TBR Pile Challenge 2016

So I just found out the sad (for me!) news that Adam at Roofbeam Reader is not going to be hosting this challenge in 2016. I started this blog back in January of 2011 for the express purpose of participating in Adam's challenge. As I have related many times before, I am not a person who has awesome powers of stick-to-it-iveness in general, so in the back of my mind I suspected I'd lose interest in blogging and maybe read the 12 books I had chosen for the challenge during 2011 and that would be about it; I assumed I wouldn't blog any longer than a couple months or so. Although I was correct about completing the challenge, I am still blogging (mostly) regularly 5 years (!) later - in fact, I have written more than 700 posts. I have cleared at least 60 books from my TBR pile thanks to Adam's challenge over the past 5 years. Along the way I have really felt a sense of accomplishment from keeping my commitment to finishing the books I signed up for. I've also found some amazing books that were just waiting on my pile to be read. So I want to thank Adam for starting me down the path to book blogging and reading the books I actually own. I wish him all the best!

Before I discovered the challenge wouldn't happen in 2016, I had thought about which books to include and made a tentative list. It just seems really weird to not have this as a challenge, so I decided to make a list as a personal challenge just for fun. So without further ado, here are the 12 books I will be reading in 2016 as part of my unofficial TBR Pile Challenge, in no particular order.

1. The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet - Arturo Pérez-Reverte - read May 2016

2. A Case of Two Cities - Qiu Xiaolong - read Apr. 2016

3. The Glass of Time - Michael Cox - read Nov. 2016

4. The Snowman - Jo Nesbø - read Mar. 2016

5. The Fire Engine that Disappeared - Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö - read Dec. 2016

6. Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh - read Nov. 2016

7. The Woman Who Died a Lot - Jasper Fforde - read Dec. 2016

8. The Fifth Floor - Michael Harvey - read Nov. 2016

9. The Celestial Globe - Marie Rutkowski - read Nov. 2016

10. Always - Nicola Griffith - read Nov. 2016

11. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe - read Apr. 2016

12. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher - Kate Summerscale - read Apr. 2016

BONUS BOOKS:

Adam's challenge always called for 2 alternates, but I'm going to call these books "bonuses" because I hope to read them anyway.

1. The Children's Hour - A.S. Byatt - read Nov. 2016

2. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown. It's no mystery why this book has remained unread: I'm terrified that it will make me really angry. But that's a poor excuse to leave a book unread, so I need to get over myself and make it happen.

So there you have it - wow, I have a lot of book series to read in 2016 - should be fun!