LibraryLover23's 2014 TBR Challenge

TBR Challenge List
1. The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman (finished 3/25/14)
2. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (finished 4/6/14)
3. City Of Bones by Cassandra Clare (finished 10/26/14)
4. Eighty Days: Nellie Bly And Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around The World by Matthew Goodman (finished 1/21/14)
5. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (finished 7/20/14)
6. Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches From The Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (finished 4/27/14)
7. Torn Thread by Anne Isaacs (finished 1/24/14)
8. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
9. The Bungalow Mystery by Carolyn Keene (finished 8/24/14)
10. The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (finished 5/23/14)
11. Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub (finished 2/16/14)
12. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
13. In The Garden Of Beasts: Love, Terror, And An American Family In Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson
14. Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane (finished 2/8/14)
15. The Giver by Lois Lowry (finished 2/12/14)
16. A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
17. All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
18. Anne Of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery (finished 1/1/14)
19. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
20. Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach (finished 9/19/14)
21. Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff (finished 12/28/14)
22. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
23. Let The Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor
24. Ladder Of Years by Anne Tyler (finished 1/30/14)

I love making a new list every new year! I tried to use some older titles this time around, in the hope that maybe I'll finally get to them this year. Good luck everyone with your challenges!

Good luck to you too!

I read The Thirteenth Tale last year and loved it.

Black House and The Giver are both great, great, great; A Game of Thrones is on my list this year as well.

I have All the Pretty Horses out from the library right now, I'll be reading it within a couple weeks, for discussion of McCarthy as the January author in Monthly Author Reads :)

Oh good, all these positive comments on the books I've chosen, it makes me more excited to get to them. :) Thanks for stopping by, everyone!

1. Anne Of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery
I'm cheating a bit as this one was mostly finished before today, but oh well. I adore the Anne books, they're a sheer delight to read. This one finds Anne working as a school principal, while also encountering the usual motley crew of characters. A pleasant, happy way to start the year.

I smile at the very thought of Anne. She simply never goes out of style, does she? The only bad Anne-thing I can say is that I did find the movies excruciatingly painfully horrible...and my daughter either really enjoyed them or found my misery quite humorous because we ended up watching every episode. Even that's not bad, as it made a good family memory. :)

>7 LibraryLover23:

I'm cheating a bit as this one was mostly finished before today, but oh well.

That's ok - I'm still working on one that I started last year (Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos). :)

Similarly I was already working on two of my titles. I think it's fair game to list them. Y'know you're gonna finish them this year, so why not? :)

>6 LibraryLover23: Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the Summer Tree, The Poisonwood Bible - I've read them all, but ... lol, what can I say now??

But I did read and enjoy Game of Thrones and The Thirteenth Tale, I'd like to read In the Garden of Beasts, and the Giver is on my TBR pile already. Plenty of opinion-swapping to look forward to.

So happy to see Nancy Drew on your list! I have read most of the series, and I just can't give them away. Have you ever read the Trixie Belden mysteries? I have my Nana's set from the 50's and they are really fun to read.

>8 Merryann: It's funny you mention the movies, I was wondering how they compared to the books and if they'd be worth checking out. Maybe I won't be in too big of a hurry then, lol.

>9 artturnerjr: I'm finally getting around to one of my Early Reviewer books that's been on my list since last year. Oops... :)

>10 Cecrow: You're right, I'm definitely looking forward to the opinion-swapping. And I simply must get to Game Of Thrones soon!

>11 kaylaraeintheway: No, I can't say I have but if they're anything like Nancy Drew I'm sure I'd like them. It's fun to read books that seem like they're from such a different time and place, isn't it? :)

I thought the first movie was good. I still remember what an event it was when it aired the first time. But the two sequels were less successful.

>13 Cecrow: Turns out they have it on Netflix so I added it to my queue. Granted, my queue is as bad as my TBR list but I'll get to it eventually!

