jessibud2 tries again to scale Mt. TBR

23 TBR books on my shelf. Lowering my goal this year to 8 (from last year's 15!) Surely, I can do THAT!

There we go!

Haha! I upped my count to 12 for this year. Big readers...aren't we?!

> 3 - Now, don't fall off your chair but a certain book that has been on my shelf for mumbledy-mumble years will be my FIRST Mt. TBR read of the year Finally!! ;-)

Which book is that?

Did you see how old some of the books were that I used in the 2014 challenge?

The oldest was this one!

>5 SqueakyChu: - Shelanu. Interesting, after reading your last journal entry for that book you linked to in the previous post, I had noticed that Shelanu was also losing pages. Because it is heavy, it was destined to be a bedside book anyhow, not one to tote around in my purse, so at least no further damage will be done.

I thought you already read it! Barbara and I read it years ago!!

LOL! I can't believe you're reading it now!!

>1 jessibud2: Welcome and good luck in your challenge! Glad to see you back this year :-)

I think setting a realistic achievable goal is a great idea. I too often set ones that are too hard to reach. Good luck!

>9 BoekenTrol71: - Thanks!

>10 mathgirl40: - And the best part of that is if I achieve that goal, I may well even surpass it. Win, win.

My problem with the challenges is that I generally read according to whim, to whatever catches my eye on my shelf or whatever my mood is at any given time. Last night, I pulled out the 8 TBR books I plan to read and put them on my bedside table. When I tried actually listing the titles last year, I only got to 2 of those, before sidetracking to other books. So, no titles in my challenge this year, only posting them AFTER finishing and reviewing! ;-)

I like your title "try again to scale Mt. TBR". Maybe if we keep trying, we will at least get some altitude. I don't know if I'll ever totally scale it!

>12 nancynova: - Me neither. In fact, I originally noted in the first post in this new thread, that I have 23 Mt. TBR books currently on my shelf. Today, I found 4 more, in another spot. I sure hope more won't keep surfacing, in the coming days.... or I'll never make progress! ;-)

>11 jessibud2:

My problem with the challenges is that I generally read according to whim

Me, too! It's pretty certain that, if I put a book on "reading list", when I have the time, I'm more likely to not read that book in favor of a different one. Go figure. :)

>14 SqueakyChu: - It's like Murphy's Law, for Bookcrossers lol!

Really!

Good luck with your 2015 challenge. "If at first you do not succeed then change your target" seems like a reasonable motto to me ;)

>17 ardachy: - Thanks!

Full disclosure here: I liked the idea someone here had of tackling Mt. TBR by oldest-registered first. I am a bit embarrassed to admit just how old some of mine were. But, also, in the last 3 days, I have already started and abandoned the 3 oldest! I just couldn't get into them at all. I guess that's to be expected, over time, that interest in what once looked intriguing, might wane. On the other had, that does lower the pile somewhat, ;-) I've moved those 3 to the stack to bring to the next meetup. PS - Madeline, yours was not one of those!

>18 jessibud2: I always used to read my BC books by oldest-registered first. I feel like those books need to be moved along to continue their travels. But lately my reading has been more driven by various VBB's I'm hosting, so I haven't been doing that as much. I'll probably go back to that method eventually, tho.

>18 jessibud2:

I just moved my book review of Shelanu from my PC to here on LibraryThing. My friend Barbara remembers buying this book on sale in some bargain bin after we got back from Israel. We left Israel in October, 1973. I read that book about 20 years later. At that time the book was already falling apart. Feel free to recycle it after you read it. I never BookCross any books with pages that have fallen out of a book's binding. I think it's funny that you're just now ready to read it. I was 26 years old when I lived in Israel. I'm now 67 years old. Ha!

Isn't this the fun of BookCrossing, though? :)

>20 SqueakyChu: - I arrived in Israel in October '73! Maybe we passed in the airport, lol. I've had it in the bookcase next to my bed since you sent it and always intended to get to it sooner....the best laid plans... Anyhow, I really will read it this time, though it may not be quickly. It's not the sort of tome I can easily carry around in my bag so it is destined to be bedtime reading only. But I promise it will be read and journalled before this challenge ends.

In my view the challenge is working if you have picked up those three books and given them a chance to impress. At least now they are available to move on to someone else who may enjoy them. I aim to look at seeing how long I have had some of the books on my TBR shelf that I purchased now I have those from other BCers under control. I may well then tackle them in date order. Of course I can't do that until I finish reading a book I purchased last week!

