The 2024 TBR Challenge

At the beginning of this year, I set myself a 2024 TBR Challenge that was intended to focus my reading on the (many, many) books that I own and to avoid buying books that will sit on my shelves unread.

Four months later and I’m surprised to find both that the TBR Challenge isn’t producing the results that I’d expected and that I’m quite happy about it.

The TBR Challenge has helped me focus on reading the books in my TBR mountain. 31 of the 66 books I’ve read so far this year are from my TBR. I’ve also read 35 of the books that I’ve bought this year.

All this reading is not reducing the size of my TBR pile because I’m still adding more books than I’m reading.

The surprise is that I can’t bring myself to feel bad about that.

Shakespeare described Cleopatra’s appeal by saying that “she makes hungry where most she satisfies.” My experience is that good books share that quality. When I read a good book, I want to search out other books by the same author or even other books in the same genre or from the same period.

Reading increases my appetite for buying books. I see no reason to feel bad about that.

I’ve also admitted to myself that I love finding and acquiring new books almost as much as I enjoy reading them. Just finding them gives me pleasure and each find promises me future pleasure. I don’t think either of those are pleasures that I want to curb or to turn into burdensome sources of guilt.

So, I’m going to continue with the TBR Challenge because I like the focus that it brings but I’m no longer expecting my TBR to go down year on year.

2024 TBR Challenge Check by goal

1. Read all books added to my library in 2024
   • Year to date I’ve added 94 books,
   • I’ve read 35 of the books that I’ve added,
   • I now have 59 new books on my TBR shelf which is a net rise of 30 books.
2. Read 90 books from my TBR pile that were added in 2023
   • Year to date I’ve read 20 of the 90 books, which means I’m 10 books behind plan.
3. Read 30 books selected from my 2012-2022 TBR shelf
   • I’ve read 11 of the 30 which means I’m 1 book ahead of plan.
4. Move some TBR books to the Unlikely To Read shelf
   • This is complete. I’ve selected 24 books.

What I read in April

I read 16 books in April. Almost all of them were fun. Two were outstanding, one was disappointing and two of them I set aside.

My two best reads were C. J. Tudor’s ‘The Gathering’ which gave me a new and memorable take on a vampire story and Michelle Dunne’s brutal, compelling and deeply sad thriller, ‘The Good Girl‘.

Duane Swierczyski’s ‘California Bear‘ and Simone St. James’ ‘Murder Road‘ also grabbed my imagination. ‘California Bear‘ managed to be dark, funny and surprisingly moving. ‘Murder Road‘ was so intense that I had to take breaks from it to prevent it from being overwhelming.

I found two new-to-me series this month: Ian Hamilton’s Ava Lee series about a Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant with a taste for risk and a flair for martial arts and Lee Goldberg’s Mr Monk books.

What I added in April

I added 35 books in April. Yeah, I know that’s more than twice as many as I read in April and yes, I know April only had 30 days in it.

BUT – look at the books.

I’ve already read seven of them. Another seven are continuations of series that I’ve already started. I have two new Women Who Kill books: ‘You’d Look Better As A Ghost‘ and ‘The Best Way To Bury Your Husband‘; three Old People books ‘Nosy Neighbours‘, ‘One Puzzling Afternoon‘ and ‘The Lonely Heart Attack Club‘ and two quirky Dark Academia books ‘Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead‘ and ‘The Will Of The Many‘.

How am I supposed to let books like those slip by?

Then there’s the one about the Canadian vet and the exploding pigs. And the one about the woman who inherits a friend’s dog. And the speculative fiction mystery with strange investigators called Engravers…

–and that’s why my TBR is getting bigger and why I no longer care.