Over a year ago now, I shared a list of all the unread books on my shelves and proclaimed myself determined to start working through them.
After a good start, the stacks of unread books began to lose their appeal and I slipped back into the habit of buying something new, if it took my fancy.
As this year draws to a close, it seemed like the appropriate time to check in and see just how many of the novels on last year’s list I’ve read…and how many new ones I’ve added to my TBR.
I read…
- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs
- Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
- Big Sur, by Jack Kerouac
- To Have and Have Not, by Ernest Hemingway
- The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
- The Ice Princess, by Camilla Lackberg
- Blacklands, by Belinda Bauer
- Strange Shores, by Arnaldur Indridasson
I started to read…
- The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
I still haven’t read…
- Shock of the Fall, by Nathan Filer
- North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell
- Desolation Angels, by Jack Kerouac
- The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey
- IQ84 Part One and Two, by Haruki Murakami
- IQ84 Part Three, by Haruki Murakami
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami- Beijing Coma, by Ma Jian
- The Dark Road, by Ma Jian
- Red Dust, by Ma Jian
Humans, by Matt Haig- For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
- Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, by Helen Fielding
- Ash Wednesday, by Ethan Hawke
- Italian Shoes, by Henning Mankell
- Voices, by F.R. Tallis
- Wonder Boys, by Michael Chabon
- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John LeCarre
- Wool, by Hugh Howey
- Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, by Haruki Murakami
- The Ghost Writer, by John Harwood
- Talulla Rising, by Glen Duncan
- Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
- The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
The Preacher, by Camilla LackbergExposed, by Liza Marklund- The Dummy Line, by Bobby Cole
The Hangman’s Song, by James Oswald- The Long Way Down, by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman
- The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
- Immortal Beloved, by Cate Tiernan
- Herb and Lorna, by Eric Kraft
- Rites, by Sophie Coulombeau
- Pure, by Julianna Baggott
- Mrs. Hemingway, by Naomi Wood
- Sea Glass, by Anita Shreve
- The Icarus Girl, by Helen Oyeyemi
- Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
- The Gathering, by Anne Enright
- Stoner, by John Williams
- Who is Mr Satoshi?, by Jonathan Lee
- Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me, by Javier Marias
- The Witch’s Trinity, by Erika Mailman
- The Still Point, by Amy Sackville
- Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
- Underground, by Haruki Murakami
- Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
- The Diary of a Nobody, by George and Weedon Grossmith
- Moonfleet, by J.M. Falkner
- The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Eeny Meeny, by M.J. Arlidge- The Boy That Never Was, by Karen Perry
- Redemption, by Jussi Adler-Olsen
- The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
- Rant, by Chuck Palahniuk
- Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
- The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy
- Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, G.W. Dahlquist
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte
- Shadows in the Twilight, by Henning Mankell
- A Bridge to the Stars, by Henning Mankell
- The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles, by Roy Jacobsen
- The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway
- Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell
- The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton
- Death in the Andes, by Mario Vargas Llosa
- Fortune’s Deadly Descent, by Audrey Braun
- The Redeemer, by Jo Nesbo
I added…
- On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, by Thomas De Quincey
The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan PoeA Slip Under the Microscope, by H.G. WellsThe Gate of the Hundred Sorrows, by Rudyard Kipling- Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
- Until Thy Wrath be Past, by Asa Larsson
- Northanger Abbey, by Val McDermid
- Meatspace, by Nikesh Shukla
- In the Light of What We Know, by Zia Haider Rahman
- Radical Self Love, by Gala Darling
The Enchanted, by Rene Denfeld- The Abomination, by Jonathan Holt
I gave away…
- Dead Scared, by S.J. Bolton
Typically, I’ve actually added more books to my TBR pile than I’ve completed – not really the point of the challenge!
Still, I bought quite a few other books this year, but I managed to read them promptly. A couple of the books on my ‘added’ list were gifts or have been borrowed from elsewhere.
Most of the books I did read from the original list, I finished before the end of last year. The most recent book I picked up from my TBR pile was The Book Thief, which I put down at the start of March, intending to finish it at some point.
Oops.
This challenge clearly shows that I’m too tempted by the latest shiny new thing to really crack on with anything that has lost its lustre.
Must do better.
Kristin | My Life as a Teacup says
You keep such detailed track of all this! I think I just add things and before I know it, my Goodreads shelf is 700+. Also oops.
Amy Lord says
If I used Goodreads, my TBR would be out of control!
Kiera Lesley says
I’m planning something similar next year for my TBR pile and I’m really scared that the same thing is going to happen to me and I’ll end up with more books than I started with. The struggle is real!
Amy Lord says
Amen!