December TIOLI: books that have been on your TBR the longest

Since we're getting to the end of another year, here's a good chance to clear out some of the books that have been hanging around on Mt. TBR the longest!

This doesn't have to be an exact science - but I am sure that you know when you look at your shelves, which are the books which have been hanging around and have never quite made it to the top of the pile. In my case, I definitely own some unread books which I got when I was an undergraduate - which makes it at least 15 years ago. I've even turned up two books - Vol 1 & 2 of A History Of Their Own - which I think I may have been given when I was still at school...

Do you notice any trends when you look at your oldest TBRs? Looking through for this challenge I have realised that most of mine are history books, although I've found a couple of fictions.

I wonder how many of the books listed for this challenge will end up read by the end of the month! Let us know, why do you think you'd left the book unread for so long? Was it worth the wait when you finally got to it?

My list of books which could be covered by this challenge include:

A History Of Their Own, as mentioned
Gargantua and Pantagruel, a birthday present in 1993!
The Invention Of Tradition, a gift from my then boyfriend... who I stopped seeing in 1995
The Trotter-Nama, The Swimming Pool Library, a couple of the few fictions I've definitely had since student days
Emperor of China, a book from my undergraduate reading list
The Cheese And The Worms, a book I bought after hearing the author give one of the Oxford Amnesty lectures in 1994
A History Of The Arab Peoples, Never Again, The People's Peace, Religion And The Decline Of Magic - more histories

I've had an illustrated edition of Cider with Rosie since I was a teenager and as I read Laurie Lee's other 3 memoirs this year I suppose I should really go with this one.
Looking at the titles on your list above, I can understand why we do avoid this part of Mt Tbr - well they do form part of the foundations too and we don't want to mess with that.

I think my downfall is best expressed by this quote from Schopenhauer: "Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents."

I love the idea of Mt TBRs toppling! I have been to several second-hand bookshops where the space available to customers has got smaller and smaller as new piles of books have been built up, and if you did want to look at one of the books at the bottom of the pile it was a major logistical operation... never mind trying to get to the piles or shelves at the back.

Lol, a bit like the scene in my bedroom currently! I was sure I'd had my CwR for longer but it seems that it was published in the illustrated edition in 1984. I still have to dig out my copy but I had a quick check over on the abebooks site.

I'll be reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (provided the library copy hasn't been lent out by the time I get to the library this Friday) for this challenge. It's been on my list since 2000, so high time to read it!

Sounds like a good time to pick up A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin, the 3rd in the Fire & Ice series. The 4th one hadn't come out when I got it, so it was probably 2003 or so. Excellent books, but they are rather long. The main reason I haven't read it yet is just that the series isn't finished yet. Stretching them out, as it were :) But it's been calling me for a while now, so...

I'm impressed to see we have a book dating from the 1970s - let's see if someone can beat that...

I just took down V1 of A History Of Their Own and found a bookmark at p286 - a letter postmarked April 1994! So it's not just the oldest book on my TBR but also the one that's been longest half-read.

I would just like to congratulate Megi53 for the first completion of a book in this category!

I decided that what I was going to do with my pile was to give each book a serious 30 minutes of reading, and then see whether I wanted to carry on with it.

Two of them have not passed the test, but I am onto one now that I think I will be completing: Emperor of China: self-portrait of K'ang-hsi by Jonathan D Spence.

@9: Thank you, wandering-star!

I think Dec. 2008, when I bought Varjak Paw and its sequel after someone at BookCrossing raved over them, is the latest date anyone's listed for this challenge. I recently found a book I got from BookCrossing in Dec. 2006 to add, though.

I have dozens of old children's and YA books belonging to my grown son and daughter that I could read for this challenge. But, no! I decided that from now on I was only going to count my own books as part of Mt. TBR (What a relief. Now I can stop feeling frustrated when the kids go on a book-buying binge and then store them here instead of at their apartments;-)).

ETA: I just noticed your questions in the first post. I guess I procrastinated on The Outlaw Varjak Paw because the first one wasn't my cup of tea (except for Dave McKean's illustrations; they are fabulous). As it turns out, I didn't care much for either text -- way too violent for my taste -- but wouldn't have missed the pictures.

I received several Australian books for Christmas 2006, since I told relatives about a longstanding dream to visit that country. I burned out on reading so many of them before I made it to Going Inland (and Eucalyptus, the very last title left from that bounty).

I feel like a bit of a light-weight since my book has only sat on my shelves since 2007. Before I joined LT my TBR shelves consisted of 30 - 40 books, now they are sitting around 400 (counting my Kindle). Mr. D'Arcy's Daughters, my book choice for this challenge, is a left-over from my pre-LT days.

I just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which has been on my shelves since the late 1990s and has been on my radar screen even longer. I had read the first few pages a few times, but the book didn't really grab me. I'm so glad that I picked it up when I had time to sink into it and read it slowly but steadily. In the end, I was completely engrossed. This is a fascinating, multi-layer story. I'm so glad that this challenge pushed me to read it!

Finally!! I finished The Heptameron! A book I've had on my TBR shelf for, oh, probably 12 years. It was not what I had expected and a much lighter read than I had anticipated. My review will need to wait till after Christmas however because it's getting a bit hectic around here.
Thanks for setting up this much needed challenge!

I'm visiting my parents in suburban Philadelphia for the Christmas holiday, and I've started reading Intern by Doctor X, the pseudonym for Alan E. Nourse. I borrowed this book from The Free Library of Philadelphia, and it's a wee bit overdue: I should have returned it on Aug 31, 1985.

You better hope for an amnesty day, Darryl

I'm so glad that other people are actually finishing the books they are reading for this challenge. I have started several, and discarded them from my TBR pile, so in a way the challenge is doing what I need it to, but I would really like to finish one as well. I don't think I've found it so far...

It's not that the books I have discarded were necessarily bad, but a lot of them are non-fiction and quite dense (hence the long wait on Mt TBR), and I'm just no longer interested enough in the subject to make it worthwhile ploughing through.

Darryl - you'll just have to sneak it back onto the library shelves when no-one is looking!

>15 majkia:, 16 I'm not worried. If George Washington can get away with it, so can I!

George Washington's library book returned -- 221 years late

I am slowly but surely reading through The Poisonwood Bible. I really like it, but it is not a book to read straight through. I am, however, confident I will be able to finish it this month, although I am not so sure I can finish it before I go on holiday on December 27. I really want to though, as I do NOT want to try and pack this chunkster in my suitcase. That's what my Kindle is for!

I finished A Storm of Swords. I like the first two in the series better, but I'm glad I finally got around to this one!

Eeek! I have just realised that the one book I was hoping to actually finish for this challenge won't be done by the end of today. Will I be the first challenger who doesn't complete a book in her own challenge even though other people have read some? Still, as a result of this challenge about half a dozen books are gone from TBR, which I suppose was the point... But I hadn't been expecting it to be quite so hard to finish one. I think I might make this into a personal challenge for next year.