justchris works on the TBR box sitting in the bedroom

That's the heart of it. Actually, it's a box and some stacks of trade paperback or hardcover anthologies that have accumulated. Then there's the books I started but didn't get far and set on top of my fiction shelves so I could return to them. Basically, when I go to bed, I am surrounded by all my good intentions. I would like to be less crowded at bedtime...

This is my first year with the 2021 category challenge. I see y'all have some great themes and categories. Since I am already going outside my comfort zone by trying to be more directed and intentional in my reading, I guess I'll just keep it simple for myself.

I'm looking forward to the experience.

Category: Anthologies

My TBR possibilities:

Malice Domestic 7
Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind
Past Lives, Present Tense

Queers Destroy Science Fiction! January SFF-KIT (2020 leftovers) 2
Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling 7
Crazy Woman Creek 18
New Worlds, Old Ways 22
Invisible Planets 25
Love after the End 26
Nameless Woman 27
Latinx Rising 29
New Suns 30
People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! 35
Mothership 37
Sunspot Jungle volume I 38
Sunspot Jungle volume II 40
Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora 42 NEW!

Category: Too Large for My Fiction Shelves

My TBR possibilities:

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Tiopa Ki Lakota
The City We Became NEW!!

Seed to Harvest 8
This Is How You Lose Her 12
The Attenbury Emeralds 13
Cyteen 19
The Telling 20
Blood and Ivory: A Tapestry 43 NEW!

Category: Paused Fiction

TBR Possibilities:

The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Dead Mountaineer's Inn
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

Category: Classics & Literature

TBR Possibilities:

The Age of Innocence
Bleak House
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Martin Chuzzlewit
Nicholas Nickleby
The Old Curiosity Shop
The Pickwick Papers
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Pudd'nhead Wilson

Black Boy
The Color Purple
Go Tell It on the Mountain
The Good Earth
Night
Uncle Tom's Children

Cry, the Beloved Country 21

Category: Paused Nonfiction
Africa SF
The Ancient Wisdom of the Celts*
The Body Is Not an Apology
do less
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
the life-changing magic of tidying up
The Religion of the Ancient Celts
Strange Matings
Full Catastrophe Living
Chi Running
make your place
The Green Witch NF
Gaian Tarot NF
make your place NF
BPMN Method and Style NF
Beading 101 NF
The Anxiety Workbook NF
Crucial Accountability NF
All Wired Up NF
A Festival of Violin and Fiddle Styles for Viola NF

*Might not actually be nonfiction

Category: Nonfiction Shelves
These are in my main room, not the bedroom, and they hold many, many, many unread books. I didn't include this in my original categories, but I am expecting to read some of these over the course of the year for various reasons. So I realized I needed this category too.

Ornament of the World by Maria Rose Menocal - January HistoryCAT (medieval) & GeoKIT (Europe) 3
The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter 4
Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein - GeoKIT (North America) 5
The Witch's Book of Self-Care by Arin Murphy-Hiscock 6
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay - March AAC 9
Ken Hom's Asian Ingredients by Ken Hom 10
Gardening with Less Water by David A. Bainbridge 14
Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson 15
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin 16
The Celts: Life, Myth, and Art by Juliette Wood 17
What's Your Pronoun? by Dennis Baron 23
The Revised and Expanded Decktet Book by P.D. Magnus24
Show Me the Numbers by Stephen Few 28
Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few 32
The Ancient Celts by Barry Cunliffe 36
Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva 39

Category: Speculative Fiction

This is the largest category. I've broken it down into subgroups:

Other works by favorite authors:
CJ Cherryh
Alternate Realities
Regenesis 31
Divergence 34 (NEW!!)

Jo Clayton
Magic Wars
Wild Magic
Wildfire

Jennifer Roberson
Sword Bound
Sword Sworn

Judith Tarr
The Dagger and the Cross
Lord of the Two Lands

Sherri S. Tepper
Grass
Raising the Stones
Sideshow

Barbara Hambly - Dog Wizard*
Vonda N. McIntyre - The Moon and the Sun
Robin McKinley - Spindle's End
Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years of Rice and Salt
Joan D. Vinge - Dreamfall

Works by authors I've read occasionally:
Samuel R. Delaney
The Fall of the Towers
Triton
Forever Free

Tanith Lee
Biting the Sun
The Silver Metal Lover

Adrienne Martine-Barnes - The Sea Sword*
Tom Deitz - Windmaster's Bane*
Charles deLint -Spiritwalk
Joanna Russ - The Female Man
Susan Schwarz - Shards of Empire

Works by authors new to me:
John Crowley - Little, Big
Nnedi Okorafor - Who Fears Death*
HG Wells - The Time Machine | The War of the Worlds**

*Missing associated works, which complicates things.
**Of course, I am familiar with these Wells stories and others, just never actual *read* any of them.

