gypsysmom tries to conquer Mount TBR in 2021 (again)

I didn't realize that I had not posted my goals for 2021 here but better late than never. Updated to the end of October.

1. To read all the Already BookCrossed books (ABC) in my possession (total of 6)
6 read, The Indian Clerk, Love Lives Here, Small Beneath the Sky, The Maltese Falcon, Swamp Angel, and The Sorrows of Young Werther

2. To read 2 books loaned to me, one in 2018 and one in 2020
1 read, Fortune Cookie

3. To read the 9 oldest books on my TBR list
6 read Map of Glass, Grain, The Ice Queen, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, Captive Queen and The Corpse Will Keep

4. To read all the books received as gifts before December 31 2020 (total of 11)
8 books All the Devils Are Here, On Fire, Rural Voices, The Geometry of Holding Hands, A Duty to the Dead, A Dance in Donegal, Heat Wave, and November Rain

5. To read 2 books that are on the CBC list of 100 Novels to Make us Proud to be Canadian
2 books George & Rue and Swamp Angel

That's a total of 30 books. I should be able to do that, shouldn't I?

ETA: Well I didn't read everything I had planned. Only managed 23 out of 30 but that's still 23 off my TBR list.

As of the end of January I have read one ABC book, The Indian Clerk and one gift book All the Devils are Here.

Good luck with your goals, especially #1. Last year, I finally managed to get my ABC count down to 0 and it felt great. I've vowed that I would never again let it get to the ridiculously high number that it had been some years ago. I had to swear off BC bookboxes; they were the worst for adding ABC books.

Now February and March have gone by and I have again failed to update. So, I had better correct that.

I read one of the oldest books on my TBR list A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart which was terrific so I kicked myself for letting it sit on the shelf for so long.

I also read two more gift books:
On Fire by Naomi Klein which has a subtitle of The Burning Case for a Green New Deal. She is a passionate writer (and I imagine speaker) about what the world has to correct to avert the climate crisis along with other social ills like racism, poverty etc.

Rural Voices a collection of short stories edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter that attempt to show the realities of rural living. Some were quite good.

>4 gypsysmom: I've not read On Fire, but I did find This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein very thought-provoking.

I finished two more books in April.
Love Lives Here by Amanda Jette Knox which is a memoir about a family that has a transgender child as well as a transgender spouse. It was passed along to me by Pooker3 at one of the few in-person (but socially distanced and outdoor) meetings we had in 2020.
George & Rue by George Elliot Clarke is the story of two brothers who are black who committed a horrific murder in New Brunswick and were hung. It was a book that was featured on the CBC list of 100 Novels that Make You Proud to Be Canadian and although the subject matter doesn't really make me proud to be Canadian I did think it was a very well-written and important book.

>6 gypsysmom: Our book club at work chose Love Lives Here last year, and we had a really good discussion about it.

George and Rue sounds really interesting. I've added it to my wishlist.

Another two books off the list in May and one finished up on June 1 so I'm going to add it here.

The Illicit Happiness of Others was a book loaned to me by a friend who was raised in India. She found this book about an Indian Tamil family coping with the suicide of their elder son to be well-written and quite funny. She loaned it to me but although I can see the well-written part it wasn't funny to me and I couldn't see what she saw in it.
The Geometry of Holding Hands is a book set in Edinburgh and is about Isabel Dalgleish, a philosopher, who structures her life based on ethical decisions. It's not a serious book but does raise some interesting ideas and was a fun read.
Grain by Robert J. C. Stead is almost 100 years old (written in 1926) and is the story of a young farmer in southern Manitoba at the turn of the 20th century. It was interesting to see the progress of farming practises from horse-power and lots of manual labour to the introduction of machines.

>8 gypsysmom: I should keep Grain in mind, as I've read only a small number of books set in Manitoba and would like to learn more about its history.

June was a pretty good month for reading books off the TBR list.
Confessions of an Igloo Dweller is the memoir of James Houston who was the man who first brought Inuit art to the attention of the outside world. It's quite fascinating to read about all the years he spent on Baffin Island mainly. An artist himself he immediately recognized the worth of the small carvings brought to him in return for drawings he did of various Inuit he met.
The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman is a book that I bought 10 years ago but never got around to reading. I'm usually not a fan of magical realism but Hoffman is a master at writing in that genre.
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd is a mystery set during WWI with an army nurse as the chief character. I'll be looking for more books in this Bess Crawford series.
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead won the Canada Reads debate this year and, in my opinon, was the right choice.

