Wednesday 28 November 2012

2013 TBR Pile Challenge & Book Buying Ban




This year I’ve decided to sign up for Adams' TBR Pile Challenge. In 2012 I’ve been entirely unsuccessful with the Mount TBR Challenge, but this challenge requires me to read fewer titles, and coupled with my annual renewing of my book buying ban (see below), it seemed worth a go!

 Here’s my list:
  1. True Grit by Charles Portiss 
  2.  Eternals by Neil Gaiman
  3. Till We Have Faces by C.S Lewis
  4. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  5. The Odyssey – Homer
  6. The Outsiders – S.E Hinton
  7. The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors – Michele Young – Stone
  8. Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovich
  9. The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M. Auel
  10. The Phantom Tolbooth – Norton Juster
  11. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
  12. The Merlin Conspiracy – Dianna Wynne Jones.

And in case one of the books on the list disagrees with me, my alternate is Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson.

As mentioned above, I plan to reinstate my book buying ban in 2013, with the added incentive of the last three months of my maternity leave being unpaid and so needing to save as much as possible in the first four months of the year! Exceptions to the ban are if people get me gift cards for birthdays or whatever then I’m allowed to buy books. Ditto with money given as a gift. I’m not actively using ReaditSwapit at the moment, as I decided the other day that the 90 odd books I had listed on there had been sitting around the house getting in the way for way too long so I took them all to the charity shop! However, if I do start using it again this year, I’m only allowed one swap a month, and all other books I want to read must be received as gifts, or borrowed from family and friends or the library.
In 2011 I went three whole months without buying a single book. This year I lasted about a week. Wish me luck for 2013....

4 comments:

  1. Good luck with the book buying ban. Sounds like you have a pretty good incentive.

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  2. I really need to read The Master and Margarita - that book comes up a lot, and I hate not having anything to say about it. They Odyssey and The Outsiders <33 to both! My sister adores The Clan of the Cave Bear (and other Auel books), so I should probably give those a try someday...and yay for Dianna Wynne Jones! I read her for the first time this yaer (How's Moving Castle) and I will definitely be returning for more. Looking forward to your thoughts on all these - good luck with the challenge!

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  3. Hmmmm, see, this is the one challenge I'm really tempted to join again - I did okay last year, nine out of twelve, but have failed utterly this year. As soon as I make a list, I start out all enthusiastic but then wind up desperate to read anything but! TO JOIN, OR NOT TO JOIN?!

    I really enjoyed 'Fear and Loathing', as you may remember, and 'The Outsiders' was probably THE defining book of my teenage years. I have it on my shelves to reread, so I'm hoping beyond hope that it stands up to another reading ten years on! I have 'The Master and Margarita' and 'The Clan of the Cave Bear' on Mount TBR, and I love the sound of 'The Handbook for Lightning-Strike Survivors' too!

    Best of luck - and even though I'm not formally going on a book ban, I hope I can gain some inspiration from your efforts to cut things back! :)

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  4. Woot, nice challenge, I usually try to read as many books a year as possible but I hardly ever challenge myself to read as much as possible.

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