Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2014

Straight from Howling Frog Books and originally from My Reader’s Block, it’s the 2014 Mount TBR Reading Challenge!

Challenge Levels:

Pike’s Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile/s

Mount Blanc: Read 24 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books from your TBR piles/s
Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books from your TBR pile/s
El Toro: Read 75 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Everest: Read 100 books from your TBR pile/s

Mount Olympus (Mars): Read 150+ books from your TBR pile/s

~  Once you choose your challenge level, you are locked in for at least that many books.  If you find that you’re on a mountain-climbing roll and want to tackle a taller mountain, then you are certainly welcome to upgrade.  All Books counted for lower mountains may carry over toward the new peak.

~  Challenge runs from January 1 to December 31, 2014

~  You may sign up anytime from now until November 30, 2014

~  Books must be owned by your prior to January 1, 2014.  No ARCs (none), no library books.  No rereads.  Audiobooks and E-books may count if they are yours and they are one of your primary sources of backlogged books.

~  You may count any “currently-reading” book that you begin prior to January 1st, provided that you had 50% or more of the book left to finish in 2014.

I am going to go for the Mount Blanc challenge.  I’ve read this many at least for the last couple of years and, if I’m fortunate, I might get to Mount Vancouver.  Wish me luck!

Planning Ahead – 2014

I thought I would get a jump start on the year by listing some of my planned reads for 2014.  Since I’m so easily influenced when it comes to books, it will be interesting to compare my planned reads to my actual reads at the end of 2014.  My suspicion is that they won’t look particularly similar.

Here is the pick and choose list:

2014 Around the World Challenge (dead authors)

  1.  The Saga of the Volsungs
  2.  Fear and Trembling – Soren Kierkegaard
  3.  Les Lettres Du Mon Moulin – Alphonse Daudet
  4.  The Maias – Eça de Queirós
  5.  (book undecided) – Isaac Bashevis Singer
  6.  The Arabian Nights: Tales from One Thousand and One Nights
  7.  The Epic of Gilgamesh
  8.  The Cairo Trilogy – Naguib Mahfouz
  9.  Cry the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
10.  The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
11.  The Story of Stone – Cao Xueqin
12.  The Far Pavillons – M.M. Kaye
13.  Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
14.  The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas – Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

2014 Biography Challenge

  1.  The Lives of the Artists – Giorgio Vasari
  2.  Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin
  3.  Jack: A Biography – George Sayer
  4.  Unbroken – Lauren Hillenbrand
  5.  Bonhoeffer – Eric Metaxas

Non-Fiction

  1.  A Distant Mirror – Barbara Tuchman
  2.  The History of the Ancient World – Susan Wise Bauer (ongoing)
  3.  The History of the Middle Ages – Susan Wise Bauer (begin)
  4.  Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs – Barbara Mertz
  5.  Red Land, Black Land – Barbara Mertz

2014 C.S. Lewis Challenge

  1.  The Chronicles of Narnia
  2.  Mere Christianity
  3.  The Screwtape Letters
  4.  The Great Divorce
  5.  Surprised by Joy
  6.  A Grief Observed
  7.  Out of the Silent Planet
  8.  Perelandra
  9.  That Hideous Strength
10.  God In The Dock

2014 TBR List Challenge

  1.  The Epic of Gilgamesh
  2.  The Rule of St. Benedict – Saint Benedict
  3.  The Cloud of Unknowing
  4.  Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature – Saint Basil
  5.  (the next Rougon book) – Émile Zola
  6.  The Cloister and the Hearth – Charles Reade
  7.  Bleak House – Charles Dickens
  8.  Hard Times – Charles Dickens
  9.  The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton
10.  Defense Speeches – Cicero (finish)

That’s it for now.  There are a few more children’s books I’d like to add, I was thinking of throwing in a few Shakespearian plays and possibly a Trollope series, but we’ll see ……….

No, I do not think I will finish all of these books but if they are in a post, staring me in the face, at least it will help me from getting distracted …………..  I think …………