Nickelini back for 2012

I generally find that writing books down makes me want to read them less, but I actually have made a mental list of the ones I most want to knock off my TBR, so really, this is a piece of cake. Some of these appeared on previous years' lists (blush). I find that when I delve into my TBR, I either find treasures, or books I've grown away from. Therefore, if I give a book the 50 page try, and it doesn't work, I count that as a success.

1. Oliver Twist, Dickens (READ February & March)
2. A Good House, Bonnie Burnard
3. Away, Jane Urquhart (READ December)
4. No Place for a Lady, Barbara Hodgson (ABANDONED March)
5. Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton (ABANDONED May)
6. the Third Man, Graham Greene (READ April)
7. Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (READ May)
8. Demolished Man, Alfred Bester (READ September)
9. Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel
10. Last Orders, Graham Swift (READ May)
11. Tulip Fever, Deborah Moggach
12. the Preservationist, David Maine (READ March)

8 down, 4 to go.

Alternate Dozen

13. Lives of Shadows, Barbara Hodgson
14. Wild Swans, Jung Change
15. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
16. First Fruits, Penelope Evans
17. Death of a River Guide, Richard Flanagan (READ June)
18. The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler (READ March)
19. Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler (ABANDONED July)
20. China: a Novel, Alan Wall (READ November)
21. Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik (ABANDONED Dec)
22. Natives and Exotics, Jane Alison (READ August)
23. Nora Ephron Collected (READ July)
24. the Hiding Place, Trezza Azzopardi (READ January)

8 down, 4 to go.

One of my main goals this year is to read one really old TBR book a month, and this pretty much covers them (there are some other old ones, but these are the more important ones). So I should be posting a happy update each month!

Looks great, Nickelini. Good luck and happy reading. :)

I also have Oliver Twist on my list!

Good luck with your happy updates and Happy New Year!

I got to one of these books in January: The Hiding Place, by Trezza Azzopardi. I loved this book and can't believe it took me so long to get to it! A gem hidden in the stacks.

I find it's easy to give up on, or lose interest in, TBR books that have hung around too long. Something happens to that initial enthusiasm, or you forget what triggered it in the first place. You give it a try anyway, sometimes reluctantly, and - magic!

Oliver Twist will probably make my 2013 list, after I get Pickwick Papers done this year. Accidental Tourist and Cry the Beloved Country are "eventualies" but not in my TBR at the moment. The rest, I'll wait for your reviews ;)

My February book was Oliver Twist, but I didn't quite finish it due to other reading obligations (damn you, book club!). I should finish it in the next week or so and then I'll start something else from these lists.

I finished my February book, Oliver Twist, yesterday and this morning I stared book 3, The Preservationist by David Maine. The book design for this is stunning, so I hope the story delivers even half the delights.

Will you be writing an Oliver Twist review? Now I'm curious which book design of the Preservationist you have ...

Cecrow - Yes, I comment on every book that I read on my Clubread thread. Here's the link to Oliver Twist: http://www.librarything.com/topic/128278#3274351

My Preservationist is the first edition. I will have pictures and a write up on the book design when I review the book, which should be later this week. Are you familiar with the book?

>11 Nickelini:

A very well-written review. The prevalence of anti-semitism in classic fiction (even up until the 1930s) is quite disheartening, isn't it? Does shed quite a bit of light on how the Holocaust happened, however.

I only finished four books in March (I've been reading a lot of different things and not finishing much). But three were from my lists: Accidental Tourist, The Preservationist, and Oliver Twist. I also tried to read another one, No Place for a Lady, which I decided I will never want to read, but will like to retain as a reference book on my shelf. So that's four off the list.

>13 Nickelini:

I only finished four books in March

Only four? That's four times as many as I've read all year! :)

I knocked off another four since I reported last:

Last Orders
The Stone Diaries
The Third Man
Cry, the Beloved Country -- I made it to p 120 with this one but it was too, too annoying to go on with, so I chucked it. It's still off my TBR pile.

>15 Nickelini:

Good deal, Nickelini. Keep at it. :)

My wife read The Stone Diaries a few years ago; I'll sample Carol Shields eventually but will probably choose Unless. Cry the Beloved Country is another one I intend to try; what did you find annoying?

#17 - Unless is an excellent choice for a first Carol Shields novel.

Most people rate Cry the Beloved Country very highly, but I just couldn't stand the writing style. Here's my review: http://www.librarything.com/topic/135898#3379181

Read one more in June: Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan. It was very good, but it was a bit difficult.

I knocked another three off the list this summer:

Jane Austen Book Club - abandoned it after reading the first section and then skimming the actual Jane Austen bits.
Natives and Exotics
Nora Ephron Collected - I read these essays slowly over several months.

>20 Nickelini:

Nora Ephron Collected

You know that Ms. Ephron passed away recently, don't you?

Oh, yes indeed. I'm a huge fan, so it was a very sad day. I just recently completed a Nora Ephron tour of NYC, including a performance of Theatre in the Park that was dedicated to her.

Only read one of these in September: The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester. This was possibly the one on the list that I've owned the longest and I've been avoiding it ever since I bought it. Way out of my comfort zone, but I can say I've read it and never have to think about it again.

>23 Nickelini:

Way out of my comfort zone

That's not always a bad thing. I've read very little mimetic/non-speculative fiction lately, but I just finished The Scarlet Letter and enjoyed it much more than I thought I was going to.

Yes, it's a good thing to stretch ourselves with our reading once in a while!

Since I last posted in early October, I've checked off China: a Novel, by Alan Wall, and Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik. The second I abandoned, as it just wasn't clicking by page 50.

I recently finished Away, by Jane Urquhart, which was wonderful and I don't know why I let it languish in Mnt TBR for so long. Not sure if I'll get to another book this month or not, so I'm going to summarize my results. My goal was to move some of the older books out of my TBR pile--either move them out of my house, or into the I'll Read This Again Someday pile. Although I didn't get through all 24, I still feel this was a success.

I have 7 still to go. They will most likely all show up on my 2013 list. That means I moved 17 out of my TBR pile. Of those, I abandoned four: No Place for a Lady (which I'm keeping but moving to my reference bookshelf--I may dip into it here or there a some point), and three that just didn't work for me (Cry the Beloved Country, Jane Austen Book Club, & Paris to the Moon).

Of the remaining 13, five were real finds and I wondered what took me so long to get to them (Away, Stone Diaries, the Preservationist, Death of a River Guide, and The Hiding Place). There were three I didn't care for: Demolished Man and the Third Man are just out of my areas of interest, and the Accidental Tourist was dated and sort of silly.

So there you go. I find this little project a great way for me to remember to read some of the older books I've had sitting around for too long.

Glad to hear this challenge was helpful for you. It sounds like you made some great progress.