Mount TBR 2014 Challenge discussion

I don't have a list of the books I have around my house, I'll just post as I go.
I'm warming up for the climb!

Yes, you can do it! Good luck with your climb!

#1 check!
Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern. Cute, easy beginning for 2014. I've owned this book since 2012...next I'm going for one owned for several years.

Yay! I just logged my first step up the mountain too.

Bev wrote: "Yay! I just logged my first step up the mountain too."

I hope I can keep strong the rest of the year and not give in and end up buying more books or getting them from the library.

#2 From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I loved it! These kids were a hoot.

I finished reading 2 more books this weekend:
#3 The Handmaid's Tale. I had read this as a teenager and have owned it (Kindle)for at least 3 years, planning to re-read it. It was excellent and creepy.

#4 No me iré sin decirte a dónde voy. I've had this book for 2 years in my bookshelf. It's got a good message in it, but there's a lot of business/financial talk in it that I found boring.

#5 She Stoops to Conquer. A short play that I found in my Kindle from a couple years ago.

Barbarac wrote: "#5 She Stoops to Conquer. A short play that I found in my Kindle from a couple years ago."

I find it so funny! I hope you enjoyed it :)

Leslie wrote: "Barbarac wrote: "#5 She Stoops to Conquer. A short play that I found in my Kindle from a couple years ago."

I find it so funny! I hope you enjoyed it :)"

Yes it was really funny. I enjoy those comedies of errors. They never get old.

#6 Stardust. I've had this in my Kindle since 2012. I really enjoyed it, and I'm not even a big fantasy fan. This is my third Gaiman book and I have to say I've loved them all.

#7 Mittee. I actually finished this book before #6 but I forgot to list it. This was a very dark romance in Africa, pre-Boer times, so there's a lot of violence, love-triangles, rapes, racism. Everybody was so bad or so good that it made me laugh.

#8 I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood. I've had this book since my kids were toddlers so...2008/9? It was a gift from a friend with good intentions trying to help out with my crazy life after adopting 2 little boys. I finally got around to this and...I guess I wasn't thrilled about a book telling me everything is ok because we're all going thru the same. Plus it stressed me out to read about this when I finally found some free time from my kids :(

#9 Artemis Fowl The Code. I toughed out for 100 pages. I'm not enjoying it at all.

Barbarac wrote: "#8 I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood. I've had this book since my kids were toddlers so...2008/9? It was a gift from a friend with good intent..."

:-( Reading definitely shouldn't be stressful! And...sorry about the Artemis Fowl book not being a winner either. I've had a few duds this year as well.

I dislike many award-winning films and novels. They're often about harsh lives, crying, injustice and I don't care for those in my entertainment.

Bev wrote: "Barbarac wrote: "#8 I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood. I've had this book since my kids were toddlers so...2008/9? It was a gift from a friend..."

It's bound to happen. I figure some of the books I have at home have remained unread for many years because subconsciously I know I'm not really going to enjoy them. Hopefully only a handful.

#10 Three Bedrooms in Chelsea. It was an easy chick lit book, but it took me a while to like the characters.

#11 The Time in Between. This was a chunkster! 600+ pages, phew...I'm so glad I read it. If it wasn't for this challenge it may have sat in my room for a couple more years, and it was a great book to read.

I've been discussing within my thread, I have chunskters to do for other challenges (not the 3 I host). I continuously hope that really good stories will make any number of pages fly by. :)

#12 From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava. This is a short book telling the real story of how an US Marine managed to save a puppy and get it out of Iraq. I didn't really care for the writing style, I feel it made the story less exciting than it should have been. But I still gave it 3 stars to appease dog lovers out there.

#13 Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II. Great story and very interesting to find out about New Guinea culture. The rescue mission was amazing.

