Mount TBR Challenge Checkpoint!

Apparently this is the second checkpoint for the Mount TBR challenge, but I think I must have missed the first one. Oh well. I signed up for this challenge originally as a way to try to encourage my book buying ban, which promptly went out the window within about two weeks... :-/ Still, I'm doing ok with the reading aspect, if not so much with the reviewing, and it is making me feel good to read the book that have been on my shelves for so long. It isn't quite achieving the desired effect of helping me thin down the amount of books in the house, partly because a lot of what I'm reading is so good I want to keep it, and partly because I am unable to stop myself from buying more books. I have to say, this is not entirely my fault. This past weekend I left the house on Friday morning and came back Sunday evening, having bought NO BOOKS, with a grand total of 11 books. So it was my birthday weekend, but you know, it seems a little like it's out of my control...

Anyway! The ACTUAL point of this post is for me to tell you what I've read so far from my challenge list. I signed up for Mt Vancouver, 25 books, and have read 9.95 of them (I'm nearly done with One Day), so I'm a bit behind where I need to be, but I'm hoping to get to a few more (1602, Hideous Kinky, Shirley, North and South) in the next month or so, which will be good.


So far my favourite from the list is probably The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, who is swiftly becoming my favourite Bronte. For rambling about it in varying degress of enthusiasm, go here and here. The weirdest thing I've read has got to be Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I still can't decide whether to go out and buy all of his books, or to run away screaming... Most disappointing is The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, hands down. I was expecting it to be really great and thought provoking and it just wasn't. And the most surprising book I've read for this challenge was Alison Bechdel's brilliant Fun Home, from which I expected absolutely nothing, and which delivered beyond all hopes for a graphic novel which isn't Persepolis.

So there you have it. I'm doing better with this challenge than I'd expected, but not as well as I should be. I haven't reviewed nearly enough of the books I've read (4/9), but I have at least been reading them, and even getting rid of some, which clears shelf space, which has got to be good! :-)