Florence's 2012 goal

I have already established my goal of 25 books for 2012 and they have been added to the group ticker. I wish it could be higher, but I have to allow reading time for Early Reviewers books (I hope!) and for an award committee I'm on (usually 10-15 entries to be read in February/March, consuming most of those months).

Since I'm a relatively new LT member and don't have dates of acquisition for most of my books, I'm restricting my BOMBS to books published before 2011 (2010 and earlier, which will eliminate the award entries which are limited to 2011 publications). I'm not committing to taking any books off my shelves permanently--just long enough to read them, and maybe lend them to a friend or two. The BOYS challenge led me to several gems that had been languishing on my shelves for several years, and now having read them, I wouldn't dream of parting with them! On the other hand, I did find a few duds that will soon go to new homes to make more room for others (Santa Claus brought me some Barnes & Noble gift cards!).

Don't worry about having to get rid of the books! Everybody makes their own rules for this challenge, and has their own priorities. Most people just mean they move them off their TBR shelf, and I myself want to move the books off my nightstand and ON to the bookshelf!

Best of luck with your challenge!

I really like the way people feel free to mold the terms of the challenge to their own goals and habits.

For me it's all about the books on the bookcases in the living room, the bedroom, my room, and the book-filled room we call the library. Those are all the actual shelved books under my full or partial control (I'm not concerned with other family members' bookcases).

If we started talking about the twenty books on the nightstand and the uncounted numbers in other vertical stacks and in boxes, it would be a whole different concept.

It's being able to set my own goal and parameters that makes this do-able for me. In addition to counting only pre-2011 publications, I'm starting out with the intention of counting only hard copies and not ebooks. That might change, however, because I just learned that the ebooks available at the library where I work can be downloaded to my Kindle-compatible electronic device--free! And there are 80,000 of them.

I am compiling a list of likely candidates which I shall post in a day or two. Some of them are discouragingly thick.

And I won't be posting a list in advance because I don't know half of what's there. The idea is that once I take it off (and list it), it doesn't go back. One-way trip: bye-bye.

I didn't make a list in advance last year. When I finished a book, I just browsed the shelves until something else struck my fancy. This year I might save time by having a list of likely prospects and also might avoid unintentionally overlooking a book I had intended to move higher to the top the TBR list.

Last year I tried, successfully enough, to maintain a balance between fiction and nonfiction. I plan to do that again, not aiming to alternate rigidly between them but neither reading as many as, say, half a dozen in a row of fiction or of nonfiction. It gives me more variation and, sometimes, more impetus to tackle a book that, for some reason, I've been avoiding. I'm also going to keep better track of new additions to Mount TBR.

Florence

January BOMBS:
1. Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden (2009)
2. Spencer Quinn, Dog on It (Chet and Bernie Mystery #1)

I'm on pace toward my goal of 25 books. And at the beginning of January I got 16 books off my shelf to stay - 2 to the university library where I work, 12 to charity (the library couldn't use them), and 2 to a graduate student who has been assisting me.

I like the idea of reading a book associated with the month and, although I haven't joined the "12 in 12" group, I'm aiming to do this informally. My January effort was #1 in the Chet and Bernie Mystery series. Coming up in the second month of 2012: Second Hand Smoke by Patty Friedman.