Challenge Complete: Off the Shelf

Thanks to Cheryl at CMash Loves to Read...I found this reading challenge last year. The Off The Shelf Challenge was a made-for-me kind of challenge...it was meant to make the participants actually dig in to those TBR piles that are lying aroung everywhere in taunting stacks. And it certatinly did its job. I managed to knock off 50 books that had been sitting around the house...some of them for over 20 years.

Challenge Levels

1. Tempted~ Choose 5 books to read

2. Trying~ Choose 15 books to read

3. Making a Dint~ Choose 30 books to read

4. On a Roll~ Choose 50 books to read

5. Flying Off~ Choose 75 books to read

For extra hard challenges

1. Hoarder~ Choose 76-125 books to read

2. Buried~ Choose 126-200 books to read

I decided on #4 On a Roll. And even though, at times, I wasn't on a roll (and had a hard time finishing some of them), I finally did it! Here's the list of books removed from the TBR stacks...

1. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (5/24/11)

2. Leave It to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse (3/2/11)

3. The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell (9/8/11)

4. Death in the Garden by Elizabeth Ironside (2/4/11)

5. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (7/6/11)

6. A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron (1/30/11)

7. The Praise Singer by Mary Renault (12/20/11)

8. The Silk Stocking Murders bt Anthony Berkeley (2/19/11)

9. The High Crusade by Poul Anderson (11/25/11)

10. Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes (5/13/11)

11. The Habit of Widowhood by Robert Barnard (12/4/11)

12. The Porcupine by Julian Barnes (4/20/11)

13. Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh [2/28/11]

14. A Time to Be in Earnest by P. D. James (1/18/11)

15. A Chapbook for Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis & Ministers by Ray Bradbury (9/28/11)

16. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (8/30/11)

17. Robert F Kennedy: In His Own Words by Edwin O. Guthman & Jeffrey Shulman (eds) [7/19/11]

18. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson [8/17/11]

19. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice [9/13/11]

20. The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte [12/5/11]

21. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (4/11/11)

22. Emma by Jane Austen (1/9/11)

23. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milord (11/9/11)

24. Middlemarch by George Eliot (9/27/11)

25. The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson by Lillian de la Torre (6/19/11)

26. The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham (1/25/11)

27. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (3/15/11)

28. A Graveyard to Let by Carter Dickson (1/31/11)

29. Jerusalem Inn by Martha Grimes (4/2/11)

30. The Prince Lost to Time by Ann Dukthas (11/29/11)

31. Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (8/21/11)

32. The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green (2/8/11)

33. Evvie by Vera Caspary (8/1/11)

34. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (8/24/11)

35. My Foe Outstretch'd Beneath the Tree by V. C. Clinton-Baddeley (4/16/11)

36. No Case for the Police by V. C. Clinton-Baddeley (8/14/11)

37. The Caravaggio Books by Bernard Peterson (6/2/11)

38. Blood upon the Snow by Hilda Lawrence (3/16/11)

39. The Ampersand Papers by Michael Innes 1/23/11)

40. Black Orchids by Rex Stout (1/21/11)

41. Alfred Hitchcock: The Best of Mystery (from his Mystery magazine) [7/9/11]

42. Therapy by David Lodge (7/3/11)

43. Dragons of Light by Orson Scott Card (11/24/11)

44. Shroud of Darkness by E. C. R. Lorac (3/10/11)

45. An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear (12/12/11)

46. Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen (8/15/11)

47. The Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny (3/19/11)

48. Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis (1/22/11)

49. Perelandra by C. S. Lewis (9/2/11)

50. That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis (12/17/11)