Among the many challenges this year I included the BookShelf Gargoyle’s Oddity Odyssey, I signed up for the award of common or garden weirdie with a target of six books, with no particular concerns for which of the categories Bruce Gargoyle had set up for us.
These are my offerings:
1. Books with an odd TITLE:
A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk by Scott E Tarbet – well, I think it fits ‘odd’
2. Books with an odd AUTHOR:
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Not someone I’d have thought of reading, considering The Remains of the Day as a film, but I’m glad I did and I may read more of his.
3. Books with an odd SUBJECT MATTER:
Mr Planemaker’s Flying Machine by Shelagh Watkins. It’s really about the afterlife, I think!
King Arthur’s Sister in the Washington’s Court by Kim Headlee. Of all the Arthurian stories I’ve read this year, this is the oddest!
4. Books with an odd LANGUAGE ELEMENT:
no entries
5. Books with an odd SETTING:
Apocalypse Weird: Reversal by Jennifer Ellis. Set in the Arctic. Or maybe the Antarctic. Or somewhere in between. It’s seriously weird, anyway, and I loved it.
Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Set in somewhere that people can’t really go, and the location for the end of the rainbow.
Cupcakes vs Brownies by Scott King. A world made of confectionery?
6. Books with an odd CHARACTER:
Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader. The Queen. I think only Alan Bennett could get away with this.
M T McGuire’s The Wrong Stuff. Most of them are odd, but particularly The Pan of Hamgee, who is both odd and gorgeous, in his own way. I like him, anyway 😉
Hmm. Well, I seem to have found it perfectly easy to beat my target. In fact, I have become Strikingly Strange!
The 2016 Mount TBR Reading Challenge
My thanks go to Bruce Gargoyle once more, for introducing me to this challenge – which is designed to get those already-purchased, sitting-on-the-shelf-and-ereader books READ!
It is organised by My Reader’s Block, an Australian site 🙂 and you can read all the details HERE.
The key is to sign up to a mountain of books you are going to read, and report on your progress quarterly. The books that count are ones you have in your possession on January 1st 2016 – no additions and ARCs or anything like that afterwards. As usual with these challenges you can upgrade to a higher level if you find you’re doing well, but you can’t downgrade. So I havered between 24 books and 36 books – heck, I have over 420 on my TBR list, and at least half of those I now own, given the state of my kindle and my physical TBR shelf. But I’m a coward, and I’m going to sign up to the 24 level – Mont Blanc! With a plan to read 52 books in 2016, that means at least half will be pre-owned, which is actually what I’d really like to do – read my own books!
Why not sign up to read your own pile – the basic level is 12, or one a month.
Hooray! Well done you. I’m quite excited about the Mount TBR challenge too. I think I might even to get through two books in January – bliss!
Thanks so much for finding it, Bruce. I wish I’d seen the non-fiction one you did this year as well.
I’m working around having my main computer fried – got a laptop sitting on three books with a remote keyboard. Not the best of arrangements but at least I can stop by,
Thanks for stopping by, Noelle – I know that feeling, done it myself!
I don’t own many of the books on my TBR list, but I was looking at our bookshelves yesterday and noting the ones I haven’t read. Some of those belonged to my husband before we married, and some have been gifts. I’d say any book we own should count as a TBR book. Maybe I should tackle this one. (Sometimes I think every book in the library where I work would also fall under this heading).
Yes, I think in some ways, working in the library must be a drawback, since the books are all there TBR! But I think it was two Christmases ago I put all the books on my shelves that I hadn’t read… there were too many of them then, and I’ve had a lot of new ones this year, most of the new ones from Noirwich, so they are crime, thrillers and noir 😀
Just a post-Christmas update – thanks to gifts and vouchers, I now own the next 60 books on my TBR. So I have no excuses!