#14 El Albergue de Las Mujeres Tristes takes place in Chile. I read this book in Spanish and I bought it in June 2013, so it's not too old. It's really about a "spa" as there are many others in the world, where women go to lick their post-relationship wounds. While it was very poetic, and I did really feel for the women in the albergue, heart-break is no fun after all. But I can't agree with the premise of the book that seems to indicate that modern women have gotten to a level of confidence about our lives that men don't know how to love us. The book went back to this theme a lot, but I thought this was plainly...B.S.
I did really enjoy the writing, so I may check out another book by this author.

#15 El Aleph/Ficciones/Antologia Poetica. This is a book i've had for years at home...before she my mom bought a Kindle and stopped sending me paper books. I have to say this was not a book I really enjoyed, but i still don't know how to rate it. I'm obviously missing the whole book, since so many people seem to love it. Nothing to do with the writing...it's just the story was too confusing.

#16 The Winter Sea. Wow this book barely made it into this group. I thought I owned it for a couple of years because I used to see it on my to-read-list, but I just noticed I bought it on Dec 23, 2013 when it was on sale for Kindle.
I didn't realize it was a historical-fiction book and romance on top of it. It was interesting to read, but I got bored with having to follow 2 stories. Towards the end I just wanted it to be over.

!No Barabara, no quiero tener miedo! ?Pocas estrellas para Susanna Kearsley, o especificamente este libro? Tengo éxito hacia mucho tiempo de leer "The Winter Sea".

C. wrote: "!No Barabara, no quiero tener miedo! ?Pocas estrellas para Susanna Kearsley, o especificamente este libro? Tengo éxito hacia mucho tiempo de leer "The Winter Sea"."
You'll probably enjoy it more than me. I was not very familiar with the historical time period of the story, and maybe that's why it didn't spark my interest at all. Also, at the time I read it I was under the weather. But 3 stars is not bad! I enjoyed it, had a good time with it.

I'm new to historical fiction but find time period doesn't matter if I'm liking the heroine or other elements. I guess I will only see. :) Yes, we too had a terrible cold early this year.

So I have been sick for over a week now...which has given me some time to catch up on reading.
#17 In Evil Hour. While in the past I've loved Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this book was just ok. Some common characters with some of his other books, this almost read like a prelude to another big book. Still entertaining, as all his writing.

#18 The Dress. Cute story. By the cover I thought it would take place in the past but it doesn't.

#19 Mrs WhippyThis is really a short story, read in 30 min or so. It was good to see the main character's life turning around, even if perhaps a bit quickly to be real.
Still a fun read that will have you searching for ice cream in the freezer.

#20 Mortal y rosa. This is a good book. I admit it. But sooooo depressing! Anybody with kids, or having a bad day should abstain from reading it. I did, and I have kids and was having a bad day, Phew!

I own a few Marquez too. Of course a must, for a Spanish major. I don't recall one iota of which ones were taken in university but collected a few English-translated works for future perusal. I wonder if I would dislike feeling a sequel is coming if it doesn't. He has none?

No, I don't think this was a prequel to anything. But somehow it felt unfinished to me. And that's a big pet peeve...books unfinished to give way to a sequel. And nowadays, isn't that the trend?

My whole question: does he have any duologies or sequels? It would be a surprise. Yes indeed, the trend for sequels (not counting The Three Investigators / Nancy Drew / The Hardy Boys) came about at the beginning of the 1980s. VC Andrews was at the forefront of adult series. Now it feels odd to stumble upon a standalone story.

Those I read finish the plots of each novel. Except for the quick-pace paranormal series by Robert Liparulo, which I insist on owning before I start. I'm with you. I wouldn't care for an end that hangs.

#21 Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories. I've only had this book for a few months...bought in 2013, but I read it for another challenge. The short stories were quite fun to read,but very dark and poignant.

C. wrote: "My whole question: does he have any duologies or sequels? It would be a surprise. Yes indeed, the trend for sequels (not counting The Three Investigators / Nancy Drew / The Hardy Boys) came abou..."

I will politely disagree with this idea that series came about at the beginning of the 1980s. Alexandre Dumas, Anthony Trollope, Rafael Sabatini, Emmuska Orczy, just to mention a few, all wrote series or sequels in the 1800s/early 1900s. Not to mention Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Arthur Conan Doyle, and too many other mystery writers to name starting in the 1800s and continuing into the present.

