Mount TBR Checkpoint #3

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Well, things have been pretty busy around here, but I've been doing some fun reading and I do plan to tell you about it!  Meanwhile, it's time for the Mount TBR Checkpoint.  Bev 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'm pleased to report that I finished up book #27 last night!  I'm now over the top for my original goal of 24.  Good thing too, because the pile just keeps getting larger.  I thought I wasn't getting many books this year, but I was fooling myself, especially after I found out that John Verney and Alan Garner have disappeared from my local public library.  I went on an AbeBooks binge and bought (for super-cheap!) most of Verney, all the Garner I wanted, and about half of Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles.  Those don't count as TBRs, though, so on with our story...

  1.  Early Christian Writings (a collection)
  2. The Age of Bede 
  3. The Ginger Star, by Leigh Brackett
  4. The Hounds of Skaith, by Leigh Brackett
  5. The Reavers of Skaith, by Leigh Brackett
  6. Crashing Suns
  7. Danubia, by Simon Winder
  8. The Story of Science, by Susan Wise Bauer (my guru!)
  9. Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson 
  10. Pan Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz
  11. Fire in the Bones, by S. Michael Wilcox
  12.  Towers in the Mist, by Elizabeth Goudge
  13. Libraries in the Ancient World, by Lionel Casson
  14. Home and Exile, by Chinua Achebe
  15. Over the Gate, by Miss Read
  16. The Market Square, by Miss Read
  17. The Sea and Poison, by Shusaku Endo
  18. The Pocket Enquire Within
  19. Justinian's Flea, by William Rosen
  20. Miss MacKenzie, by Anthony Trollope
  21. Lectures on Russian Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov
  22. 800 Years of Women's Letters, ed. Olga Kenyon
  23. The Sibyl, by Par Lagerkvist
  24. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, by Caitlin Doughty
  25. The Romance of the Forest, by Ann Radcliffe 
  26. Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell
  27.  Confronting the Classics, by Mary Beard

2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following:
A. Who has been your favorite character so far? And tell us why, if you like.
 Hm, most of mine have not been fiction. I think Towers in the Mist has been my favorite novel, but then....I am very fond of Miss MacKenzie,.  She is an unusual heroine, being neither young nor beautiful, and she is stubbornly good.


B. Pair up two of your reads. But this time we're going for opposites. One book with a male protagonist and one with a female protagonist. One book with "Good" in the title and one with "Evil." Get creative and show off a couple of your books.
The Sea and Poison, by Shusaku Endo, and The Romance of the Forest, by Ann Radcliffe.   The ocean and the forest are opposite landscapes, and it's a metaphorical sea vs. a real forest.  Plus one is a grim, realistic, modern Japanese novel, and the other is an English Gothic fantasy from 200 years ago.  It's hard to get much more opposite than these two novels. 
C. Which book (read so far) has been on your TBR mountain the longest? Was it worth the wait? Or is it possible you should have tackled it back when you first put it on the pile? Or tossed it off the edge without reading it all?
 800 Years of Women's Letters, ed. Olga Kenyon.  I bought it in about 1993, read a little bit, and then ignored it for about 25 years because -- as I said in the post -- I don't actually like historical collections of letters.  Despite this fact, there is another one on the shelf.  I should have tossed this one, and maybe I'll toss that one too.

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