It's pretty simple, really: for the first three months of the year, you can only read books you already own. Exceptions can be made for book clubs, ARCs, etc. Pretty much anything can be an exception, and James encourages people to make any kind of modification to the program that they need to make. So basically you will not find a lower-stress event out there in Book Blogging Land. But it DOES help you accomplish the goal of getting through that ever-growing (in my case, and I suspect in yours too) TBR pile.
I thought I should make a plan of the books I want to read during the dare. I figure I MIGHT be able to read 3 books a month, so rounding that up to a nice round number means I needed 10 books on my list. And here they are, posing for their beginning-of-the-dare portrait:
In top-down order from this picture, the 10 books I am going to be reading during the TBRDDD are as follows:
- Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
- Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk
- Pandora by Anne Rice (this is one of the highlights of my TBR list -- it's a signed first edition that I got many moons ago)
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (in the Penguin Drop Caps edition; I am gradually adding these to my collection because I think they're mighty cool little books, and I am going to read this first one in the collection although I have ZERO interest in reading Austen)
- Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe
- Inferno by Dan Brown (on my list despite some of its reviews)
- The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
- Under the Dome by Stephen King
- Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
- Skylight by Jose Saramago
(You may have noticed that more than one of these books is what is known as a "chunkster." Maybe I should have taken that into consideration before I made my final choices....)
Now the sad news: this does not even begin to scratch the surface of the books in my physical library that I need to read. And it does not even begin to touch the number of Kindle books I have to read. Sigh. I could probably NEVER EVER buy another book and have enough reading material for the rest of my life, if you want to know the truth. But then the global publishing industry would probably come crashing down without me putting money into it, and we can't have that, can we?
The TBRDDD begins today and runs through April 1. First up on my reading list (chosen by pulling the title at random from a box -- Deal Me In has spoiled me for any kind of rational choosing, I fear) is Under the Dome by Stephen King.
I have been wanting to watch the TV adaptation of this book for some time now, but was reluctant to do so before I had read the book. I started it first thing this morning, and it certainly comes roaring out of the gate!
Now the sad news: this does not even begin to scratch the surface of the books in my physical library that I need to read. And it does not even begin to touch the number of Kindle books I have to read. Sigh. I could probably NEVER EVER buy another book and have enough reading material for the rest of my life, if you want to know the truth. But then the global publishing industry would probably come crashing down without me putting money into it, and we can't have that, can we?
The TBRDDD begins today and runs through April 1. First up on my reading list (chosen by pulling the title at random from a box -- Deal Me In has spoiled me for any kind of rational choosing, I fear) is Under the Dome by Stephen King.
I have been wanting to watch the TV adaptation of this book for some time now, but was reluctant to do so before I had read the book. I started it first thing this morning, and it certainly comes roaring out of the gate!
First of all, what's irrational about the Deal Me In choosing mood?!?! :-) One takes a stressful process - trying to decide between many worthy options that all seem appealing - and takes the burden of the decision off the reader and places it in thehand of fate. What could be more rational? :-)
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, I've read three of these I think (I get all the Dan Brown titles confused). Under the Dome has the distinction of being the first book I ever read on an e-reader ("So it's got that going for it...") but it and the miniseries quickly diverge - at least they had by the time I stopped watching the miniseries, admittedly pretty early on.
I'm doing the TBRDDD as well, but my reads haven't been planned out yet.
Oops! Um..... well...... the opposite of rational is not irrational, necessarily, maybe? :-)
DeleteBut let's just say that if I had tried to choose among these books in a logical..... um, reasonable..... ok, NON-Deal-Me-In kind of way -- I'd undoubtedly leave the Austen for last. That's how much I don't think I want to read it. But there's lots of people who like Austen, so I do want to see what all the fuss is about.
And I had to laugh when I saw your comment about Under the Dome on an e-reader. Lying in bed last night trying to get comfortable with this gargantuan book and trying to cope with the sheer BULK of it, I thought more than once about rebuying it for my Kindle, so it would be in a much more manageable form. I may still do that -- I think it will still be in keeping with the spirit of the TBRDDD. :-)
*mode
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