TBR Challenge 2009 Sign-Up

Those read­ers who are inter­ested in sign­ing up for the TBR Chal­lenge 2009, leave a com­ment below with a link to your site. You do not have to have a blog to par­tic­i­pate. Rules are the same as before, 2007 and back, the older the title the bet­ter. No penalty for read­ing 2008 books if that is all you have. No 2009 reads (nope).

Books can be of any genre, fic­tion, non-fiction, graphic nov­els, etc. The day to post your review will be every third Wednes­day of the month with reminders from me the week before or the week of if time gets away from me. I will keep a sep­a­rate page of par­tic­i­pants like before and again, this is all vol­un­tary. Read­ers can con­tinue to join even after the chal­lenge has started.

I decided to assign a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge for each month with the default being that if you can’t do the assigned chal­lenge, you can read what­ever you like from your TBR pile and post your review as per usual. I wanted to shake things up a bit, make you all dig these books out of your stacks. No pur­chase is nec­es­sary to par­tic­i­pate in this chal­lenge (so please don’t run out and buy a book just to participate…unless you want to).

We will offi­cially start Jan­u­ary 2009 (dates will be posted this week­end) and here are the assigned challenges:

Jan­u­ary It’s all about the cat­e­gory, baby. Har­le­quin, Sil. Inti­mate Moments, Harl. Blaze, Harl. Presents. A lot of read­ers have been enjoy­ing some great cat­e­gory titles of late. Hey, they’re quick reads, too! Did you buy any of them last year and didn’t read them? Now is your chance. Don’t have any? Grab a book out of your stacks and get to read­ing, you’re not excused.

Feb­ru­ary Find a DIK review book at AAR that you bought and read it. We’ve all bought some of these books and now is the time to see if they truly are DIK. Let’s demys­tify some of these claims or val­i­date them. Any genre. Don’t have one (really?), just grab a book and read it.

March This month is ded­i­cated to the his­tor­i­cal novel (and dying breed). Do you have a good his­tor­i­cal novel just lying around that you really, really, really want to read? If you don’t care to read a his­tor­i­cal, fol­low the pro­ce­dure as stated above, just grab a book out of your stacks and read it.

April Urban fan­tasy, fan­tasy or SFR…ohhhh, Patri­cia Briggs, Ann Aguirre, Char­laine Har­ris to name a few. Did you buy any of their stuff and didn’t read it yet? Now is your chance and if you’re already caught up, just pick a book out of your stacks and read it with the rest of us.

May Ok, chal­lenges get more spe­cific. For the month of May, pick a book that has a friends to lovers theme or some vari­a­tion to it. All of us have these some­where in our stacks and if not, you know what you need to do (see above).

June Tor­tured heroes are my favorite! They are usu­ally found in his­tor­i­cals but see if you can find a tor­tured guy in your stacks or a tor­tured hero­ine (they’re even rarer!). Read and review it and if you have no luck with find­ing such a hero in your huge, humon­gous stacks, just grab a book and read it.

July Wrong­fully accused or just released from jail theme books are another favorite of mine. I always seek these out and I may have to do some reread­ing for this month as there are some real good ones out there that I’ve read but I think I should have some in my stacks. If you don’t have such a book in your huge moun­tain of books, you know what you need to do (see above).

August Ok, I’m going to start assign­ing authors — Julie Gar­wood, Liz Car­lyle, Judith McNaught, Nora Roberts, Johanna Lind­sey, Con­nie Brock­way, Laura Kin­sale, Mary Balogh, Carla Kelly, Joan Wolf — own any of these author’s books and haven’t read them yet? Now is your chance. Already caught up — you know what you need to do.

Sep­tem­ber Linda Howard, Eliz­a­beth Hoyt, Joanna Bourne, Sherry Thomas, Mel­jean Brook, Lois Bujold, Shanna Abe, Pene­lope Williamson, Jayne Ann Krentz, Amanda Quick, Rachel Gib­son, Vic­to­ria Holt, Mary Stew­art, San­dra Brown, Loretta Chase or who­ever else you have in your stacks and you just haven’t taken the time to read them yet.

Octo­ber Hor­ror. Yep. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or who­ever else you have in your TBR stacks and if you don’t want to read any­thing scary, you know what you need to do.

Novem­ber Turkey day. Find a book that has a Thanks­giv­ing theme (good luck with that!) or if you can’t find a book that does have a turkey theme, just grab a book out of your stacks and read it.

Decem­ber Easy. Christ­mas themes and if you’re like me and can’t stand Christ­mas themed sto­ries, just grab a book out of your stacks and read it. Con­grat­u­la­tions, you’ve com­pleted this year’s challenge.

Any ques­tions, sug­ges­tions, crit­i­cisms, please leave a com­ment. I came up with themes, authors, gen­res just to give you some ideas but this is your TBR moun­tain and you know what books you have in there. My goal is the same as yours — to help you weed some of these books out of there! Ok, are we ready to have fun yet?

For Fur­ther Reading

• TBR Chal­lenge 2009
• Next Wednes­day, June 17, TBR Challenge
• Out­back Sur­ren­der, Mar­garet Way
• Stray (Were­cats Series), Rachel Vincent
• April’s TBR Chal­lenge Is Today