Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge discussion

Use this space to discuss books you’re reading or that might fit the 9th Read Harder task. Sign up for our new Read Harder newsletter to get recommendations for each task delivered straight to your inbox! https://bookriot.com/newsletter/read-...

the Bible!!? o_O

According to my Goodreads shelf, I added One Hundred Years of Solitude to my want to read in 2010, so I think that will probably be my pick.

I'm going to read Chitty Chitty bang bang💥 next then a different book📔after that is finished🏁

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

I added The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg in 2014.

I'm afraid it's probably 1984

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Judging by my shelf on goodreads I’ll be reading Room

The book that's been on my goodreads tbr shelf longest is Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America, which I will try to get to. I'm also considering picking a book that I've had longer than I've had goodreads but not yet gotten to though.

I'm going to rejigger this to mean oldest kindle book on tbr. For me it's a complex question even then. It's down to two books:

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman which is oldest on my tbr but I purchased the kindle version a couple of years ago.

The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by Stanisław Lem is my unread oldest kindle book purchased back in 2012

Logic For Dummies by Mark Zegarelli for me!

I added over 250 books to my 2021 tbr alone and I have only read about a quarter of it so my choices here are varied.

Effie Briest I think has been on Mt TBR since 1991.....

This one was tricky. Though there are many on my tbr I went with the ones on my 2021 list.

Postcolonial Love Poem

How do you know which ones are the oldest on the gr tbr list?

Little Women has been sitting and waiting for me.

Jen wrote: "How do you know which ones are the oldest on the gr tbr list?"

If you go to "My Books" and then the "Want to Read" shelf, you can sort it by date added. You can either sort by ascending (newest first) or descending (oldest first). On the app, you can reverse the order to see the oldest first. On your activity it will show the date you added it to your want to read. I hope that helps!

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is my oldest TBR since 2012. Now's as good a time as any, I guess.

Looks like I added An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science to my to-read shelf in 2011. I think that a copy of it might even be on my actual shelf at home.

Succubus Blues, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, or The Eagle Has Landed

East of Eden for me! My sister is planning to read Anna Karenina. We're starting our books in January, and we'll see when we finish them...

Elizabeth wrote: "According to my Goodreads shelf, I added One Hundred Years of Solitude to my want to read in 2010, so I think that will probably be my pick."

Me too! I am starting to lose count of how many times I have tried to get through that book, including the times I included it in Read Harder Challenges. Maybe 2022 will be the year I succeed.

I did a quick check of my goodreads "want to read" list and my oldest on there is The Alchemist. I have owned it and wanted to read it since 2016 so this is how I'm going to start the year and the 2022 challenge!

The oldest ones on my Goodreads Want to Read shelf are A Tale of Two Cities and 1984. I've started both at different times and couldn't get into them, but they're obviously classics for a reason, so I'll give one of them another try. Maybe as an audiobook it'll be easier.

Apparently I will be reading Fledgling finally which is excellent news because it is the only Octavia E. Butler book I haven't read AND I already own it.

The first time I can remember seeing a book and thinking I should read it someday is in the first or second grade, when I noticed a copy of A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson on the school bookshelf and was intrigued by it, but never got around to reading it. I've thought about that book off and on ever since, so this might be a good time to check it off my to-do list.

Cay wrote: "I’ve had The Hobbit on my TBR list for the past 30+ years."

I have this on my list as well and keep telling myself I'll get to it but when I say that it becomes 'eventually' and then I never do because of so many other books that I find to be more important.

So I did end up reading Postcolonial Love Poem .

It was okay but I wasn't enraptured with it as I have been with other poets. I found myself getting a little bored but I pushed through that anyways just to finish the book. I highlighted a few things but there wasn't enough to keep my interest.

Maybe I'll have to give it a second read sometime to see if my perspective changes.

The Children of Húrin

This thing has been staring at me for like 5 years. I love Tolkien, but that stuff is from my pre-reader's block days. So I've been reticent to tackle it.

