Do the 2008 TBR challenge

Just wondering if we will do a 2009 TBR goal together? I’m feeling quite confident that I can do this in 09! Seriously, I have started reading for pleasure again in the last month or so and I am ready to do my list for 2009. Anyone else going to join me?

Okay, it was not on the list I compiled early in the year but, you know what, it has been on my actual To Be Read List for a couple of years. Now that I have read it, I cannot imagine what took me so long. What a lovely, lyrical book. The kind of read where you don’t want to finish the book because then it will be over, if you know what I mean. The spell will be broken. Real life will return to center stage. I want to go back through the book now that I have finished and highlight some of the passages that made me say, “Oh, my, that was a lovely arrangement of words!” Definitely the best book I have read this year. Maybe in the last few years, though perhaps I should review what I have read before I make such a bold statement! :)

Okay, so it was an audiobook. I have had it on my iPod for more than a year and finally managed to stay awake long enough to listen to the whole thing. Not that it was boring. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It was just that I would start listening when I went to bed and, often, when I do that, I go to sleep in something less than 10 minutes.

The fact is…I loved this story and I am so very glad that my first reading of it was an audiobook. The narrator did an amazing job of capturing the spirit of the young man, Christopher, who is telling this bittersweet story. It was charming and quite intriguing.

but it would have been if I had thought to put witty and popular chick lit on my list. That is right, I picked up The Devil Wears Prada from the book pile at my MIL’s yard sale last weekend and read it in something less than several hours. It was light, it was fun and it made me wonder at the possibility that there really may be people in this world who care that much about fashion and there may be bosses who are so very unreasonably demanding. On that last note, I must say that I was once perilously close to one such boss but I was rescued by someone who had power and authority and who did not abuse those two things. But I digress…I thought this book was had some clever writing but it didn’t offer much meat. Which was exactly what I needed at the time so it worked for me as I needed it to. And isn’t that what reading is supposed to be all about?

I may or may not actually read the books I said I would read this year. The bottom line is, I have (if I am honest) hundreds of books in my home which are on my TBR list. I am going to pick up the one that sings out to me this week and begin to read, and, if it is not on the list, it will be!

I have been reading away at You Remind Me of Me. I finally finished it last night. It is oddly constructed – jumping around in time and person. It is also not a cheerful book. I didn’t really find any of the characters terribly likable, though I wanted to like Troy. Oh, well, it wasn’t an awful book, well, not totally awful. It just wasn’t a great book for me.

On now to The Town that Forgot How to Breathe. Hopefully, a better read for me!

but it sort of fits so I am putting it here.

For many years, I have had a New Year’s Eve practice of visiting the bookstore in the afternoon and picking out a book to read into the new year. (This practice emerged from 10 years of working as a waitress and learning to hate the way so many people celebrate in the new year.) I don’t always finish the book before the new year but I try. This year, I did! And it was a book that I have wanted to read for a long time (years, in fact), though it doesn’t qualify for TBR because I only purchased it yesterday. I read The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy and it was marvelous (well, except for a couple of places where she went on too long about extraneous stuff). It sort of felt like a melding of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Talented Mr. Ripley. I loved the feel of the book – I got lost in the character of Sally Jay. It was a fun read to finish up the year.

I’m only looking forward on this goal. I have browsed my shelves and, so far, I have decided on 9 books and one author with the work to be decided at a later date. I may hold the last 2 slots to see where my fancy takes me. Some of these books have been waiting for me for a very, very long time; others are fairly recent additions to my collection. In no particular order (well, actually, in the order they are in the pile next to me, from the book on the top of the pile to the book on the bottom), they are:
You remind me of me by Dan Chaon
the town that forgot how to breathe by kenneth j. harvey [could the non-traditional, lower-case based title presentations have influenced my selections?]
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Rope Walk by Carrie Brown
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
Brothers by Da Chen
Our Religions Edited by Arvind Sharma
The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner by Douglass Shand-Tucci
An undetermined selection by Neil Gaiman

I am excited. It feels, at the moment, like a good mix. I am not going to handcuff myself to the list this year, however. If a different mood strikes me and I read something else from the shelves where books languish (as I did once or twice in the past year), I am going to record it here towards this goal and not torment myself with my failures! :)

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I didn’t get to from the 2007 TBR Challenge? :) This really is something I want to accomplish and I believe I will in 2008! Thanks, EBear for the invite!