2024 TBR Challenge Check, June – time to review my goals halfway through the year.

The 2024 TBR Challenge Half Year Check Point

I’ve had a good reading year so far. I’ve read 92 books of which 17 were five-star reads and 22 were four-star reads and only 12 were DNFs.

I’ve fallen in love with new or newly discovered books this year. Between January and June, I’ve added 145 books to my shelves. Yes, that’s 24 a month and yes, that’s too many and no, that’s not sustainable BUT there are just so many good books out there.

I’ve read 55 of the books that I’ve added and started a few more but that still leaves a lot of (really exciting) newly added books that I haven’t started yet.

I’m excited by the books that I’ve added but not yet started. I want to get to them NOW while they’re fresh, I’d be happy to spend the rest of the year reading them.

But what about my TBR? There are a lot of exciting books on those shelves too!

So what should I do?

I think it’s time to recognise that my TBR goals and my appetite for new books are in conflict and that the new books are winning.

I don’t want to abandon my TBR books entirely but I don’t want reading them to feel like an unwelcome obligation that’s getting in the way of reading the books I really want to read.

So far, I’ve read 35 books from my TBR, That’s 38% of my total reading and works out at about 6 books a month.

I’ve decided to revise my targets for the second half of 2024.

2024 TBR Challenge Check by original goals

Read all books added to my library in 2024
- Year to date I’ve added 145 books of which I’ve read 55 (38%).
Read 90 books from my TBR pile that were added in 2023
- Year to date I’ve read 24 of the 90 books, which means I’m 21 books (46%) behind plan.
Read 30 books selected from my 2012-2022 TBR shelf
- I’ve read 11 of the 30 which means I’m 4 books behind plan.
Move some TBR books to the Unlikely To Read shelf
- This is complete. I’ve selected 24 books.

Revised TBR Challenge Goals: July – December 2024

Read at least 70 books.
Read 25 books from my TBR pile that were added in 2023 or that were part of the 30 books selected from my 2012-2022 TBR shelf.
Add no more than12 books.

If I can meet these goals then, by the end of the year, I’ll have read 60 books from my TBR and have read most of the books that I’ve added in 2024.

What I read in June

I read 15 books in June. I rated 8 of them as four-star reads or better. Two were outstanding and two of them I set aside.

My best reads were ‘The Maid‘ by Rita Prose which has a wonderful neurodivergent character at its heart and has a plot that is full of surprises and ‘The Friend‘ by Sigrid Nunez which feels like an intimate, bookish conversation with an academic friend about grief, loss, friendship and how a dog can transform your life.

I had six four-star reads in June. So far I’ve only had time to write reviews for two of them: Kimi Cunningham Grant’s new novel ‘The Nature Of Disappearing‘ an immersive, emotionally powerful book about a young woman’s struggle to overcome post-trauma anxiety and embrace hope while on a life-threatening journey to rescue a friend and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mystery ‘A Pocket Full Of Rye‘.