As Bing Crosby once sang, let’s start the new year right! It’s time once again to set the stage for our TBR Challenge.
This is the third year now for the Challenge, and I’ve discovered that it really has made me more aware of the books I purchased ages ago and have yet to read. It hasn’t stopped me from adding books to the fray, though! One of these days I’ll figure out how to address that 🙂
Here are my conditions for this year:
1. How many books from your TBR pile will you read? I’m going with 18 again this year, since I didn’t quite make it last year. That’s 1.5 books per month, which I should be able to manage even after allowing for writing and editing time, and other reading challenges I’ll be participating in.
2. How long have your books been waiting? For the purposes of this challenge, the books I read must have been acquired by me or placed on my library TBR list (which is still out of hand) before August 1, 2015. This means I can’t buy new books in January and count them toward my TBR Challenge come September–which I found myself doing at least once during the first year, and kind of defeats the purpose of the challenge.
3. How will you hold yourself accountable? Like years past, I’ll post here once a month to share my progress and see how you all are doing. I found that creating a Goodreads shelf and the dedicated page on this blog to be enormously helpful, too, so I’ll do both again. I’m a very visual person and being able to see the collection of books that I’ve read gives me a nice sense of accomplishment, which makes me want to read more TBR books.
So who’s in this year? I know I’m not the only one with a TBR mountain…range 😉 Leave a comment with your goal and conditions–how many books will you tame this year?
And Then She Kissed Him 
Good morning, Cora! This will be my six year of reading historical romance novels, when I began, I was reading more than five books per week, well, we were homeless and living out of our van and I was not working. This year, husband Harry was very ill and I was surprised to not have read more than one book per week, sometimes, that was per month…I would love to get back to reading five books per week, but, I need to be realistic… so, let’s say…10 novels per month…(I maybe hopeful, but, I have a very large e-book library.)…I will continue to post/share the title, author’s name, synopsis, cover illustration and author’s site onto my Facebook page…(I have not read any e-books in over a year.) Does Audible count? I’ll try to log into Goodreads my progress. So, count me in! First book…’Devil’s Cub’ by Georgette Heyer
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Audible can count if you want it to, as long as you’ve had the book for a while 🙂 Good luck!
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Cora, I am going to try to read one book a month acquired before 1 January 2013. I’m going to try to restrict my purchases to auto-buy authors only but I’m not sure how successful that will be!
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I’ve gotten a little bit better about curbing my purchases, but I have a hard time resisting a sale (which is probably how I ended up with the giant TBR pile in the first place). Maybe this is the year we both find some book-buying willpower 😀 Good luck!
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Thanks, Cora. 📚
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My auto buys are extensive, so not sure how that would work for me! LOL
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I am still thinking of how many books to set up for Goodreads Challenge. I am trying to assess all my others challenges and to make them cross over. I am also planning to read articles and various posts, so I need to be realistic about how books I can actually read for the year. So much thinking just to come up with a number, haha :).
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I had a hard time coming up with an overall number for my Goodreads Challenge, too–I have a lot planned for this year, but I still wanted to read a fair number of books. Crossover definitely helps 😀 Good luck!
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Many thanks :).
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Oh, man! My quilt guild sponsors a UFO (unfinished fabric objects) challenge each year. I never thought of one for books, since I read constantly. However, I can see the value in it, especially for those books that are not “light” reading, but will take some serious thought, highlighting and bookmarking. Thanks for the post.
Robyn Echols w/a Zina Abbott
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I never thought of a challenge for sewing projects–what a great idea! Glad you stopped by, and you’re welcome back anytime 🙂
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Your challenge popped up at just the perfect moment for me. I’ve been mulling over how to go about depleting my monstrous TBR stack. Between reviewing and blogging I’m going to be gentle with myself and only go for one book a month. I should be able to do 12 this year. So, I’m in.
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I started out with 12, too, the first year I did this. One book a month worked nicely and gave me some info to consider for the next year 🙂 Welcome aboard and good luck!
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I am going to stick with 10 books a month. I have more than enough books to keep me busy! I still have my older series to get to – finish Mackenzies & McBrides, Cynsters, Bridgertons, Spindle Cove & some others. I don’t think I can stop myself from buying new, so I will have a combo of old & new reads. Thanks for keeping us going, Cora!
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Sometimes I think it’s you guys that keep me going 😉
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I plan to read 35 books this year. Some of my books have been waiting since 2015, this is because I spent 7 months in a rehab facility after a medical mistake. I have a pact with my daughter and we will check monthly. Thanks for chance to get to know you and your fans.
Margie Vickers
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The monthly check-in is one of the reasons I started this challenge in the first place. I found that having to report what I’d been reading (even if no one read the post) made me more conscious of which books I was reading and how long they’d been sitting on my bookcase or Kindle. I hope you have the same success 🙂 Good luck!
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