As I’ve mentioned frequently over the last few months, in December I signed up for the TBR Double Dog Dare hosted by James at James Reads Books. It isn’t a challenge, really, but a dare to stick with your own books for three full months, January 1 through April 1. I’m happy to announce that I was mostly successful!
Why only “mostly successful?” I’ll get there.
In the last three months, I read nine books, all from my current TBR. I didn’t read anything I bought or checked out of the library after January 1. In fact, I also finished every single book I started. I never went through a period of picking things up and putting them down 50 or 100 pages through and starting something else (although, admittedly, several of the books I managed to read had suffered such treatment from me in the past). Below are the books I read, in order:
January
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, Sara Gran
We Disappear, Scott Heim
The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, Joel Dicker
The Lola Quartet, Emily St. John Mandel
February
Seating Arrangements, Maggie Shipstead
Bark, Lorrie Moore
Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
March
Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
Lake of Sorrows, Erin Hart
While I liked all of them, I enjoyed Skippy Dies and Seating Arrangements the most; I had a difficult time putting them down. The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair was the book that exasperated me the most, but obviously not to the point of abandoning it. And I’m sorry to say—and I have a proper write-up coming at some point in the next few weeks—that the biggest disappointment for me was Lorrie Moore’s Bark. I liked it, it was fine, but it’s far from her best collection. I’ll stop there before I say too much.
With the exceptions of Lorrie Moore and Erin Hart, all of these authors were new to me. I was most pleased to discover Sara Gran, Emily St. John Mandel, and Maggie Shipstead. (Okay, “discover” sounds weird, because obviously I’d heard of them; I own their books.) I’ve got Station Eleven (which just won the Tournament of Books) and Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway waiting for me, now that April has arrived and I can read my new books.
And I suppose that brings me to that “mostly successful” part of the story.
I read nine books from my backlog. For some of you, that would be a terrible number, because you all are much more dedicated readers than I am. But for me, nine is a good number, a nice dent, especially considering that some of those books had been on my TBR since 2009. The “mostly successful,” then, stems from this: while I was reading only my own books, I never stopped buying them. In fact…I bought…uh…21 books. YOU DO THE MATH. But see, I had Christmas money, I had credit, they were on sale–ALL OF THEM.
Er, anyway, I did it. Yea me! Kind of. Oh, shut up.
The Evening Reader 
Oh well! So you didn’t stop buying books! The main thing is to whittle down the TBR books that have been SITTING on your shelves. Right? Totally. So it’s fine. And nine books from your own shelves is brilliant. If I read nine books from my own shelves that I had not previously read, I would be enchanted with myself. (I should do that.) (I’m probably not going to do that.)
Jenny, I was so happy with progress, however small. And I knew that I’d bought a book here and there, but I hadn’t counted them until I wrote the post. Maybe I’ll read them all during next year’s dare–ha!
Skippy Dies, such a wonderful book! And when it comes to getting rid of your backlog – every little helps, I should know!