(not sure why touchstones missing here, will try editing to fix later)

Good luck with your 2021 reading!

>8 Tess_W: Thank you!

Welcome to the challenge - I'm a first timer, too!

So many great titles in these lists! I read your mention of the book on pronouns in another thread and found it very interesting. I included it in my tbr list.

Another first year Category Challenger here too.

Good luck with decluttering your sleep zone!

Welcome! You will love it here!

Hope you have a great year of reading! Welcome to the category challenge.

Good luck with your challenge.

Welcome to the challenge. Wishing you a prolific year of reading and much luck working your way through some of those good intentions. I am sure there are other readers here who can relate to the boxes of books to be read someday.

Welcome to the Category Challenge, here's hoping you have a great reading year ahead of you!

Welcome aboard and good luck with your challenge! I like the idea of revisiting paused books to finally finish them off :)

>10 MissBrangwen: and >11 spiralsheep: Thanks for the welcome from fellow newbies! We'll have to form a cohort to cheer each other on in particular.

>13 thornton37814: and >16 DeltaQueen50: I definitely appreciate seeing some familiar folks here. I may not be as familiar to y'all because I have a tendency to lurk more than post.

>12 JayneCM: >14 hailelib: >15 This-n-That: >17 rabbitprincess: Thank you so much for the welcome and good wishes!

Yes, I am going to create a new collection of "Paused" for all the books I haven't declared DNF but am not actively reading. "Currently reading" is the de facto record of those books, but I am not finding that so useful.

And one more category...

Category: Catch-All
Beauvallet
The Milagro Beanfield War
The Song of God: Bhagavad-Gita
Tales from Watership Down
Maus I

The Talisman Ring 1
Solutions and Other Problems 11
Mooncakes 33

>18 justchris: I've "starred" your thread to remind me to visit.

>18 justchris: "We'll have to form a cohort to cheer each other on in particular." I'm all in and have starred your thread!

"Yes, I am going to create a new collection of "Paused" for all the books I haven't declared DNF but am not actively reading."
I use "paused" as a tag to indicate which books I am in the middle of reading but currently stopped reading them. There are always a handful of those and I want to keep in mind which ones there are. I don't put them in the "currently reading" collection because that one would be overflowing then!

>19 justchris: That "catch-all" category is so important! Mine is divided into a fiction and a non-fiction catch-all. The fiction one will be used more because my non-fiction will only venture once in awhile from the set non-fiction categories.

Welcome aboard and good luck with your challenge!

Welcome and good luck with a little more structured reading challenge!

Welcome to the Category Challenge! I love to use the challenge to try and read more books off my TBR, like you are doing. Of course, I tend to get side-tracked by new shiny books, but so long as you have fun with your reading, that is all that matters. Happy reading!

>25 lkernagh: Thanks for the welcome, Lori! I know the distraction of the shiny. I often fall prey to that.

First book down!

I'm stalled on my categories for the moment because I'm occupied with my latest book club read (that's from my humongous nonfiction TBR shelves) and library book. But I am sure I will dip into them this weekend. They are calling to me.

>27 justchris: It's a good thing you have a Catch-All Category as just when you think you have everything covered along comes a book that doesn't fit your set categories!

>28 DeltaQueen50: Yup. I just added to it retrospectively because I finished The Talisman Ring before I set up this thread and didn't include it, but then changed my mind and decided it should be counted because it was from my TBR box.

OK, stopped at the thrift store just to browse...

Came home with Maus I, This Is How You Lose Her, Forever Free, and an origami book for the arts and crafts room. Not making my TBR situation better...

>30 justchris: Had to read Maus I for a graduate Holocaust class I took back in the 80's.

>30 justchris: Looks like a good haul!

>31 Tess_W: Yeah, I've known about it for years and not sure I was ever going try it. But finding it there in the thrift store seemed like a message from the universe. What did you think of it? If the memory is at all clear after 30+ years.

