Do the 2009 TBR challenge

For the past several months, I have been working on both “Minders of Make-Believe” and “Fortress of Solitude”. Neither one is what I had been hoping for, and both are proving to be much slower than I had wished.

I think I thought “Minders…” was going to be literary analysis, why the people who decide what “classics” are choose what they do. Instead, it’s a very dry history of “who’s who” in children’s literature. Which, I guess, is all new information to me, and good to know. But not what I had in mind.

“Fortress…” came heavily recommended. But nearly a third of the way into it, and it’s still not going anywhere. And not in a “going somewhere, but I don’t know what it is or why” sort of way, but in a snotty lit-trit-chure fashion where the point seems to be that it’s not going anywhere at all, that life is ust a futile series of incidents without much direction on the protagonist’s part. And… well… I’m over it. That’s not how I live my life, and I’m entirely bored with reading that kind of story, as well.

So I’ll finish both of them. But hopefully the rest of the list will go faster again, once I get through this slow and painful selection of readings. Better luck next year picking titles, I guess.

1. The Jungle Upton Sinclair
2. Children’s Literature Seth Lerer
3. Minders of Make-Believe Leonard S. Marcus ✓
4. The Twilight of the Elephant Elio Vittorini
5. A Game of Dark William Mayne ✓
6. Flatterland Ian Stewart
7. Special Topics in Calamity Physics Marisha Pessl
8. American Born Chinese Gene Luen Yang ✓
9. Walden Henry David Thoreau
10. The Fortress of Solitude Jonathan Lethem ✓
11. Because of Winn-Dixie Kate Dicamillo ✓
12. Memoirs of a Beatnik Diane Di Prima ✓

For my alternates this year, I’m picking books that I have read before, but really do need to re-read.

• Bridge to Terabithia Katherine Paterson
• Five Children and It E. Nesbit
• Only Forward Michael Marshall Smith
• Daphne’s Book Mary Downing Hahn
• The Best of John Bellairs John Bellairs

Had to give up on the 2008 list. Tjanting was just too big to tackle in a month, and then I was so behind, and there were other things that were nearly or just as dense, and… well, let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson in making a Very Difficult TBR list. I am hardcore, but not, sadly, that hardcore.