{"id":805,"date":"2009-12-01T21:24:34","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T01:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=805"},"modified":"2009-12-01T21:24:34","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T01:24:34","slug":"tbr-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/tbr-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"TBR Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read about Emily’s Attacking the TBR Tome Challenge<\/a> over on Of Books and Bicycles<\/a>, and it seems like a useful thing for me, though I suspect I am not going to participate in the not-buying-new-books part of it. These days most of my book acquisition isn’t actually purchasing books, anyhow: mostly, it’s picking up books from the sidewalk (I live in a bookish neighborhood!) or from the kitchen at work (I work in publishing, with other bookish people!). But I have been buying the Proust books as I slowly read my way through them, and want to continue to do so. <\/p>\n

So here we go: 20 books I currently own that I aim to read by December 31, 2010, not necessarily in this order!<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Captive & The Fugitive<\/em> by Marcel Proust, trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin: I’ve picked this one up and put it down a few times but want to pick it up again and get back in the Proustian mood!\n
  2. Inventing Japan<\/em> by Ian Buruma: seems like smart nonfiction; I like smart nonfiction.\n
  3. Waiting for the Weekend<\/em> by Witold Rybczynski: ditto the above\n
  4. Austerlitz<\/em> by W.G. Sebald: I think I bought this for school but only read part of it. But I think I liked it.\n
  5. Eating for England<\/em> by Nigel Slater: picked this up when I was in England for work last year, but haven’t read it yet. It is about food and the UK and seems light and fun.\n
  6. White Teeth<\/em> by Zadie Smith: seems like everyone else has read it already!\n
  7. The Time Traveler’s Wife<\/em> by Audrey Niffenegger: ditto the above\n
  8. The Charterhouse of Parma<\/em> by Stendhal: because I haven’t read any Stendhal.\n
  9. The Great Brain<\/em> by John D. Fitzgerald : because I never read any of the Great Brain books as a kid, and should have.\n
  10. The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman<\/em> by Angela Carter: because I’ve never read any Angela Carter.\n
  11. Elegy for Iris<\/em> by John Bayley: I bought this when Iris<\/em>, the movie, came out, but sadly, didn’t read it.\n
  12. Stone Butch Blues<\/em> by Leslie Feinberg: do I lose queer points for not having read this yet?\n
  13. Seeing Through Places<\/em> by Mary Gordon: I think I read this in college but I sure don’t remember it. I think I kept it because it was good. I’d like to find out!\n
  14. The Green and Burning Tree<\/em> by Eleanor Cameron: I’m excited for this—it’s all about children’s literature—though it will surely just add a bunch of children’s books to the list of books I want to read!\n
  15. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down<\/em> by Anne Fadiman: I bought this in college but never read it; Megan read it over the summer and said it was really good.\n
  16. The Uses of Literature<\/em> by Italo Calvino: mm Calvino. I bought this in college but never read it.\n
  17. Moments of Being<\/em> by Virginia Woolf: mm Woolf. I bought this for a college class on autobiographical writing that I ended up dropping; I kept the books because it was a good reading list, but I’ve never gotten to this one.\n
  18. The Lost Art of Walking<\/em> by Geoff Nicholson: mm walking. I loved Wanderlust<\/em> by Rebecca Solnit and have heard this is another satisfying walking book.\n
  19. Witch Grass<\/em> by Raymond Queneau: when I first bought this I knew nothing about Oulipo but thought I’d like it. Now I know a little more about Oulipo and still think I’ll like it.\n
  20. How to Be an Explorer of the World<\/em> by Keri Smith: I got this for Christmas last year and should have read it by now! This one might actually be tied with Proust for the one of these I plan on reading first—I think this book will be a good start to 2010. If you are not familiar with Keri Smith, go look at her blog<\/a> and prepare to smile.\n

    and a bonus number 21… <\/p>\n

  21. The Namesake<\/em> by Jhumpa Lahiri, because Josh said I’d like it.\n<\/ol>\n

    We shall see how this goes, as I’m not normally very list-directed in my reading habits, which is of course why I end up owning a bunch of books I haven’t read yet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I read about Emily’s Attacking the TBR Tome Challenge over on Of Books and Bicycles, and it seems like a useful thing for me, though I suspect I am not going to participate in the not-buying-new-books part of it. These days most of my book acquisition isn’t actually purchasing books, anyhow: mostly, it’s picking up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalmeta","tag-tbrchallenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}