Reading Mojo? There It Is!

So I went to the doctor and got medication for Beelzebub's Delight (my name for shingles) and although I am still blistered and fire ants patrol my back in shifts and my right breast actually resembles a beast, my reading mojo has returned. I'm happily making my way through Carly Simon's memoir Boys in the Trees, glad that I've got such a good book to finish out 2015. (I almost wrote 2012 just now. Meds making me a little time-warped, I guess.)

I am looking forward to doing the TBR Challenge hosted by James Reads Books. I will try once again to read from my own bookshelf till April. Well, at least till the end of January.

Hoping to get back here again before year's end, but if I don't, Happy Book Year! I appreciate the book blogging world more than I can say.

Bybee's TBR Dare: Smells A Bit Like Fail

One of my Book Year resolutions was to participate in the TBR Dare at James Reads Books and only read my own books -- books that already belonged to me from the beginning of the year till April 1.

 Things went belly-up pretty quickly.  I hit a new record for succumbing to temptation (Jan 17). There were just too many new page-pretties out there, and I couldn't keep my hands to my shelf.  In between diversions, I managed to read 10.5 TBRs:

1. My Brother Sam is Dead - James Lincoln Collier (January 1)
2. The Shining - Stephen King (January 2)
3. The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk (January 5)
4. The Devil's Knot: The True Story of The West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt (January 10)
5.My Name is Mary Sutter (January 14)
6. Before We Were Free - Julia Alvarez (January 20)
7. Dear Coca-Cola - Terry Ravenscroft (February 7)
8. Doctor Sleep - Stephen King (February 14)
9. Esther Waters - George Moore (February 20)
10. Man's Search for Meaning -Viktor Frankl (March 14)
10.5 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft

I don't know why, but I still think that I can complete this challenge successfully.  Next year.

The TBR Triple Dog Dare Challenge

Yes, I'm brave enough to take the dare hosted by James at Ready When You Are, C.B.  It's not bravery I lack; it's perseverance; it's discipline; it's a good attention span.

To read only books I already own from Jan. 1-April 1 shouldn't be that difficult, right?  Yet for the past three years that James has done this challenge, I've let myself be distracted.  Last year, I only made it 11 books into the new year. I even remember the day: February 9, then I was blown off-course by A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, (and it wasn't even worth it).  I tried to right myself with a long-promised copy of Sharp Objects, but then Teri dangled the audiobook of Founding Mothers before me as well as an ebook of Where'd You Go, Bernadette -- What?  I was supposed to ignore lovely literary files dropping into my emailbox? -- anyway, that was that for the TBR Double Dog Dare.

Here I go again, but one thing that Operation Carb Face has taught me is that I need to mentally prepare. I've got 22 days. What steps can I take that will help me stick to my own shelves and not be beguiled by all the nice page-pretties that pop up on other blogs and on Goodreads and in a thousand other places?

TBR Double Dare: Pieces of April

So far, so good.  I'm nearly through week 1 and I've only read things that have been mouldering on my to-be-read shelf.  There's a richness nearly beyond compare stacked up on that 7-foot wooden structure.

 There are hundreds of choices, but of course this contrary bookworm wants what she doesn't have and can't read until after April 1 if the TBR Double Dare is to be successfully completed.

Friday found me poking through a box of book giveaways at the office.  I came home with:

Dust To Dust - Timothy Findlay.  Canadian author!
Salads (recipe book).  Maybe this book will turn my eating habits around forever.  Nah.
The Black Monk - Anton Chekov.  I can never resist those cute little palm-sized Penguin 60s.
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse.  I tried to read Hesse in high school because he was so "meaningful", but quickly lost interest.  I'll go back and see if my lost interest was justified or just the mark of an immature reader.

A day before that, my friend Teri gifted me a Kindle copy of The Gathering by Anne Enright.  I heard that this Man Booker winner is grim and depressing -- everything I love in a novel.

Last night, I went wild on Amazon, in search of Taylor Caldwell books.  I ordered two:  Wicked Angel (1965) and Captains and the Kings (1972).  I also wanted a nice hardcover first edition copy of A Prologue to Love, but the bookseller wouldn't deliver to South Korea.

"All of this is off limits till April 2."
 Repeat as necessary.

I've got pieces of April...it's a morning in January.

TBR Yikes!

Yikes! is right.  There's no other word for my TBR shelf.

Did I say 'shelf'?  It's time to unpack my plural forms.

Final TBR count:  298 books.  Yikes.