>11 kaylaraeintheway: I second your Trixie Belden recommendation. Loved those books when I was younger. Just recently bought a few Kindle versions. Hoping to read at least one soon.

Sounds like I'm definitely going to have to check out the Trixie Belden series... :)

Oh, yes! Trixie Belden is wonderful!

2. Eighty Days: Nellie Bly And Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around The World by Matthew Goodman
Interesting and very readable look at a mostly forgotten bit of history: two women's around-the-world trip to try to beat the time set in the Jules Verne novel, Around The World In Eighty Days. I've wanted to learn more about Nellie Bly for a long time, and Elizabeth Bisland's story was just as intriguing. Although at times the story seemed a little overly detailed, it was still fascinating to learn about these intrepid women and some tidbits of 19th century travel and history.

3. Torn Thread by Anne Isaacs
A harrowing children's/YA story, about a young girl who's forced into a work camp with her sister and other Jewish girls during the Holocaust. The author based the story on her mother-in-law's experiences, giving the book authentic, true life details.

Good YA accounts of that situation are really important, since there's very few survivors left anymore. One I read a few years ago was Ruth Minsky Sender's The Cage, about her own experiences.

>20 .Monkey.: Thanks for the rec! I've added that one to my list.

Quite welcome :)

4. Ladder Of Years by Anne Tyler
As always Tyler's characterization is flawless and as I was reading the book, I found myself so immersed that when I would stop reading it was always a surprise to find that there was a real world going on around me. She's one of the few authors who consistently does that to me with her books. Anyway, this one is about a woman named Delia who, upon finding herself unappreciated by her family, simply wanders away during a family vacation. And again, as with all of Tyler's books, you have no idea where she will end up.

>23 LibraryLover23:, love those authors. Fewer and fewer times the spell works as I get older, but once in a while it still happens.

>24 Cecrow: I managed to have it happen to me again with my next book!

5. Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane
Much like with Anne Tyler's books (see #4 above), I find myself completely drawn into the world Lehane creates with his writing. In this book's case, it's the seedy underside of Boston, and a mystery involving a missing child and the two private investigators who were hired to find her. Great stuff.

6. The Giver by Lois Lowry
Wow, what a book. I can see why it's often a banned book, which made me like it all the more. Jonas lives in a futuristic world where everything is the same and it always has been, but his life is about to change when he's selected to be the next Receiver, the one person who holds all the memories. The ending is a little ambiguous, which means I'm a little ambiguous about it, but it was an unputdownable read all the same.

>26 LibraryLover23:, movie version coming later this year! I've sneaked it onto my list to read before then.

>26 LibraryLover23: - Sounds fascinating. Adding that one to my wishlist right now!

>26 LibraryLover23:

Glad you liked that one. I didn't have high hopes for the book when I began it, but ended up being very satisfied and pleasantly surprised by its ambiguity and darkness.

>27 Cecrow:-29 I thought it was great and, Cecrow, I'm looking forward to the movie too. I'm curious to see how they'll portray that world...

7. Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub
This sequel to the The Talisman finds Jack Sawyer all grown up and entangled in a case involving a serial killer. Unfortunately the killer has ties to the Territories, the alternative world that Jack explored as a child in The Talisman. I have to say, I vastly preferred The Talisman to this one, mainly because the Territories were only a peripheral feature in this book, and Jack spent most of his time reluctant to acknowledge his childhood adventures. But that's not to say it was all bad, the central mystery was rather intriguing (if gruesome), and when they did finally make it to the Territories the action really picked up.

>31 LibraryLover23:

Interesting - I actually preferred Black House over The Talisman (although I enjoyed that one, too).

>31 LibraryLover23: I loved The Talisman, and I wound up reading it only a few mos before Black House came out, by chance, so I didn't have to wait long to continue, but even with the short wait I was very disappointed. It wasn't bad but it was not remotely the amazing journey that Talisman was. :|

>32 artturnerjr:, 33 Yeah, I definitely preferred the wonder of Jack experiencing the Territories for the first time in The Talisman, versus trying to deny it existed in Black House.

