TBR Challenges 2021 and 2020 Wrap-up

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Once again, I'm planning to participate in Bev's TBR challenges, of which there are two: the usual Mount TBR for books you own, and the Virtual Mount TBR, for library and other borrowed books.


I'll be going for my usual Mont Blanc/Mount Crumpit goal of 24 books in each one.  

Since I haven't been able to go to work or sort donated books for the past 9 months, I have done very well at both of these challenges; I haven't gotten nearly as many unexpected and new books (though I've still managed to add to my TBR bookshelf!).  I therefore read, respectively, 46 and 30 titles :

  1. Bill, the Galactic Hero, by Harry Harrison
  2. The Metal Monster, by A. Merritt
  3.  Siege Perilous, by Lester Del Rey
  4. The Case Against Tomorrow, by Poul Anderson
  5. Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall
  6. Passing, by Nella Larsen
  7. Akenfield, by Ronald Blythe
  8. The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith
  9. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, by John le Carre
  10. When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone, by Gal Beckerman
  11. Pre-Shakespearean Drama vol. 1
  12. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman
  13. The Bookshop of Yesterdays, by Amy Meyerson
  14. The Long Walk, by Slavomir Rawicz
  15. Coronation Summer, by Angela Thirkell
  16. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, by Ted Lawson
  17. The Peasant Girl's Dream, by George MacDonald
  18. Russian Tattoo, by Elena Gorokhova
  19. The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich
  20. A Strange Stirring, by Stephanie Coontz 
  21. The Castle on the Hill, by Elizabeth Goudge
  22. The Bards of Bone Plain, by Patricia McKillip
  23. The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, by Henry Handel Richardson (aka Ethel)
  24. Virgin Soil, by Ivan Turgenev
  25. Heidi's Alp: One Family's Search for Storybook Europe, by Christina Hardyment
  26. The Return, by Walter de la Mare
  27. Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn
  28. The Golden Bough, by Sir James Frazer
  29. Thames: a Biography, by Peter Ackroyd
  30. The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe
  31. The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens
  32. The View From the Cheap Seats, by Neil Gaiman
  33. The Children of Hurin, by JRR Tolkien
  34. Tales From a Rolltop Desk, by Christopher Morley
  35. The Spy and the Traitor, by Ben MacIntyre
  36. A Celtic Miscellany 
  37. Crossings, by Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
  38. Beside the Ocean of Time, by George Mackay Brown
  39. Black Renaissance, by Miklos Szentkuthy
  40. Resurrection, by Lev Tolstoy
  41. The Anvil of the World, by Kage Baker 
  42. After London, by Richard Jeffries 
  43. Heap House, by Edward Carey
  44. The Tower of London, by Harrison
  45. Understanding the Book of Mormon, by Grant Hardy
  46.  The Future is History, by Masha Gessen 

  1. Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century, by Alexandra Popoff
  2. Last Ones Left Alive, by Sarah Davis-Goff
  3. Footsteps, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
  4. Amrita, by Banana Yoshimoto
  5. Women Without Men, by Shahrnush Parsipur
  6. Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange: Medieval Arabic Stories
  7. The Ultimate Tragedy, by Abdulai Sila
  8. Subtly Worded, by Teffi 
  9. The Dark Child, by Camara Laye
  10. Red Cavalry, by Isaac Babel
  11.  Jazz and Palm Wine, by Emmanuel Dongala
  12. A Tempest, by Aime Cesaire
  13. The Golden Thread, by Kassia St. Clair
  14. Death of the Snake Catcher, by Ak Welsapar 
  15.  Robin Hood: Green Lord of the Wildwood, by John Matthews
  16. Mudlark, by Lara Maiklem
  17. Edward Lear: Life of a Wanderer, by Vivien Noakes
  18. Forest of a Thousand Daemons, by D. O. Fagunwa
  19. The Forest of Enchantments, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
  20. The Scapegoat, by Sophia Nikolaidou
  21. Seeing Red, by Lina Meruane 
  22. There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
  23. White Guard, by Mikhail Bulgakov
  24. The Inland Sea, by Donald Richie
  25. Women's Work, by Megan Stack 
  26. Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon
  27. Ivory Apples, by Lisa Goldsmith
  28. Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, by Peter Pomerantsev
  29. The Life of Gluckel of Hameln, by Gluckel
  30. Network Effect, by Martha Wells

 So I'm pretty pleased, even though the massive slump I hit this fall and winter is pretty obvious when I look at these.  In each list, only five or six titles happened after September 1st.  My calculator says I posted on 85% of these books in the first 8 months of the year.

Comments

  1. IzaBzhDecember 31, 2020 at 6:30 AM

    Many interesting titles in here, especially Passing by Nella Larsen (I have it too). I wish you a good climbing and cutting down of those mountain TBRs (is this Captain Picard I see on the virtual challenge pic ?).

    ReplyDelete

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