Image Links to Challenge Page

The Savvy Reader is launching another #50BookPledge for 2012. And don’t they have a colourful, snazzy logo now?

Here’s their “Are you Ready?” page, designed to entice you into lots of bookchat in the year ahead. How can you resist?

Working through books at a fiendishly fast rate, I wasn’t sure what to do about this, because who wouldn’t hate me if I were to have posted about 50 books by the end of February?

[Edited to add that I actually only read 43 books as of February 29, 2012: hyperbolic.]

But then it occurred to me that one of my weaknesses is to collect books and then, promptly, neglect them, choosing instead to read fresh new books borrowed from reading friends or from the library.

So if I was to make this 50 books from my own shelves, this would definitely be a challenge.

And, already, it is. Barely a week into January, I’ve read seven books (including three re-reads, two of which are children’s books, and another children’s book besides), but only one book which would count towards my Pledge with this restriction.

So, here it is, my list of 2012 Reads, off my own shelves, for the 50 Book Pledge:

1. Cathleen Schine’s The Love Letter (1995)
2. Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (2002)
3. Gail Carriger’s Soulless (2009)
4. Z.Z. Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2003)
5. Elizabeth Taylor’s At Mrs. Lippincote’s (1945)

6. Maria Tatar’s The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (2002)
7. Sinead de Valery’s Irish Fairy Tales (1973)
8. Elizabeth Jolley’s Miss Peabody’s Inheritance (1983)
9. Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976)
10. Manda Scott’s Hen’s Teeth (1996)

11. Mary Lavin’s In the Middle of the Fields (1967)
12. Sterling North’s Rascal (1963)
13. Homer’s The Odyssey
14. Elizabeth Taylor’s Palladian (1946)
15. Elizabeth Taylor’s A Wreath of Roses (1949)

16. Catherine Asaro’s Ascendant Sun (2000)
17. Dorothy Sayers’ Strong Poison (1930)
18. Elizabeth Jolley’s The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981)
19. Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief (2005)
20. Colette’s Ripening Seed (1923)

21. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
22. Charles de Lint’s Dreams Underfoot (1993)
23. D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913)
24. Maureen Jennings’ Under the Dragon’s Tail (1998)
25. Audrey Thomas’ The Wild Blue Yonder (1990)

26. Holly Black’s Tithe (2002)
27. Carrie Snyder’s The Juliet Stories (2012)
28. Alice Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are? (1978)
29. Brian Jacques’ Redwall (1986)
30. Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes (2007)

31. G.R.R. Martn’s A Game of Thrones (1996)
32. Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter (1920; 1921; 1922)
33. Elizabeth Taylor’s A Game of Hide and Seek (1958)
34. Nicola Beauman’s The Other Elizabeth Taylor (2009)
35. Alice Munro’s The Moons of Jupiter (1982)

36. Patrick Somerville’s The Cradle (2009)
37. Rosemary Nixon’s Kalila (2011)
38. Meg Mitchell Moore’s The Arrivals (2011)
39. Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (2008)
40. Ann Marie MacDonald’s The Way the Crow Flies (2003)

41. Muriel Spark’s The Bachelors (1960)
42. Kim Thúy’s Ru (2009)
43. Alice Munro’s The Progress of Love (1986)
44. Lisa Moore’s Alligator (2005)  
45. Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay (2010)

46. Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (2011)
47. Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air (2007)
48. Rawi Hage’s Cockroach (2008)
49. Rawi Hage’s DeNiro’s Game (2006)
50. Margaret Atwood’s The Circle Game (1966)

Just made it! My library habit made this one a real challenge, and as much as I’d like to think that I’ve absorbed the habit of reading from my own shelves, I suspect it will be just as challenging in 2013!