8. The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
Well-written non-fiction about how the owners of the Warsaw Zoo hid Jewish people from the Nazis during World War II. In addition to the zookeepers' (Jan and Antonina's) story, the author would go off on tangents on fellow resistance fighters, animals, nature, and other fascinating things.

Sounds like a great premise for a novel. Speaking of zoos, I learned an unexpected amount of things about them in Life of Pi last year; not sure how far I can trust what a novel says, but it had a more positive take than I was used to reading.

>36 Cecrow: I read Life Of Pi a long time ago but I'm afraid I don't remember too much about it. The Zookeeper's Wife was more about the people than the animals, but what they did have about them was pretty interesting.

9. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Delightfully charming story about four women who leave dreary, rainy England to spend a month in sunny, warm Italy. I didn't like some of the characters at first, but by the end you feel as if they're old friends.

10. Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches From The Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
As a journalist, Tony Horwitz spent years reporting on events overseas. After he returned home, he decided to reexamine his boyhood love of the Civil War, which led him on a tour of the South, interviewing people about the lasting effects of the war and how it still resonates today. At times sobering, and at others laugh-out-loud funny, this reminded me of Bill Bryson at his best. There were too many favorite parts for me to list, although the chapters on the oldest living Confederate widow (who was still around in the 1990's!) and the one called the Civil Wargasm (about touring as many historical sites as possible in a short amount of time) comes to mind.

I'm trying to figure out how old that war widow must have been... I can see if she married a veteran when she was very young, how that would work. Even then, wow, not someone I would have expected to encounter in the 1990s.

Ok, so if she married a 60 year old when she was 12, and he joined up in the last year of the war when he was 12...

My great grandfather fought in the war. He was a kid, I can't remember how old. He spied on various groups of the Union army, posing as a local farm kid -- he eventually was caught and sent to a POW camp in Ohio. This really amazes me, as my own parents are now great grandparents. But we had a few generations there where people had their children late in life.

>40 Cecrow:, >41 ipsoivan: If I remember correctly, she was in her teens and he was in his eighties when they married, and he didn't live too much longer after that. But she managed to get a war widow's pension from his time in the service. It's just kind of mind-boggling when you think about it.

>41 ipsoivan: That's fascinating! I'm always interested in learning about the Civil War. I know of at least one ancestor of mine who fought in it and someday I plan to do research and see what I can find out about him.

In my case it was a man named James Wythe who died at Bull Run. He was my great-great-great-grandfather, and I was born in the 1970s. So the teenager who married the veteran spanned at least four generations of my family.

I really should read some American history. I never have, despite being an American, even when I was in school. Maybe that will be one reading project.

I am doing the next best thing: I'm reading a fictionalized history, Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, about John Brown, the Abolitionist. It's quite wonderful, and fills in a big gap of ignorance.

>43 Cecrow: It's crazy to think about, isn't it? And it's cool that you know that bit of family history!

>44 ipsoivan: I also have big gaps in my knowledge of American history (well, all history really). I love it that books can help fill them in. And, being out of school, you can read what you want, when you want. :)

11. The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
Not for me I'm afraid. This one was a slog, I actually skimmed the last 50 or so pages so I could get back to reading books that I enjoy. It was about a married woman who goes back to her hometown to take care of her ailing mother and ends up falling for a monk who lives in the abbey next door. At first I thought it would be an intimate character study on par with Anne Tyler, but I should've known better, no one can reach Anne's level of greatness. It's a shame because I really liked Kidd's The Secret Life Of Bees, just not this one unfortunately.

12. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
It never ceases to amaze me how readable classics can be. Granted, I still want to go on Sparknotes and make sure I understood everything, as 19th century lingo can be a little vague, but overall I greatly enjoyed this one. It was a page-turner for sure.

>47 LibraryLover23:

It never ceases to amaze me how readable classics can be.