>10 gypsysmom: Our book club at work had chosen Jonny Appleseed a few months ago, and we had a really interesting discussion about it. I'd only read 3 of the 5 books on the Canada Reads list, so I can't say if this book was the right choice but I definitely thought it was more deserving than the other 2.

Got a few more from the TBR shelves read in July
Unearthed by Alexandra Risen is a memoir by a woman living in Toronto although she grew up in Edmonton. She and her husband and son moved into a house that backed onto one of Toronto's ravines and had a neglected two acre garden down into the museum. Through much hard work and quite a lot of money they brought it back to its glory and Risen learned to accept that her own parents had loved her and taught her lots of valuable life lessons.
Fortune Cookie by Bryce Courtney came to me from my brother-in-law over 2 years ago and I kept putting off reading it because of its huge number of pages. I'm glad I finally settled down to it. It's the story of a Chinese-Australian ad man who went to Singapore shortly after the city split from the rest of Malaysia. Lots of interesting details about life in Singapore then.
A Dance in Donegal by Jennifer Deibel was one of the LT Early Reviewer books that I requested and won but it wasn't really my type of book being a Christian romance. On the plus side since it was set in Ireland there was quite a lot of lovely Irish sayings scattered throughout it.

I read a total of 9 and listened to two audiobooks in August but only three books from the TBR shelves were read. Those darn library books keep coming in and at some point they have to be taken back to the library and I always feel like I have to read them before I do so.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was my 1001 list read for this month and it was different.
Wonder Women of Science was a book geared toward the YA audience to enthuse them about finding careers in the STEM field. It was quite well done
We Are the Weather has the subtitle Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast. Jonathan Safran Foer wants to convince everyone to eat no animal products for breakfast and lunch as animals contribute much more to greenhouse gas emissions than plants. However I found the book to ramble all over the place and I don't think it would convince anyone who wasn't alread a vegan or vegetarian to switch.

>13 gypsysmom: I'll have to make a note of Wonder Women of Science. I occasionally get the opportunity to talk to girls about careers in math and sciences, and this looks like a good book to read about that subject.

Another 3 books off the TBR shelf in September.
Small Beneath the Sky by Lorna Crozier about growing up in Swift Current SK
Past Reason Hated by Peter Robinson, part of my multi-year challenge to read all the old Inspector Banks novels
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M. G. Vassanji which won the Giller Prize in 2003 and was certainly deserving of it.

Again I managed to read three TBR books in October
The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny
Heat Wave by Maureen Jennings
The Maltese Falcon by Dashielle Hammett

Three mysteries but quite different styles and I thought Louise Penny's was the best but I enjoyed the others.

>16 gypsysmom: I'd enjoyed the first book of the Murdoch series (even though it seemed quite different from the TV series) and had been meaning to read more by Jennings. This series looks interesting too, and of course, a new Inspector Gamache mystery from Louise Penny is always cause for celebration.

Only finished one TBR book in November Captive Queen by Alison Weir. It was about Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II of England and mother of Richard the Lionhearted and King John. She was imprisoned for many years by Henry for, as he thought, inciting their sons to rebel against him. A fascinating woman.

I've already completed another book from the TBR. Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson is a small but terrific book about a woman who leaves her husband in the 1950s. She finds a job working at a fishing lodge in the interior of BC something that is right up her alley because her father had a fishing lodge in New Brunswick when she was growing up. The writing is wonderful, full of descriptions of the countryside and the creatures inhabiting the lakes and forests. There are also some interesting characters. I won't soon forget this book.

As mentioned in my last update I started off December with reading a TBR book Swamp Angel which also was an ABC book. I really worked at Mount TBR in December so I knocked another 3 off.
November Rain by Maureen Jennings is the second book in her Paradise Cafe series which takes place in Toronto during the 1930s.
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe was also an ABC book and my last 1001 Books to Read Before You Die book.
The Strangers by Katherena Vermette hadn't been on my TBR pile for very long but I wanted to finish out the year by reading it since Vermette is a Winnipeg author and the story, about a Metis family, is set in Winnipeg.

>19 gypsysmom: I've not read The Strangers yet but I loved The Break by Vermette.