"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Monday, September 25, 2017

Tackle Your TBR Challenge

Tackle Your TBR Challenge ended yesterday and boy was I successful, though one indicator would beg to differ. But I get a head of myself. Here is how the two weeks went: nine books completed in either print or audio format. Three additional books started but not completed yet. For more analysis, check below the chart.

Title (Author) Audio(A) Print(P)
Comp. Date
Print Pages/ Audio Time
Total Pages
Total Time
1. News of the World (Jiles) A
9/11
6 hrs. 1 min.

6 hrs. 1 min
2. The Pearl Thief (Wein) P
9/11
325 p.
325 p.

3. Biography of the Beatles (Spitz) A
9/12
10 hrs. 10 min.

16 hrs. 11 min
4. Crossing Ebenezzer Creek (Bolden) P
DNF
100 p.
425 p.

5. Ordering of Love: New and Collected Poems (L'Engle) P
9/16
385 p.
810 p.

6. The Fashion Committee (Juby) P
9/18
307 p.
1117 p.

7. H is for Hawk (MacDonald) A
9/19
11 hrs. 6 min.

27 hrs. 17 min.
8. Landscape with Invisible Hand (Anderson) A
9/21
3 hrs. 14 min.

30 hrs. 31 min.
9. The End of Your Life Book Club (Schwalbe) A
9/23
9 hrs. 40 min.

40 hrs. 11 min.
10. Wonderful Tonight (Boyd) P
9/23
307 p.
1424 p.

11. Cries of the Spirit (Editor- Sewell) P
DNF
30 p.
1454 p.

12. The Once and Future King (White) P
DNF
23 p.
1477 p.

FINAL


1477 p.
40 hrs. 11 min.

Leading up to my success was the fact that I was already reading/listening to the first five books on the list when the challenge started on September 11th. I counted them because I finished them in the challenges time frame.

There is no way in a million years that I should have been able to listen to 40 hours of audiobooks in two weeks except for one small (HUGE) detail---on September 13th my first grandchild was born. He and his parents live about 45 minutes from here and I drove back and forth to their house every day but one. I listen to audiobooks while I drive. So that car time should account for around 20 hours of the 40. Next, and this sounds like I am cheating on my calculations, when I listen to an e-audiobook (as compared to one in CD format) I usually bump up the listening speed to 1.25. That means that the 40 hours that I listed was actually closer to 32 or 33 hours (I can't figure out the math exactly.) Suffice it to say the 40 hours isn't quite as impressive as it sounds.

When I started the challenge I said I had 52 books on my "To Read" category on Goodreads. Now I am down to 49. What? That doesn't sound like the numbers match, right?  My problem is that I couldn't help but ADD books to my Goodreads account these past two weeks. I went through and added the book club selections as far into the future as I know and I added a few titles that other bloggers mentioned this week.  I also didn't mention that I have several TBR piles and only certain books are listed on the Goodreads account. First, I have my Classics Club list which started out as 50 classic books I want to be sure to read in my lifetime. I keep adding to it but right now I have 44 unread books on it. The Once and Future King falls into that category. I also have the Pulitzer Challenge with 15 past winners identified as books I want to read. None of the books I read for this challenge came from this list. And finally, I have the books which I have laying around the house in piles, many aren't on any of the three other lists, but I clearly want to read them since I bought them. Confusing, huh?

My favorite books read during this challenge? News of the World, The Pearl Thief, and The End of Your Life Book Club. All were very different and so well written. My least favorite was Crossing Ebenezer Creek. I actually didn't finish the book and I sent it back to the library that way. It was written in such a confusing manner I couldn't figure out if the story was in present time, a past recollection, or a future time. Egad. Editors think about that when you publish books and help the readers by changing fonts or something.

I want to thank Tressa at Wishful Endings for hosting this challenge.



8 comments:

  1. Great job on the challenge! I usually kick up my speed on the eAudiobook to 1.5x since I usually find some of the narrators to be a bit slow. I've started now to read and listen to a book too especially at night when my eyes get tired.

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    1. I had no idea you can speed up an audiobook! I'll keep that in mind ;)

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  2. I like that the challenge was a limited and short time; it's so much easier to focus that way. With challenges, I tend to be gung-ho at the beginning and right about this time of year I realize we're almost to December and I need to focus on challenges again.

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  3. Way to go! You got a lot of reading/listening done!

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  4. I listen to books when I drive for stretches as well. Congrats on the grandbaby!! That is a huge and exciting milestone! :D And thanks for participating!

    Tressa @ Wishful Endings

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  5. omg I totally get the adding books thing--I managed to cut my tbr from 270 down to 260, but then added a ton and now i'm back to 290. for a short period there, I manage to have read more books than I wanted to read. I hope you enjoyed reading your books! And Tressa was a great host ;)

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  6. I rarely listen to audio books. Of course, most days my drive to/from the office is 2 miles so that kind of limits the amount of time I can listen. I'm impressed by your chart!! Congrats on knocking some books off your tbr!

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  7. I admire your ability to listen to audiobooks. I have discovered that I'm NOT a good listener, and am very distractable. :) I am doing well on my BC books but reading too far ahead, so I hope I can remember enough to add to our discussion. In my personal TBR pile, I'm doing OK, although I just got Magpie Murders from the library and have dropped everything else to read it!

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