That's kind of the definition of a classic, isn't it? If it continues to speak to us decades (or centuries) (or millennia) later, then it's a classic. :)

>47 LibraryLover23:, I have a hard time with Hardy's pessimism, plus that was an assigned book for me, so the memories aren't that happy. I gave him a second chance with The Mayor of Casterbridge and found the same outlook there. I still have Jude the Obscure on my TBR pile and feel determined enough to tackle it (since both of my earlier Hardy reads were during my oblivious university years) but - eventually. It's stuck near the bottom, lol.

>48 artturnerjr: Ha! Good point. I think my surprise came from expecting it to be rather dry, and although it did have some long-winded descriptive passages, I was pleasantly surprised by how edge-of-my-seat I was at certain moments.

>49 Cecrow: Yeah, I can attest to the pessimism of Tess, and if all of his novels are that way I can see how you might not be too excited to rush into any more of them, haha. Although that kind of bleakness sometimes works for me if it's done right...Steinbeck comes to mind on that one. :)

>50 LibraryLover23:, I love Steinbeck (who I've only read recently), so if you make that comparison then you've given me hope that Hardy (whom I haven't) is worth checking in on again - thanks!

>51 Cecrow: Well if it's a battle of the bleakness then I'd definitely give the edge to Steinbeck, lol, but that's only because I've read more of his stuff and he's one of my favorites. I definitely enjoyed the Hardy though and would like to check out more of his stuff sometime...

13. The Bungalow Mystery by Carolyn Keene
Enjoyable third book in the Nancy Drew series. Dated as anything but that's where these books get their charm. (I was particularly surprised when Nancy's dad got into a gunfight with the bad guy.) Charming, fun, light reading.

I dabbled with the Hardy Boys a few years back for nostalgia's sake. One was okay, but more than one was quickly repetitious and shallow. Was still fun reading them to my son though, and exchanging theories with him on the mystery solution as we went along. Of course we strictly read from the original series, which still holds up if you accept they only have 1950-ish technology.

>54 Cecrow: Yeah, I bet books like that would get repetitive after awhile. They're a lot of fun as a palate cleanser, but they might turn out to be too much of a good thing if you read too many at once!

14. Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Although the subject matter of this book is not something I've thought about in much detail, Roach has a gift for making unpalatable things interesting and laugh-out-loud funny. It was definitely gruesome at times, but also eye-opening. For example, I never gave it much thought before how in cop shows and things they can always tell right away how long it's been since a person was killed, but in reality there are people who actually use cadavers to study that sort of thing. And study lots of other things as well. Apparently if you donate your body to science you can't dictate how it will be used, although you can say what you don't want it to be used for. But what really bothered me most about this book isn't what was done to cadavers (I mean, they're dead, what do they care), but I was far more disturbed about what gets done to live animals. Now that is some upsetting stuff.

15. City Of Bones by Cassandra Clare
YA fantasy and the first in a trilogy about a girl who learns there's a secret world of demons, vampires and werewolves, and that she's descended from a line of demon-hunters. I enjoyed this one while I was reading it but found myself reluctant to pick it up between readings, so do with that what you will. It was good, but I don't really have any desire to read the others in the series.

I watched the first half hour or so of the movie and decided, I can't do it. :)

>58 Cecrow: I wasn't sure if I should chance the movie or not. I won't be in any big hurry if I do!

16. Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
Fascinating look at a woman I knew next to nothing about. A lot of what is known about the last Egyptian queen has been wildly inflated over the years, but Schiff does a good job of separating fact from fiction, based on what little evidence there is. Overall I enjoyed it very much.

And that finishes the year for me! I'm happy I got 16 books read. Next year's list is set and ready to go!

>61 LibraryLover23:

Way to go! :)

Congrats on doing so well with your tbr challenge!

>60 LibraryLover23:, I could probably use a book like that. I read The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George and can't hazard any guess at the fiction/fact division line.

16 is a lot better than I've done some years - good job!