Of course not the IDEA of series. In case my eating up those legends up were unknown, I clarified with my own examples of their famous early existence. Whew! Talk about flinging the obvious at me. ;) I was remarking to Barbara, about a change in decades of standalone novels being the norm. I have shelves full of single author works until 1980. Suddenly, memorably with VC Andrews, there was a rise in series that eclipsed that. I was observing to her that standalone mysteries these days, compared to how it was, got a whole lot more rare.

?Barbara, quiero saber desde el otro día si Gabriel García Marquez tiene 'series'?

C. wrote: "...I was observing to her that standalone mysteries these days, compared to how it was, got a whole lot more rare..."

Oh, apologies - I thought that you were discussing Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez. But I am not sure that stand alone mysteries were that common pre-1980... Almost all the mystery writers I can think of from the first half of the 1900s wrote series even if they also wrote some stand-alones. I would say that series seem to be more prolific in fantasy books now but I suspect that is due to my sampling rather than a true representation of the genre :D

No apologies for weighing in. You are someone who brightens everyone's threads, including my group. Yes, fantasy & classic mystery sure did have series ahead of others. If you were here and I weren't in my robe... Hm, we can scratch that. I have already answered the door to a Jehovah's witness today, where I live out in the country! A group I told two years ago, please take us off their list. Oh vey. Anyway, if you were here I'd take you to my library now and show what I mean.

Novel after novel after novel of 1940-1979 thrillers or gothic mysteries, all standalone. Millions of different authors. When I rejoin the "First Reads / New Authors" type groups I laugh, because of this. I wrote an article about how these were the popular norm (despite series existing before, in many genres). For mainstream paperbacks, these standalones were IT. I say in my article that I feel (the mainstream fiction anyway) has been replaced by the cozy series we see now. I *was* asking if Gabriel García Marquez had series because it would come as a surprise.

C. wrote: "?Barbara, quiero saber desde el otro día si Gabriel García Marquez tiene 'series'?"

C. yo creo que no tiene series...pero no estoy segura.

#22 An Arrangement of Light. I bought this Kindle Singles in 2012. Unfortunately, as with many other short stories I read, I feel unsatisfied by how little there is...Specially since I love gardening and landscape design, I wanted a full story on these characters. But short as it was, I still enjoyed it.

#23 Lady Fortescue Steps Out. This was a fun read...I suspect first in some type of series since a couple of the characters are not quite finished with their stories. I don't know how I've managed to have it around since 2012 and haven't read it till now. It's about a group of "poor relations" that decide to get together and open a business...go into "trade". Which is horrific to their rich relatives, and hilarious to us in 2014.

#24 The Invisible Girls: A Memoir. I just bought this book on a whim at the end of 2013. It's a memoir by a Christian journalist/writer. It's sad, heart-wrenching and full of hope and happiness. I admit to having passed on many books when I read that the book may touch on religious subject. But in this case, it's worth it. Sarah Thebarge's battle with cancer, and her relationship with the Invisible Girls is an amazing story. Tough lady, Ms. Thebarge.

#25The Brimstone Wedding. Technically I read this before number 23. I purchased this book in 2012. Entertaining story mixing two different time periods with a mystery that is not very mysterious.

#26 El Soldado de las Botas Feas. ugh what a bore. Couldn't get through it...gave it 100 pages and put it down.

#27 City of Women takes place in Berlin in the middle of WWII. This was one of those books that begs the question, what would I have done in Sigrid's situation. Also, thus book will help me remember to stop whining about my trashy neighbors. Obviously I know nothing about bad neighbors.

#28 The Boy in the Suitcase. I bought this in 2012. It's a mystery taking place in Denmark and Lithuania. It has that nordic mystery feel to it, and it deals with a lot of very dark subjects.

#29 The Italian Girl. This was also bought in 2012. Very short book about a family with a lot of secrets.