If you visited the last incarnation of this blog, you may have seen this post from late 2008, called “TBR Challenge 2009”:

I’m not sure how many books I read in 2008, but it’s somewhere in the 2-3 range. That’s just a ballpark figure.

I’d really like to be reading more and the 2009 TBR (To Be Read) Challenge sounds like it might help me do just that.

I think what I’m supposed to do is make a list of 12 books before January 1st that I’m going to read in 2009. I can read one a month or I can read them all in one month, as long as they’re all read by this time next year.  I already have like 100 books on my Amazon Wishlist, so this should be pretty easy (the making the list part).

My List

• Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
• World War Z – Max Brooks
• Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets – David Simon
• Generation Kill – Evan Wright
• The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 – Lawrence Wright
• Return to Mars – Ben Bova
• Great Shark Hunt (The Gonzo Papers vol. 1) – Hunter S. Thompson
• Masters of Death: The SS Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust – Richard Rhodes
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon
• A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
• Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About: A Novel – Mil Millington
• The Ghost Map – Steven Johnson

The challenge also allows for an alternate list of 12 more titles that can be substituted for any of the books on my list.

Alternate List

• Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army – Jeremy Scahill
• Sentenced to Prism – Alan Dean Foster
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
• Rendezvous With Rama – Arthur C. Clarke
• Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
• 79 Short Essays on Design – Michael Bierut
• The Timewaster Letters – Robin Cooper
• The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
• Microserfs – Douglas Copeland
• It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be – Paul Arden
• In the Event of My Untimely Demise – Brian Sack
• Band of Brothers – Stephen E. Ambrose

There were a couple follow-up posts about how horrible I was doing. I’m pretty sure I only completed one of those books in 2009, The Timewaster Letters by Robin Cooper, which is probably also the shortest book on both lists, clocking in at a breezy 192 pages. I also read about half of Generation Kill on a flight to Germany and got a couple chapters into Infinite Jest before throwing in the towel on that one. I’d still like to read it at some point but I don’t think it was best choice for easing myself into a normal reading habit.

All in all the experiment was an complete and utter failure. Getting through 6-7 books would have at least been respectable.

2010

This turned out to be a better year for me (reading wise). I didn’t even start reading my first book of the year until late August and I still managed to get through 6 books before the end of the year:

• 
  Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
• 
  Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
• 
  Generation Kill by Evan Wright
• 
  Strain by Guerrmo del Toro
• 
  Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• 
  The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks

2011

And here’s what 2011 looks like so far:

• 
  Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• 
  American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• 
  House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (in progress)
• 
  The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman (in progress)

I didn’t make a full list in time for the 2011 TBR Challenge but I’m still hoping to get 12 books in this year.

Questions for the comments:

• What are you reading?
• What should I read next? Anything from my original lists?
• If I wrote a book would you buy it?
• Is reading for pussies and should I be doing something more manly like doing tire flips or putting cigarettes out on my tongue?