Today I join my first challenge(s): To Be Read Challenges

 Bev at My Reader's Block is hosting the 2012 Mt. TBR Challenge.  I am signing up at the Mt. Vancouver level: Read 25 books from your TBR pile/s.

I think that I can easily reach this amount in the next 10 months. I am curious to know if  I can count books that I have read between Jan. 1, 2012 and today, since I have read several of my TBR books since the beginning of the year. Doesn't matter really, because I really want to get through my own books and not buy a lot of new ones this year.

I am also joining the 2012 Read Your Own Books Reading Challenge at Tales From the Crypt.

I am partial to images of skulls or skeletons, and I love this image.

For this challenge I will attempt Level 4, 21 or more books. 

At the post where Bev describes her motivation for setting up the blog, she mentions that she read Susan Hill's book, Howard's End is on the Landing, where she describes reading only her own books for a year. I am currently reading that book, at a leisurely pace. A chapter at a time in between other reading.  I am a fan of Susan Hill's Simon Serailler series, which I devour as soon as the novels are available in the US.

I have no idea how many books I have in my TBR stacks, bookshelves, and boxes in the garage. I do have all of my fiction cataloged, but not all of the books have been accurately marked as read. If I read them many years ago and plan to read again, I don't mark as read. So it would take a while to get an accurate count (or even an estimate). But it is a lot. 

My goal this year (until September) is to only buy books written by authors that I have read previously. In other words, don't buy books for new authors (and preferably not new series, even by authors I have read). That still leaves a lot of books I could buy, but the preference is to work down the TBR piles.  In September I go to a yearly book sale where I can get books really cheap, and I don't plan to limit myself there.

Books I have read (with links to reviews):

1. Do One Thing Different by Bill O'Hanlon (03/01/2012)
2. Winter by Len Deighton (03/05/2012)
3. The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson
4. Heads You Lose by Christianna Brand 
5. Green for Danger by Christianna Brand 
6. Bluffing Mr. Churchill by John Lawton
7. Second Violin by John Lawton (04/04/2012)
8. The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo 
9. Dying Light by Stuart MacBride
10. A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd
11. The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep by Lawrence Block
12. Cop Hater by Ed McBain
13. In the Woods by Tana French
14. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
15. Political Suicide by Robert Barnard
16. The Guards by Ken Bruen 
17. The Light of Day by Eric Ambler 
18. A Fall from Grace by Robert Barnard 
19. Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-fifth Street by William S. Baring-Gould 
20. Spy Hook by Len Deighton 
21. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie 
22. An Empty Death by Laura Wilson 
23. Whiskey Sour by J. A. Konrath
24. The Information Officer by Mark Mills
25. The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sebastien Japrisot 
26. Flesh Wounds by John Lawton 
27. Death of a Russian Priest by Stuart Kaminsky
28. The Suspect by L. R. Wright 
29. Under World by Reginald Hill 
30. Bullet for a Star by Stuart Kaminsky 
31. A Lily of the Field by John Lawton
32. Night at the Vulcan by Ngaio Marsh
33. The Property of a Lady by Anthony Oliver
34. Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear
35. Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
36. The One from the Other by Philip Kerr
37. A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr
38. Lament for the Bride by Helen Reilly 
39. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley 
40. A Touch of Frost by R. D. Wingfield
41. Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb
42. Zombies of the Gene Pool by Sharyn McCrumb
43. The Affair of the Mutilated Mink by James Anderson
44. To Play the Fool by Laurie R. King
45. With Child by Laurie R. King
46. The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
47. The Judas Sheep by Stuart Pawson
48. The Cape Code Mystery by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
49. Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson
50. The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell

Completion of Challenge: I completed this challenge on July 4, 2012, when I finished reading The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sebastien Japrisot. I will continue recording novels I have read this year from my To Be Read stacks on this post.