Last year, 100 books left our apartment, but you would never know that by how many remain. And of those that do, so many are unread. I might love them. I might not. But right now they’re sort of Schrödinger’s Reads, and my apartment is not big enough for that kind of book collection. There are too many new books I want to buy and too many trips to the library!

Thanks to my BFF, Karen, who is working through her own selection of longtime shelf dwellers, and to Judith at Reader in the Wilderness, who pointed me toward the 2019 TBR Pile Challenge at Roof Beam Reader, I’ve decided to tackle a dozen of the books currently residing on our shelves.

The rules of the challenge are that you have to post your 12 books at the start of the year and then get through them, with two substitutions allowed, also pre-mandated. This is not the sort of challenge I do well at, so no one will be shocked at the end of the year if I’ve read every book in my collection except for these 14 titles, but let’s give it a shot anyway, shall we?

My 12 official contenders are:

1. Jake and Lily by Jerry Spinelli
2. The Bookshop on the Quay by Patricia Lynch
3. In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Laurie King and Leslie Klinger
4. Selected Fables by Jean de La Fontaine
5. Starglass by Phoebe North
6. On Writing by Stephen King
7. Jane Steele by Lindsay Faye
8. The Magicians by Lev Grossman
9. Woman Rebel by Peter Bagge
10. How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric
11. A Tyranny of Petticoats, edited by Jessica Spotswood
12. Eggshells by Caitriona Lally

My two alternates:

1. Truthwitch by Susan Dennard
2. The Bookman’s Tale by Charlie Lovett

Middle grade, ya, adult, fiction, and nonfiction. Seems like a reasonable mix.