Mt. TBR Challenge: Quarterly Update

My goal for the TBR cart* was to read 36 books this year – basically 3 per month. I’m on track so far:

Sunday, 3.27.2022 & first quarter update:

  1. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain; 2/11/2022
  2. My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather; 1/23/2022
  3. Waiting for Willa by Dorothy Eden; 3/6/2022
  4. Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin: 2/17/2022
  5. Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper; 1/5/2022
  6. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper; 1/21/2022
  7. Greenwitch by Susan Cooper; 3/6/2022
  8. The Grey King by Susan Cooper; 3/12/2022
  9. The Maine Massacre by Janwillem van de Wetering; 3/9/2022
  10. A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman; 3/27/2022

I have two reads from the TBR cart that I’ve been working on:

  1. Tempest Tost by Robertson Davies, which is the first book in the Salterton Trilogy and
  2. A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman, which has been my bedside book for a couple of weeks. I’m reading a chapter every few days. I would really like to finish this by the end of March, so I think I will buckle down. I only have about 3 chapters left.

As part of the quarterly update process, I have also decided that I will take the opportunity to review what’s on the TBR cart, and add books to fill the cart, but also to replace books that aren’t sparking my interest at all. So, my current cart, with new titles in red:

Tier One:

  • The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman
  • Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
  • Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner
  • The Quiet American by Graham Greene
  • Death in Rough Water by Francine Mathews
  • Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
  • Miss Buncle Married by D.E. Stevenson
  • Mariana by Monica Dickens
  • The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly
  • Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper
  • Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
  • Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones
  • The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart
  • The Bowstring Murders by Carr Dickson
  • The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
  • Professor Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto

Tier Two:

  • The Semi-Attached Couple and the Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden
  • An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym
  • The Road to Paradise by Victoria Holt
  • The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
  • The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
  • The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
  • The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander
  • Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander
  • The High King by Lloyd Alexander
  • The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman
  • The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman
  • The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith
  • Beloved by Toni Morrison
  • My American by Stella Gibbon
  • The Matchmaker by Stella Gibbon

Tier Three:

  • Howards End by E.M. Forster
  • Shadows Waiting by Anne Eliot
  • Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
  • Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
  • A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
  • The Shadow of the Lynx by Victoria Holt
  • The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
  • The Day of the Scorpion by Paul Scott
  • The Towers of Silence by Paul Scott
  • A Division of the Spoils by Paul Scott
  • Alanna by Tamora Pierce
  • In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce
  • The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce
  • Lioness Rampant by Tamora Pierce

I enjoyed re-reading/reading The Dark Is Rising Sequence (although I still have book 5 to finish) so I decided to pull a very few books, but to add two additional YA series that I have never finished: Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series and the Alanna series by Tamora Pierce. In addition, I bought the whole Paul Scott Raj Quartet at a UBS many years ago (in fact, the receipt is still in the books – it was 2013 when I bought them) and it has been hanging around, waiting to be read. This seemed like a good time to add them to the cart!

*For those of you who are wondering about the handsome ginger pictured, Sora is our youngest cat, named by my son after a character in his favorite childhood video game franchise of all time, Kingdom Hearts. Yes, his tail is incredibly long!

4 comments

  1. What a lovely cat! I have one with a long tail with a white tip to it! There is a final Raj Quartet book you will need to get too, to finish it off. I wonder what I’d make of it re-reading it. I did enjoy it, though. I just ticked another one off my TBR challenge but I still have 41 to read by 5 Oct and too many NetGalley books that are NOT on the list!

    1. I was amused to see the receipt in the book – I wouldn’t have thought that it had been sitting on my shelves for NINE years!

      Cats and books just seem to go together in my mind.

  2. So many great books on your list — Howl’s Moving Castle is one of my all-time favorite books (also a great film adaptation!). Also love the Persephones on your list, and I’m hoping to read My American some time this year, it’s on my TBR Pile Challenge list.

    Every year I swear that at least 50% of my books will be from my owned and unread shelves, and every year I fail. I’m actually at exactly half and half this year so I may actually achieve this goal in 2022!

    1. I know exactly what you mean. I can’t resist buying more books, and then there’s the public library, which also keeps me swimming in possibilities.

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