Katrina's 2019 challenge

I love this idea, I'm going to use this to get rid of some of those books which have been lurking too long, I'm not buying books in 2019 so this will be a good way I don't just read my 2018 purchases. I'm going to use a number generator to pick my read for the month - if I don't fancy that I have to read the alternative with the matching number.

1. This Thing of Darkness
2. The City of Dreaming Books
3. Schindler's Ark DNF
4. Magician
5. Everything That Rises Must Converge
6. A Short History of Nearly Everything
7. How Green Was My Valley
8. The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman
9. Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord
10. Last Evenings on Earth
11. The World According to Garp
12. Seven Years in Tibet

Alternates:
1. Nine Suitcases
2. Down Under
3. A Fish Caught in Time
4. Tales of the City
5. White Dog Fell From the Sky
6. The Apothecary
7. Ahab's Wife
8. Let the Great World Spin
9. Billiards at Half-Past Nine
10. Negotiating with the Dead
11. The Book of English Magic
12. Invitation to the Waltz

January's choice: Schindler's Ark

Welcome to the challenge! I don't think I could use your random method being too much of a mood reader so that's going to be interesting to see how it goes :) Happy reading!

Welcome to the challenge!

You have quite the varied list here! I loved the Bryson book, and the O'Connor book, though for very different reasons. Some authors here who are on mount tbr somewhere -- I'll be following along to see if you can nudge them to the surface.

Happy reading!

Welcome! Your first time in this challenge, right? Fyi you can pretty much ignore the "rules" on the challenge page, just about the only one we stick to is the 24 number, lol.

I've gotten mixed up by the book version of Schindler's List, but I think it's because it's sometimes called the List, sometimes the Ark. The movie is my favourite, although 'favourite' always feels like the wrong way to say it (that I most appreciate?). I missed reading Feist in the 80s and sometimes think he deserves a chance (I went back to read Paul O. Williams last year, from that era). I'd like to read Garp and Tibet, I have the first in my TBR pile and the 2nd would fit.

Speaking of which, I would love to say "I'm not buying books in 2019", I've plenty enough at home already. I just know from experience that 12 months is a looooooong time ...

Thanks, I'm a rule breaker so assumed I would follow in a loose sense of the rules. I didn't buy any books in 2017 and stuck to it so I'm confidence I can do it, I just have to borrow less from the library this time around so that I get through more of my own books.

I think not buying any books for a year is an admirable goal. Someday, I hope I can say the same thing. :) Schindler's Ark is a great read. You have lots of great choices on your list. I look forward to seeing how you liked them.

January update: so I DNF'd Schindler's List as I felt that it was written in a really dry way, it was said to be a novelisation of Schindler's life but read like non-fiction (and very distanced non-fiction at that), I flicked forward and checked other people who struggled with it and it seemed to be the same throughout. I then picked up A Fish Caught in Time which is a book I never know why I own as it's a non-fiction book about the discovery and search for a fish. Whilst this was well written I ultimately wasn't interested in the fish so the book kept getting put to one side.
An unsuccessful month in the fact I DNF'd two books, but good as my aim was to get to books which have been lurking too long, now I know I'm not interested these can go to the charity shop.

1. This Thing of Darkness
2. The City of Dreaming Books
3. Magician
4. Everything That Rises Must Converge
5. A Short History of Nearly Everything
6. How Green Was My Valley
7. The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman
8. Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord
9. Last Evenings on Earth
10. The World According to Garp
11. Seven Years in Tibet

Alternates:
1. Nine Suitcases
2. Down Under
3. Tales of the City
4. White Dog Fell From the Sky
5. The Apothecary
6. Ahab's Wife
7. Let the Great World Spin
8. Billiards at Half-Past Nine
9. Negotiating with the Dead
10. The Book of English Magic
11. Invitation to the Waltz

The random generator picked number 4 for February: Everything That Rises Must Converge a book I really want to get to so that's a positive.

Bummer that you've had two disappointing reads right off the bat. Hope the third book is the charm for you.

>7 katrinasreads:, yes, too bad you had some disappointments but as you say, clearing the shelves of unread is the goal either way.

I'm reading Flannery O'Conner myself, except I'm doing the whole collected works spread over a few months. We'll be able to compare notes on that, eventually.

Best of luck with book #3.

At least you known when to DNF. I always push through even when I'm not enjoying a book in case it gets better. Sometimes I get lucky and it does but not often enough.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that Pearl's rule of 50 is the way to go for DNF:

Give a book 50 pages. When you get to the bottom of Page 50, ask yourself if you're really liking the book. If you are, of course, then great, keep on reading. But if you're not, then put it down and look for another. (Always keep in mind that there's nothing to stop you from going back to it later, whether that might be in six days or six years. Or 60 years. [...]) [...]When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number (which, of course, gets smaller every year) is the number of pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book.