Ooof for me there's quite a list of books I am a bit ashamed the admit I haven't read, that have all been TBR since high school. They are all classics that my particular English classes didn't read: Lord of the Flies, The Grapes of Wrath, A Tale of Two Cities, The Color Purple, Catch-22, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Moby-Dick. I guess the easiest one to tackle would be the first as it's pretty short.

I'm sure I have some older tbr books (probably from some college class) but I'm going with my goodreads to read list. Cleopatra: A Life which is also the first book I dnf'd on goodread or Matterhorn. Not only have they sat longest on my to read shelf here but I also have the physical copies collecting dust at home.

Karen wrote: "I'm sure I have some older tbr books (probably from some college class) but I'm going with my goodreads to read list. Cleopatra: A Life which is also the first book I dnf'd on goodre..."

Matterhorn is one of the best book I have ever read (and I read a lot) but it is brutal! I cried a lot while reading it and I am not a crier.

Glory Over Everything has been on my "For Later" list on the library website since 2016 so I decided to request it and read it already.

I don’t know how this happen or why it happened. The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett is an ebook on my TBR since 2016. I don’t know why I bought it. It is #30 in the series. I have never read Terry Pratchett. You think I would of started with a different book. According to the internet I don’t have to read the series in order. It looks like this is my book.

I just deleted a bunch of stuff off my Want to Read shelf at the beginning of the year. But I left one from 2015 - I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks - because I actually DO work at a public library now! I started in November! 😆

Elizabeth wrote: "According to my Goodreads shelf, I added One Hundred Years of Solitude to my want to read in 2010, so I think that will probably be my pick."

This is a good criteria. I technically added In the Woods second, but it's been on my TBR since before I had Goodreads and I already have it from the library, so I think I'll go with that!

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss has been on my TBR the longest and I’ve been putting it off because apparently he isn’t writing the final book….

So do I read it? Is it worth it? Will the fact the series is not finished shatter my soul?

Sherri wrote: "I don’t know how this happen or why it happened. The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett is an ebook on my TBR since 2016. I don’t know why I bought it. It is #30 in the series. I have never read Terry..."

I read this a couple of years ago, and it is super fun! You definitely don't need to read any other Discworld books. The audiobook recording is also fantastic if you are struggling with the ebook.

I've had The Lovely Bones on my shelf since 2002 when it was recommended to me. I read the first chapter, was rather unsettled by it all and never read further.

Elizabeth wrote: "I read this a couple of years ago, and it is super fun! You definitely don't need to read any other Discworld books. The audiobook recording is also fantastic if you are struggling with the ebook." I loved The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. Even though it was #30 in Disc World it was #1 in Tiffany Aching. I will definitely read more in this series. I really enjoyed the book.

The oldest book on my Goodreads TBR list (which I used because I don't have the faintest idea what it would be otherwise!) was from 2016. It was Good Girls and Wicked Witches: Changing Representations of Women in Disney's Feature Animation, 1937-2001 by Amy M. Davis. I've just finished slogging my way through it, and it was alright. Mildly interesting, but it did wander from the subject a lot.

According to my Goodreads TBR shelf, the book that's been on there the longest is Deadwood by Pete Dexter; but I think I might pick something that when it comes up in conversation, people say "I can't believe you haven't read that?!?!?" Included here are Little Women, The Giver, The Book Thief, Frankenstein....plenty of options.

I finally think I figured out my longest shelf sitter. It's The Portrait of a Lady, which I started reading when I was a junior in High School. In 1987. I have seen the Nicole Kidman movie (because who doesn't see Nicole Kidman movies?) but I stalled out on the book. No excuse not to finish now.

This is pretty random, but I'm going to say that the book Heidi has been on my TBR since I was born! Okay, well, maybe at least since I was old enough to read. My mother was named after the main character and I've never read the full book.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith, which I was bought as a gift in (I think) 2006!

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I only recently joined Good Reads, but I've been keeping a list of books I want to read since 2017, so I used the first book on that list:

The Catcher in the Rye.