansom
  5. Nightmare Abbey, by Thomas Love Peacock
  6. The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Stories, by M. R. James  
  7. The New Road to Serfdom, by Daniel Hannan 
  8.  Doctor Thorne, by Anthony Trollope
  9. Winking at the Brim, by Gladys Mitchell 
  10. Lovely is the Lee, by Robert Gibbings 
  11. A Collection of Essays by George Orwell
  12.  Erewhon, by Samuel Butler
  13. Decameron, by Boccaccio
  14. Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson 
  15. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

2. Complete ONE (or more if you're ambitious) of the following:

Who has been your favorite character so far? Why?
 This is a tricky one, as half my books don't have characters, really, or they're satire or stock mystery or something.  But I do love Mary Thorne and her slightly undeserving husband Frank Gresham from the Trollope novel.  I like Siri, Susebron, and Vasher in Warbreaker.  No one else is terribly likeable--Emma Bovary is a well-drawn, fully realized character, and I am loving the book, but I would like to bonk her on the head.

Have any of the books you read surprised you--if so, in what way (not as good as anticipated? unexpected ending? Best thing you've read all year? Etc.) 
I was hoping that Boccaccio would be better than it turned out to be, and I did not expect to enjoy Madame Bovary so much.

Here's my TBR pile as it looks right now (not that much changed!): 

Comments

  1. sawcatJune 22, 2012 at 5:32 PM

    Congrats on finishing! You have a very eclectic TBR pile there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bev HankinsJune 22, 2012 at 5:34 PM

    Doing great! And you are certainly right about Emma Bovary...she needs several bonks on the head, I think.

    ReplyDelete

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