LibraryLover23's 2017 TBR Challenge

TBR Challenge List
1. The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander
2. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen (finished 3/25/17)
3. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun (finished 9/5/17)
4. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
5. The Power Of One by Bryce Courtenay
6. Suspension by Richard Edward Crabbe (finished 2/18/17)
7. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
8. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
9. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (finished 6/28/17)
10. The Silence Of The Lambs by Thomas Harris
11. The Ghost Of Blackwood Hall by Carolyn Keene (finished 2/4/17)
12. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
13. All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (finished 11/22/17)
14. Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min (finished 10/11/17)
15. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
16. The Blind Mirror by Christopher Pike (finished 10/28/17)
17. The Sixth Wife: The Wives Of Henry VIII by Jean Plaidy (finished 10/1/17)
18. In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd
19. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (finished 12/15/17)
20. Let The Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor
21. The March Of Folly: From Troy To Vietnam by Barbara W. Tuchman
22. The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler (finished 4/13/17)
23. The Once And Future King by T.H. White
24. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

I only read 6 books for the 2016 challenge so I'm carrying over most of that list. I use the "folly" feature on the home page to pick my books randomly, and I find it hilarious that every year it picks a Nancy Drew for me! This is like the third or fourth year in a row. But overall I'm happy with my choices, and I hope to do better this year than I did last year!

I don't know most of these, but Ragtime was pretty good, and Silence of the Lambs and All the Pretty Horses are excellent. :)

>3 .Monkey.: Good to hear!

Nice list! I remember Silence of the Lambs scaring the crap out of me lol I also enjoyed The Prydain books and The Cat Who. I've heard of several others on your list too, this will be fun to follow. Happy reading in 2017 :)

lurking ;)

I've got a Cormac McCarthy book on my lists this year, too (No Country for Old Men). And I also always intend to read American Gods and never quite seem to get around to it.

Good luck and happy reading! :D

>5 Narilka: Thanks Narilka! I'm looking forward to all of them, even the scary ones. ;)

>6 majkia: Lurk away!

>7 artturnerjr: Thanks Art! Good luck and happy reading to you too!

You have many wonderful titles on your list! I'm a big Cormac McCarthy fan, and I loved ATPH. I hope you like it, too. :) I read the Prydain Chronicles not too long ago, and enjoyed them quite a bit. And I loved The Once and Future King, as well.

>9 billiejean: Thanks BJ! I resolve to do better this year than I did last year, which means finally getting to read some of these well-regarded titles.

I have read the Nancy Drew, Garden Spells which was excellent and a couple of other titles. Enjoy!

>11 dara85: Thanks Dara! I've read some other books by Sarah Addison Allen and really enjoyed them. I'm looking forward to this one (and the others on the list) as well!

1. The Ghost Of Blackwood Hall by Carolyn Keene
If my life depended on it I don't think I could accurately describe the plot of this Nancy Drew book. The gist of it has to do with a group of charlatans who swindle people out of money by holding fake séances. But there was also some quicksand, a hypnotized woman who almost drowns, hidden panels, stolen jewels, messages left in a tree, a dog who tracks down his owner, and a fake photographer in New Orleans. Usually I find these books charming (albeit with uncomfortable representations of anyone who isn't WASPy), but this one was a slog since I had no idea what the heck was going on.

Wow - sounds like they packed quite a bit into that one!

>14 LittleTaiko:, and by the sounds of it, more does not always equal ... more.

>14 LittleTaiko:, >15 Cecrow: Exactly!

2. Suspension by Richard E. Crabbe
Historical fiction/murder mystery set in the late 19th century and centered around a group of former Confederate soldiers who plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, a symbol of the North's wealth and power. Hot on their trail is Detective Tom Braddock, a character who, to my mind, had a few too many 21st century sensibilities to be wholly believable. But the book itself was good, a little draggy at times, but overall it held my interest.

>17 LibraryLover23:, that's a tough premise to work with, when you *know* in advance the plot ain't gonna work.

>18 Cecrow: Exactly! At first I thought maybe it would be an alternate history-type thing, or else maybe it was a fictionalized take on an actual occurrence, but alas, neither was the case.

3. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
I'm a big fan of Allen's whimsical, Southern-set magical realism stories. I've read that whichever of her books you read first remains your favorite, which in my case holds true with The Sugar Queen. But I still enjoyed this one very much - two sisters trying to come to terms with their past, figuring out their love lives, and also trying to keep neighbors from a magical apple tree in their backyard whose fruit reveals the future to whoever eats from it.

4. The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler
I love anything Anne Tyler writes, bar none. She zeroes in on her characters so closely that they are fully realized, three-dimensional people, even with a shorter work like this one. But also with her books you've got to expect a pervading sense of melancholy, it's just one of her hallmarks. This one particularly fit that tone, as it follows Aaron after his wife dies, but it is so, so worth it.

5. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Weird but good. After he gets out of prison, Shadow gets recruited in a battle of old gods (Odin, Loki, Easter) vs. new (Media, Technology, etc.). My favorite parts of the book were the "Coming to America" interludes, where you see how immigrants brought their belief systems with them, as well as the whole Lakeside section, which is a town where Shadow stays to hide out but ends up solving a mystery involving missing children. Like I said before, weird but good.

>22 LibraryLover23:, I know I've read it, but I remember almost nothing about it for some reason. Didn't really grab me, I guess. Glad you liked it though!

PS - House on the Rock is a real place, I've been there. That place is nuts.
https://www.travelwisconsin.com/entertainment-and-attractions/house-on-the-rock-...

>22 LibraryLover23: Cool. That's in my TBR pile.

>23 Cecrow: Yes, he mentions in the introduction that it's a real place and I can imagine that it is nuts! It's pretty crazy how it fits into the story too.

>24 Narilka: Hope you enjoy it when you get to it!

That's another book I have been meaning to read.

6. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun
First in a long-running mystery series about news reporter Jim Qwilleran and his sidekick, a Siamese cat named Koko. I thought it was a pretty good read, I liked the setting and the secondary characters. I'm going to try to read the next two books in the series back-to-back, while everyone and everything is still fresh in my mind.

>27 LibraryLover23: I enjoyed those too :)

>28 Narilka: I like cats and mysteries, so it was right up my alley. I'm glad you liked them too!

7. The Sixth Wife by Jean Plaidy
So-so historical fiction about Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth, and final, wife. It was interesting, I didn't know much about Katherine before reading this, and I liked the fictionalized glimpse of Elizabeth I's childhood, but overall I wasn't too impressed. Maybe a biography would have been better.

Have you read The Autobiography of Henry VIII? Fiction told from Henry's perspective (fairly unique that way), with a good look at all six.

>31 Cecrow: No I haven't, but it sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out, thanks for the recommendation!

8. Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min
More historical fiction, this one about Chairman Mao's wife as we follow her from her childhood to her eventual downfall after Mao's death. I'm afraid I didn't care for this one too much, there was some odd phrasing (something lost in the translation between cultures maybe?), along with an unusual writing style where the paragraphs shifted from first- to third-person and back again. But I learned some things about China's history that I didn't know before, so for that it was worthwhile.

>33 LibraryLover23:, yes, interesting subject matter at least. And reminds me I have Amy Tan on the TBR pile.

>34 Cecrow: Amy Tan is good, I've read some of hers before. And I have at least one other of hers on the TBR pile too. Ah, it never ends!

It never ends -- exactly!

9. The Blind Mirror by Christopher Pike
I'm a huge fan of Christopher Pike's young adult novels, but I can't quite say the same about his novels for adults, of which this is one. It has all the classic Pike hallmarks - a blend of horror, science fiction and fantasy, a California setting, track meets, a stoner character, references to high school days, etc. Things get rather bizarre by the end though, although I was curious enough to keep going and see how it all worked out. I will continue to adore his YA books, but I'm probably not going to rush out and read any of his other adult books anytime soon.

10. All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Western coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy who travels to Mexico and learns some hard life lessons about love, friendship, and finding your place in the world. I was in a bit of a major book/life funk when I read this one, so unfortunately it took me forever to read and I couldn't give it the full attention it deserved. But some of the spare, haunting prose did put me in mind of John Steinbeck, which from me is pretty high praise.

>38 LibraryLover23:, I would call either him or Philip Roth the modern author I most respect without having read.

11. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Immaculate writing and top-notch characterization make up this collection of stories about an irascible woman named Olive Kitteridge, and the family members and townspeople who make up her life. My favorite story was the first one, "Pharmacy," about Olive's husband Henry and his relationship with his pharmacy assistant. My only quibble with the book was that the stories themselves were pretty unrelentingly bleak, but for that first story alone, it was worth it.

>40 LibraryLover23:, this sort of makes me think of Winesburg, Ohio, not a book I've read yet but it's one of the 120 on my TBR pile.

>41 Cecrow: I haven't read that one either, although I think I have a copy on my Kindle. It probably is similar, an up-close look at a small town and its inhabitants.

I think I'm going to call it with 11 books read for the year. I have next year's list all picked out and ready to go - off to set things up!

>38 LibraryLover23: I read that one a few years ago, still haven't gotten around to the 3rd one yet though. I really enjoy McCarthy's writing.

>44 .Monkey.: I really like his writing too, The Road was particularly good.

I've been wondering if I'm up for The Road. I shouldn't have watched the movie first.

>46 billiejean: The book is great, but intense. You should definitely give it a try if you're up for it!

Thank you. I'm a big Cormac McCarthy fan and that's the last one I have left to read in the house. I guess I should go shopping.