>32 rabbitprincess: Thanks! Not what I was trying for. Every time, I think, "oh! I'll just look. I'm not going to buy anything. No harm in looking." And every time, I end up with a bunch of stuff. Just earlier in the week at the grocery store, I passed through the magazine aisle on my way to checkout and went home with 3 food magazines. No regrets, though.

>30 justchris: Nice haul. I liked the Maus books very much. I'd be interested in hearing what you think of Forever Free when you get around to it. I thought Forever War was very good but I've not read the sequel yet.

>33 justchris: I am not a fan of graphic novels, at all. So when I read it, at the time, I thought it was a bit irreverent to tell the story of the horror of the Holocaust into "comic book" form. I still don't like graphic novels, but my opinion would probably be slightly different today. If somebody could/would read Maus and understand the atrocity, then I say, go for it!

>35 Tess_W: I hear you. But in such instances I am always reminded of the Judy Dickinson poem:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

So I think of efforts such as Maus as a well to tell the truth slant. I wasn't sure I could stomach even the graphic novel with animals approach to such a horrendous topic.

I added my nonfiction shelves as a category as I am actually working on a few of these books. I expect to finish Ornament of the World this week and The History of White People this month. I'll be starting The Color of Law this week, but don't expect to finish by the time the book club meets on February 13.

Thank you for your visit to my thread! As a non-fic fan I'm particularly interested in those parts of your challenge - there's a few titles on your list that I'm not familiar with. So many books, so little time!

>38 Jackie_K: Thank you for stopping by! I admire people who primarily read nonfiction. It is definitely a secondary field for me. So this year is very new and different thanks to all these book clubs here and in my local life.

I've got 10 TBR anthologies to go! I think that's my immediate goal. Just started Nameless Woman. Wishing my local social justice book club could read it, but the book club has relied on library book club kits, and I don't expect this is part of the library catalog.

Just catching up on your thread :)

>41 VictoriaPL: Welcome! Thanks! I made a comment just so that I can find this among all my other starred items. It'd fallen off the first page...

So when I set a goal of 100 books, I knew it was unrealistic, but it was such a nice round number, and a nice stretch goal. What is now an achievable goal is finishing the remaining large anthologies by the end of the year: one per month. That's my immediate goal.

>43 justchris: That will be satisfying indeed to finish those large anthologies!

>44 rabbitprincess: Thanks! Yes, it will.

I am ahead of schedule to finish the large anthologies this year. And reading 50 of my own books seems like an achievable goal too, in other words, 50% of an unrealistic target. Pretty good for my first real year of reading renewal.

>46 justchris: More than "pretty good" you are doing very well! Goals can be like that, unrealistic, but as somebody very wise said "Aim for the sun and you might hit a tree" - meaning that hitting the tree is better than not getting off the ground.

>47 VivienneR: Thanks for the kind words! I'm all for hitting trees or the side of a barn or something.

I peeked at the ticker thread, and it looks like the group overall is progressing wonderfully. I think only fuzzi and I are technically less than 50% toward our goals. The vast majority are close to or have exceeded their goals. That's pretty awesome.

I just moved a bunch of nonfiction books that I started this year from my 75 Book Challenge list to here. I am not actually actively reading them at this point and not sure when I'll get back to them.

I'm still on schedule to finish the oversize anthologies this year, even though I just bought a new one a couple weeks ago thanks to visiting the new location of my favorite local independent bookstore, now right in my neighborhood! It's also open to customers for the first time since the pandemic shut everything down.

Not clear whether I'll hit 50 books, or halfway to my unrealistic goal of 100 books--I'm a baker's dozen away. It's within the realm of possibility but too iffy from here. I did pick one of my nonfiction for book club, so that helps, and the remaining anthologies would bring it down to 10. If I stuck to my fiction piles I might be able to do it. The suspense is killing me already.

I had hoped to finish the second volume of Sunspot Jungle over the weekend. Instead I finished it today. Close enough.

I don't think I'm going to manage 50 ROOTs, 50% of my official goal. I have achieved the goal of reading all of my oversized anthologies. At least, those I started the year with. I bought one a couple months ago, and I think I can read that before New Year's Eve too. That will leave 3 mass-market paperback anthologies. Those will be for next year, along with all the other fiction in that format.
(cross-posted with my 75 Book Challenge thread)