Mount TBR 2022 discussion

I don't usually make a list but it seems lately that I have a pattern where I stick to a certain topic/gist for a bit and that keeps me going faster than jumping from one random topic to another. For example, reading books about mental illness/abuse kept me going up to eight titles in a row now towards the end of 2021; in summer I stuck to thriller titles up to six in a row.
So here's titles I listed a few days ago when I was trying to figure out how to avoid the book slump I've experienced a couple of times in 2021...
I just finished Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life
I'm currently reading The Bell Jar
Maybe I can squeeze in Half Broke Horses before 2022 otherwise this will be my first read in January 2022.
Followed by:
The Love Wife
The Shoemaker's Wife
The Nightingale
The Poisonwood Bible
Children of the Jacaranda Tree
My Name Is Iran
The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between
My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq

That's as far as I can plan for now...

Looks like a good start! Good luck with your climb.

Bev wrote: "Looks like a good start! Good luck with your climb."

Thank you!!

1st book for 2022 down!! Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. It was meant for 2021 but I didn't make it. Such a good book, just like her The Glass Castle. She's a mesmerizing storyteller. I have to read Silver Star soon. For now, on to the next one.

2nd book is thrown out the window - The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. So terribly amateur my brains can't take it. It's nice to be able to weed out the ones I don't care for from the pile.

3rd book is so beautiful! The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani. Why have I never heard of her?! This is going really quickly because she's very descriptive with landscape, emotions, and the characters are so lovable. Such a gem.

4th book begins - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I had to take a break though because I went through a rough patch and needed a book that could distract me. This wasn't it. So I started on my book club pick, In An Instant by Suzanne Redfearn which turned out to be unexpectedly superb. Afterwards I couldn't come back to The Poisonwood Bible so I chose a book I've had on my shelves for years - The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell by Loraine Despres. I made it to page 140 before I decided that it's a waste of time and tossed it. Another one weeded out. It started off as witty until I noticed some amateurish dialogue and decided I could waste precious time plowing through or pick another book.

Pick another book I did and so my 5th book is - The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. I've been wanting to read this book since I went to Burma in 2012. It was so beautifully written, haunting, tragic, and nostalgic.

Weeded 6th book out of my shelf - Hell's Belles I can't read trash books lol. Maybe I'm a book snob.

7th book on the mountain is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and it was really good. I enjoyed learning a new perspective, and it was fun hearing the voices and accents of friends in my head as I read.

8th book is Main Street by Sinclair Lewis - classics are a balm to the soul. So goooood!

I tried and ended up throwing out Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah - so 9th down on the trail!!

10th book off the shelf is Dawn's Prelude by Tracie Peterson. Too many good books to read, I cannot waste my precious time on amateur stuff.

11th book is Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I've always wanted to read her work because of the raves in the classic community but I cannot enjoy it unfortunately. I know this is a masterpiece but I also think not all classics are for everyone.

12th book is Pachinko by Lee Min-jin. It's going good so far!

Maslela wrote: "11th book is Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I've always wanted to read her work because of the raves in the classic community but I cannot enjoy it un..."

I’ve struggled with Mrs Dalloway several times - it’s often a set book on English courses, though I haven’t been forced to teach it myself yet, thank goodness! Gradually I seem to be getting better at reading Virginia Woolf, but I don’t find it easy to simply enjoy her work.

Other classics are a joy, though. Elizabeth Gaskill’s North and South is quite big and doesn’t have a particularly intriguing blurb, but I really enjoyed it.

I also loved Half of a Yellow Sun, by the way. So since I loved and struggled with two of your recent reads in the same order as you did, I just thought I’d say, please don’t let Virginia Woolf turn you off classics in general!

Dani wrote: "Maslela wrote: "11th book is Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I've always wanted to read her work because of the raves in the classic community but I ca..."

Maybe I'll try it again someday, or try another title. I have loved classics since I was a child! I also took a little bit of English Lit when I had the chance to in school. I don't know if you noticed but I read Sinclair Lewis for the first time for my 8th book. I recently read Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet, and just now finished Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence. I have Gaskell's North and South but haven't read it. I have about 290 books I have to read hence this challenge. The problem is I keep acquiring more books so the number hasn't been going down, haha.

13th book!! My lucky number. I read The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala. I got this from the kids for Mother's Day last year and finally got to it. That's amazing considering most books stay on the shelf for 9 years or more before I get to it. It was a very interesting read! I love Cuba and miss it dearly.

14th book - In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I picked this to read on my adult only/date vacation with the hubs and it was so good. I could not put it down which is perfect! We read a lot by the beach and by the pool, and we enjoyed the vacation the rest of the time by sightseeing and eating good food. I love true crime and I've always wanted to read Capote.

15th book - Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence is so much better than Lady Chatterley's Lover. I'm so glad I gave Lawrence another shot. I love this book even though it was quite depressing underneath it all. So beautiful. Now I may be stuck on depressing books. Why not pick up a Wally Lamb then since I'm already there?

16th book off the mountain - The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. I love him but this was sorely disappointing all the way to the end. So sad.

17th book off the mountain is Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. So captivating, depressing, and a tragic love story indeed!

