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!

Mount TBR 2016

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.

Oddity Odyssey Roundup and my 2016 Mount TBR Challenge

7 thoughts on “Oddity Odyssey Roundup and my 2016 Mount TBR Challenge

  • 14 December, 2015 at 8:28 am
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    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!

    • 14 December, 2015 at 9:51 am
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      Thanks so much for finding it, Bruce. I wish I’d seen the non-fiction one you did this year as well.

  • 14 December, 2015 at 2:28 pm
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    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,

    • 14 December, 2015 at 2:33 pm
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      Thanks for stopping by, Noelle – I know that feeling, done it myself!

  • 14 December, 2015 at 3:21 pm
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    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).

    • 14 December, 2015 at 9:47 pm
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      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 😀

  • 27 December, 2015 at 6:59 pm
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    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!

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