THE TBR 21 IN '21 CHALLENGE

Rose City Reader is hosting a TBR Challenge. It is called the TBR 21 in '21 Challenge. The idea is to read 21 books from your TBR shelf in 2021. "TBR" counts as any book that was on your shelf prior to January 1, 2021. "Shelf" includes your ebook reader and audiobooks you own, but it doesn't include library books. 

The rules and sign up for the challenge are here. Rose City Reader's sign up post is here.

I love this idea -- I like picking a specific number of books and I like visuals. I went through my shelves pulling books for the challenge but I will have to put them all back because I don't have a shelf I can devote to this purpose. 

I was aiming at books on my TBR purchased prior to 2020. The only exception on my list is The Travelers by Chris Pavone, which I purchased in mid-2020. 

Here are the books I selected:

In case some of the titles are hard to read, here's a list:

• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• The Sirens Sang of Murder by Sarah Caudwell
• Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
• The Small Boat of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman. Second book in a series of two books. Set in Bosnia, Germany, and Italy.
• The Travelers by Chris Pavone
• Murder in the Place of Anubis by Lynda S. Robinson
• Vanish by Tess Gerritsen. Fifth book in the Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series. I read the fourth book in 2011 and I have had this one on my TBR since then.
• Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter. This book was the 2002 Pulitzer Prize Winner in General Nonfiction.
• Bangkok 8 by John Burdette
• Goodnight Sweet Prince by David Dickinson
• The End of Your Life Book Club by David Schwalbe
• Case for Three Detectives by Leo Bruce
• Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum
• Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey
• A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley
• Village School by Miss Read
• Death Has a Small Voice by Frances and Richard Lockridge
• Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris
• Mad About the Boy? by Delores Gordon-Smith
• Lincoln at the Bardo by George Saunders
• Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith. The seventh book in the Arkady Renko series. I read the sixth book in 2008 and I have had this one on my TBR since 2010.

If you have any thoughts on these books, please let me know.

Books from the TBR piles

Earlier this year my husband took these photos of books I got at last year's Planned Parenthood book sale, so I thought would share them with you. Three of these are crime fiction, one is historical fiction, the other two are non-genre fiction.

I haven't read any of them yet. Hopefully I will get them read in the next few months.

I Hear Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty
Book 2 in Adrian McKinty's Sean Duffy series. I liked the first book, The Cold, Cold Ground, and intend to continue the series which features Detective Sean Duffy of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The books are set in Belfast, during the Irish Troubles, and Duffy is a Catholic cop in a primarily Protestant police force.

The Dry by Jane Harper
I was surprised and thrilled to find a copy of this at the book sale last year (at a good price), because it had only been published in the US in early 2018, and it normally would be higher priced. I haven't read anything by this author yet, but looking forward to reading this one. This book is crime fiction, set in Australia, featuring Federal Agent Aaron Falk, and there is a second book in the series.

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Beware, Beware is the second of three crime fiction books by Steph Cha featuring Korean-American Juniper Song. I loved the first book in the series, Follow Her Home (reviewed here), and was happy to find the other two books in the series at the book sale.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
I don't know much about this book. It is set in January 1946 as London emerges from the Second World War and the story is told through correspondence, mostly letters. The setting is enough to interest me. See the review at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan.

More Tales of the City and Further Tales of the City
by Armistead Maupin
I read Tales of the City for the first time in 2018, forty years after it was first published. It amazes me that I missed it when it came out in 1978, since I was living in California at the time. That was a transitional time in my life so I guess other things were on my mind. The book is set in San Francisco, California, and it was originally published in newspaper columns. I am hoping to enjoy the second and third books in the series as much as the first. I love the covers.