18th book off the mountain is yet another sad, depressing book - Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. How is he able to put into words everything that is at the core of human?!

19th book *pant, pant*... Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray! I've been wanting to read this but keep putting it off but here we are seven years later.... very interesting, and witty!

It's August and I'm now panting, not from the Texas summer heat because I'm keeping myself indoors most of the time but from this never-ending mountain I seem to be on. It seems to me that as soon as I am down five old books, I have acquired five new ones. Sometimes it's a gift, while other times it's a hard to pass up find at the library sale for fifty cents.
It's August and there's sixteen books left on this mountain. I don't know if I can make it! Maybe it's time to strategize.

20th book is The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar. So goooood!!! I think it's time to move into Indian authors for a while even though there are still a few classics literature I was considering like Brothers Karamazov, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Egoist.

21st book - The Consequences of Marriage by Isla Dewar. Weeded out as it turns out that it's too simple and I didn't quite enjoy the void it created with its simplicity.

22nd book - Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez. I've had it for eight years at least and have always wanted to read it. I kept saving it because I was sure it'll be good which didn't make sense. What an interesting read it turned out to be!

23rd book - The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo. A pretty good Malaysian historical fiction and we don't have much of that in English. So proud of her!

24th book - The Empowered Wife: Six Surprising Secrets for Attracting Your Husband's Time, Attention, and Affection by Laura Doyle. I don't usually read self-help books but I really wanted to and needed to read this to help me achieve relationship goals. It is brilliant, and just common sense but honestly we forget a lot of the good stuff when we are in our feelings. I love the approach. Really good self-help material.

Had to read a book for bookclub so couldn't add that to this list. It was McConaughey's biography which was pretty good!

Anyway, 25th book on this mountain - Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins. It was a gift from hubs for my birthday last year. Since I'm on a non-fiction and bio thread, I might as well knock this one out. It's very interesting so far.

26th book I picked - Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. A classic literature group I'm in picked this title for discussion and it's been on my shelf for a while so I thought I'd read it since I wasn't sure what to read after Goggins'. I'm twenty-four pages in and finding it a bit difficult to visualize.
Update: I tried really hard for 25 pages more but it just goes on in the same strain. I get it that it's an addict's perspective but it isn't interesting at all and there's nothing to relate to. I tried flipping through to chapters ahead and it was just continuously devoid of material that would be worth my time. I consider it read and off my TBR pile!

I read American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins for bookclub and borrowed from the library so couldn't count it towards this challenge even though it was on my Want list. Afterwards I had no idea what to read but was leaning towards Papillon or Thunderstruck. I made my husband pick. Therefore, 27th book is - Thunderstruck by Erik Larson.

A little disappointed that Thunderstruck is boring compared to the other books by Larson. I have gotten into a reading slump. It took a while to pick another book so I decided to keep it light and fun so I can get out of the slump.
28th book off the pile is The Village Bride of Beverly Hills by Kavita Daswani. It was very enjoyable!!

It took a couple of days to pick another book after that fun one. This slump must have something to do with needing a vacation but that's too much work with kids and a lot of money... or it's just a burn out from the daily, sigh. I've got to get myself together.
Trying to get into Halloween mood so 29th book is The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood. After picking it I noticed Stephen King's review of the book on Goodreads - interesting. Well, it's pretty good so far.

The Wicked Girls was quite interesting and original. Book slump again for a few days. Afterwards I managed to pick out 30th book - Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. His writing is delicious however I was slow finishing this because I was being lazy and spent a lot of time scrolling on my phone. I was doing so good all year! Now I'm so close to the top of the mountain I'm such a slacker and I have no idea why. If I had kept the momentum, I'm positive I'd be just a book or two to the peak by now. Grrr.

I was reading some books from the library so I couldn't update here. Most were bad so that was a waste of my time. Ugh. I finally went to my shelves and picked up 31st book for the mountain - The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. Finally a good book because it's written well and has a surprising plot twist.

32nd book - 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. I've been meaning to read this but kept putting it off maybe because I haven't gotten over his novel IT which was so thick and I hate mass paperback edition. I find that with his books, there's not many format options so here goes. I need to find out why everyone says this book is so good.
Update: OMG. He creeped me out with this one, it was SO good. The fear was in me, not just in the book. It's so real, I kept looking behind my back and imagining movements while alone in the house. Eeeek!

33rd book - The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between from my birthday book stack in 2019. Time for some memoir.

34th book - The Company of Women by Khushwant Singh. I've never heard of him but apparently he is a very widely read author in India. It's pretty good so far.

I managed to begin and finish my 35th book over the short Thanksgiving (US) break!!! It was A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve. My first time reading her and it was pretty good. I almost abandoned it because the beginning wasn't too impressive but I'm so glad I read it all!

It was my last two days of Thanksgiving break and I needed to pick another book which is also the peak of MT. VANCOUVER!!! I decided on 36th book - The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve. It is pretty emotional even though nothing much really happens but the reflection on marriage is really striking me at the core and is pretty depressing, not to mention that I'm already a bit sad and lonely lately. I can't believe I actually made it to the peak!! But sadly I have acquired just as much or more within the year and now back to the same number I started off with my TBR mountain. Very silly of me!