TBR Try Again

I've got to try this challenge again.  I only made it to January 24 last year, so there's room for improvement.  This time, the challenge will be approached with great seriousness.  (Actually, C.B. said to have fun, but I'll do that, too.)

Part of the problem is that I really don't have a TBR shelf.  All my books are mingled together in sections:  Baseball*, biography, books about books, Canada, Children's lit, fiction, Flashman, graphic novels, L'Amour, Korea, movies, noir, nonfiction, Pulitzer, presidents.

 Even though it might...even though it will make me whimper, I must re-shelve and designate each shelf  'TBR' and 'Already-read'.  With a big visual reminder in my face, perhaps I can stay on track.  Feeling resolute but apprehensive.  Exactly how many books are on my TBR shelf?  Time to find out.  Stay tuned.

*Mostly baseball, with a couple of books about soccer

TBR Dare

C.B. at Ready When You Are, C.B. is hosting a TBR challenge. This challenge lasts from January 1 until April 1, 2011 and readers can go the distance or pledge to read only the tomes on their own damn dusty shelves for as long as they feel they can hold out whether it be an hour, a day, a week or more.

I really need a nudge like this. My TBR is in danger of turning to dust because I'm terribly slow about getting around to it, so I'm going to resist shiny new objects and other play-pretties dangled before me for the entire month of January. There's enough on my TBR to keep me both entertained with fun stuff and focused on my challenges. Hell, there's even work stuff lurking there should I start feeling ambitious.

C.B. also said something about creating a Western challenge, so I reckon I'll be moseying back over his way while the trail's still pretty fresh.

Summer 2010: The Unread

After taking careful notes and finding out exactly how bloated my TBR shelf really is, I was going to pull all my unreads off of the shelves and put them on the bed and take a picture.

Problem: The bed's not big enough. The photo above is just a small sample of what's waiting.

Total TBR: 224. Yikes. Actually, at this time yesterday, it was only (!) 222. A couple of hours later, I got a package from my mom and in that package (among other things) was a book that her friend Nancy wants me to read called The Quiet Little Woman by Louisa May Alcott. Tuffi and I were both pleased; the stories date back to the 1870s which was yayness for her and I go through stages where I'm All About Alcott.

Later that evening, I was over at Becka and Jim's for Mad Men Monday and I somehow absconded with Becka's copy of Chocolat. I'm sorry, Becka! Once it touched my hands, I couldn't leave without it. As you can see, things are piling up without my even having to work at it. Wouldn't it be nice to have that tendency with money or real estate?

Here are the unread numbers in my special categories:

Baseball books: 5

Biographies: 5

1930s books: 6

Louis L'Amour's Sackett Series: 18

Pulitzers: 21

Canadian books: 11

Korean-themed books: 3

Graphic novels: 4

Strangely enough, even while I'm listing these particulars and implicitly inviting you to gasp and tut-tut about my biblioextremism, another part of my mind is busily planning how I'm going to work those weekly visits to the Bybee-ary into my schedule this fall and another nother part of that mind is contemplating a visit to What The Book?'s new location.

So much multi-tasking is making my brain tired. I need a nap. Oh, right. There's books all over the bed.

Hazy Bookworm

I want to blog, but am having trouble putting together a real post. For now, we'll all have to be content with hazy thoughts that have floated through my mind this past week -- all bookish, of course.

1. Determined to work on my Pulitzer challenge a little more this year, I started reading Angle of Repose (1971) by Wallace Stegner and I'm in book love again. Roll over, Robertson Davies and give Nick Hornby the news. What took me so long to discover this author? He's like John Steinbeck with a bit of F. Scott Fitzgerald thrown in. Even better, when he was a lit professor, his specialty was the American realism/naturalism period: Twain, Garland, Wharton, Crane, Dreiser, Norris -- many of my favorites. I must hit Kyobo bookstore next time I'm in Seoul and grab Stegner's autobiographical novel, The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943). I'm a giddy bookworm; nothing pleases me more than discovering a past literary treasure.

2. Speaking of discovering fine authors from the past, I'm happier than ever that this seems to be my predisposition. Trish's unpleasant encounter with a new author distressed me greatly -- so much so, that if I had any inkling about reviewing new authors, all of that is gone now. It would be thrilling to discover some wonderful new talent all by my lonesome, but oh, well. Let other bloggers and critics and time sort them out.

3. I got curious about Mt. TBR and counted 'em up: 210 unread books! My library is flourishing, but it's gonna get harder and harder to convince people that I'm a poor little expat in dire need of reading material. In addition, I guess it would be poor form to complain about having to move all those books! from Gumi to Seoul in a couple of months.