When I admitted a week or so ago to Mr Liz that I’d ordered Dave Grohl’s new book, “The Storyteller” for myself and it was going to arrive on his birthday he set me a weird challenge. Now, he’s set me a challenge before, to ONLY read 104 books in a year – that was horrible and all I did was read magazines and watch rubbish TV so it didn’t achieve anything. I gave up in the June. This time, however, it’s a good one.

Can I read the WHOLE* of my print TBR by the time the book arrived next year, i.e. 5pm on 05 October 2022?

There are 85 books in this photograph. We have the normal TBR in acquisition order running top left to bottom right of the vertical ones (if you want to count them, Robin di Angelo’s “White Fragility” is hiding at the extreme top left. Then we have horizontally, books in series where I haven’t got the other books (but, how long have I had them?), an Icelandic trilogy that was in that pile even when I DID get the other books, the rest of my Maya Angelous and two loans, a great big Tolkien exhibition catalogue and an even bigger Icelandic Saga book I got excited by YEARS ago, a load of light novels I’ve bought when buying other things or to read around Christmas, and a loan from Matthew and the first in a series.

So 85 books doesn’t seem so much when you consider I finished 18 books last month and am on 126 for the year already. However, the oldest book in just the normal TBR is from June 2020, way over a year ago, and the project doesn’t include the following, which I will also be reading as normal:

Not included in the TBR project:

  • Other annual reading challenge books – so Anne Tylers this year and … next year
  • Review books sent by the publishers to review on my blog or for Shiny New Books
  • Review books from NetGalley
  • Other e-books on my horribly bloated Kindle
  • Books I’m reading along with Emma (we take a while to read each one so it seemed unfair to include them)
  • Any books that come in in any way from today onwards

Can I do it? Dunno. What do I get at the end of it? I told you so and clearer shelves (maybe!). Fancy joining in in some way? Comment below and commit to something.

Update 01 January 2022

One quarter in and I’m down to 53 books, my counting went awry but here we go. I’ll be counting down from this total for the next quarter.

Update 01 April 2022

Two quarters in – or, indeed, half-way – and I’m down to 41 books which is actually more than half way through the original (might have been) 85! That’s cheered me up, as I only managed 12 in the last quarter. Status as of 01 April:

Update 01 July 2022

On to the final quarter and, thanks mainly to my 20BooksOfSummer challenge, I’ve got 13 more books off the shelf and am down to 27 left! Status as of 01 July:

Update 06 October 2022

I finished reading 23 (all reviewed but one) out of the remaining 28 during Q4, and started reading or had started reading already, three more, the final book is the Dave Grohl one itself, and so I only have one book I didn’t read anything of left from the challenge! Matthew hasn’t actually got to the Grohl book himself, either, so I will probably get that one done, too, before we read that together. DONE!