TBR Challenge – Page 8 – Cora Lee, Regency Romance Author

Cora’s TBR Challenge Check In

January 29, 2015 Cora Lee

Okay fellow readers, we’re one month in–have you been a tortoise or a hare?

I seem to have averaged the two. I didn’t do any reading at all over the holidays, and that lag lasted a couple of weeks into the new year (hangover from spending all that time with the family 😉 ). I also made a point to finish a series of new-to-me books I’d started because the first one was so good (the Daughters of Erin series by Laurel McKee, in case you were wondering).

But then I completed a whole book from the old TBR mountain in one day. I also recently started two others that are more historical fiction + romance than just historical romance–the writing style is different, the story is a bit more densely packed, and the cast of characters is larger. These are going to take some time for me to get through, but they’ve both been waiting a couple of years, so the least I can do is give them a thorough read 🙂

How has your reading month been?

Books, TBR Challenge

Cora’s TBR Challenge 2015

January 6, 2015January 23, 2015 Cora Lee

In the immortal words of John Lennon, “another year over and a new one just begun”. It’s time (if you haven’t already) to make those resolutions for 2015–including one for your TBR pile.

My TBR Challenge was such a personal success last year that I’m doing it again! 2015 is very uncertain for me–my teaching career is up in the air right now (Will I ever teach again? When? Where? How? If not, what else will I do?), and thus so is my writing time (How much energy will I have to devote to a day job? How will my health hold up? The bills have to be paid, but will I be too tired to do anything else?). So this year’s TBR Challenge is a way for me to take a measure of control in addition to finally reading some of the books languishing on my shelves and Kindle.

I’ve tweaked the rules slightly for this year:

1. How many books from your TBR pile will you read? I’m upping my goal to 18 books this year over the 12 I chose for last year. I have so many books floating around the house that 12 felt like just a drop in the bucket, and I’m hoping to make more headway this time around.

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 also getting out of hand) before August 1, 2014. 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 last year, and kind of defeats the purpose of the challenge.

3. How will you hold yourself accountable? Like last year, I’ll post here once a month to share my progress and see how you all are doing. I found the Goodreads shelf and the dedicated page on this blog were enormously helpful, too. I’m a very visual person and being able to see the collection of books that I’d read gave me a nice sense of accomplishment, which made me want to read more TBR books 🙂

Who will take up this challenge with me? Who will commit to wading through the mountains of books you’ve spent your hard-earned money on, but never read? Leave a comment here or on the 2015 TBR Challenge page with your goal: how many books will you tackle this year?

Books, TBR Challenge

2014 TBR Challenge Finale

December 31, 2014December 31, 2014 Cora Lee

2014 is coming to an end fellow readers–did you meet your TBR Challenge goal?

My initial commitment was 12 books from my heaping TBR bins/kindle/iPod. I read 21 books that were six months old or older (yay!). Looking back through the Goodreads shelf I made, I can see that I favored paper books over electronic ones, and that no audio books made it into the fray. I know what happened with the audio books (I’m still working on one enormous one, and half-listened to a couple as I drifted off to sleep at night), but the paper vs. electronic count surprises me a bit. E-books are physically easier to read for me–no mass market paper back to squint at or pry open, no weighty hardcover to lift and hold. But I’m something of a tactile person, and there’s nothing like holding a real book in your hands 🙂

I also mentioned in my original post that I’d wanted to go with a small number of TBR books in order to leave room for other reading challenges and writing time. I completed the other two challenges I began, and incorporated TBR books into both (two birds, one stone right?). But the writing time never materialized. That’s something I definitely need to work on next year.

Overall, I think the TBR Challenge was a good idea. Knowing that I was posting updates to this blog and keeping a public Goodreads shelf helped motivate me. When it was time for a new book I’d find

myself digging through my bins and reading blurbs, searching for one that still sounded interesting months (and in some cases, years) after I purchased it. That was a lot of fun–like a kid sampling treats in an ice cream shop, looking for just the right flavor–and something I didn’t realized I missed until I started doing it again. In all the tumult of 2014, digging through my TBR bins was also comforting for me, and gave me a sense of accomplishment as the piles in some bins shrunk. I have no idea what 2015 has in store for me, but I’m going to make sure a TBR Challenge is involved 😀