>22 ardachy: - That's exactly why I decided not to list titles of books I plan to read. Some other book on a shelf may just call my name as I walk by and then I would have to stop and answer the call. For all my good intentions and organized planning, I will always be a *whim* reader!

>21 jessibud2:

Come to think of it, we didn't leave October, 1973. We flew back to the US from Spain in October, 1973. We must have left Israel about 4-6 weeks earlier as we did travel through Europe on our way home.

But I promise it will be read and journalled before this challenge ends.

No hurry. Haha!

>23 jessibud2:

Hurray for whim reading!! That's the kind of reading I like to do as well.

Three cheers for whim reading!

Update: not finished yet so I won't post or review yet, but I am definitely having more success with old TBR #4 (registered 2006!) It's called *Leaping Beauty* by Gregory Maguire (yes, THAT Gregory Maguire, author of *Wicked*) and is quite fun so far! :-)

To be continued...!

Ta-da! Finished book #1: Leaping Beauty by Gregory Maguire. As a primary school teacher, I have, over the years, amassed quite a collection of fairy tales and *alternate* fairy tale books in my class. We have had loads of fun with these and this book just fits right in.

I know a few of my local meetup group will enjoy this too so it will come with me to our next meetup so I can spread the joy!

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/3840627

Well Done!

Congratulations on finishing your first book. As ardachy said earlier, if this challenge is making you go back to your older books and start moving them along, that's a success.

Plum's challenge over in BC booktalk is loose enough this month that I can sort of read by whim, but stay on track. I can find enough ABC TBRs to fit!

#2 - Sheesh, only 2??! Well, the year is still young...

The Ghost of Hannah Mendes by Naomi Ragen. As a lover of time travel books, this was sent to me ages ago by a fellow bookcrosser. I don't know why I waited so long but I did finally pick it up. I have to say, I enjoyed the historic sections a lot more than the modern-day sections and that disappointed me. Here is my BC journal entry: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/4088976

Well, you are 1/4 done the year and 1/4 done in the books - so that's on target!

>32 jessibud2: Too bad parts of the book were disappointing to you, but congratulations for finishing one of your oldest books. :)

#3 - Risk and Redemption by Arthur Kent. I really enjoyed reading this book. Of course, Arthur's brother, Peter, was a fixture on tv here in Toronto for some time and I do remember watching Arthur's coverage of the Gulf War. So reading about his background and earlier journalistic adventures was interesting, too, but I actually found the latter half of the book - the part detailing his wrongful dismissal by NBC and especially, the depositions and all the background legwork that went into his ultimate success in this David and Goliath story - to be much more fascinating. Kent is one of a sadly dying breed of journalists of integrity. It was great to see him persevere and come out on top.

>35 jessibud2: jessibud2: Risk and Redemption sounds very interesting. You are such a bad influence on me because I always want to read the books that you have read.

Risk and Redemption does sound interesting. I'll have to keep this one in mind.

#4 - It's a Chick Thing by Ame Mahler Beanland and Emily Miles Terry. Ok, so this is an old TBR book but it was registered by me! I just found it at the back of a shelf where I don't usually put bookcrossing books. Since it was a quick read (good for the counter, ahem...!), I decided to just zip through it. It was ok, some of the vignettes were funny, others so-so. I will release it to a Little Free Library in the days to come.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1768140

#5 - At Her Majesty's Request by Walter Dean Myers. This is a book targeted to younger readers but was a fascinating story, nonetheless. I had picked it up at our most recent mini-meetup when Azuki and her hubby from Florida were in town. It is a non-fiction account of a young west African girl is rescued by a British ship captain after her village and family is massacred by enemies. She is brought to England and is taken under the wing of Queen Victoria.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9748437

#6 - Mistress Shakespeare by Karen Harper.

I have always loved historical fiction and one of the things I like to do after reading such a book is to google to see if I can figure out where fact ends and fiction begins. In the section called *conversation with the author* at the end of the book, Harper mentions that Alex Haley (author of *Roots*) dubbed the blending of fact and fiction as *faction*. I like that! You can read my full review in the link but in brief, author Harper took the one known fact about Anne Whateley - that her name appears in an official documented record as being the person William Shakespeare was *betrothed* to, on the day before he officially wed the pregnant Anne Hathaway. That is a fact. What it meant, and where it goes from there, is where historical authors come in!

I agree, I have just finished reading After Midnight by Robert Ryan where he starts with a genuine letter written by a father to his daughter while in Italy during WWII and creates an interesting thriller from it. I also like that he makes clear in the acknowledgements at the end what were the important historical facts and what he has fictionalised.

#7 - More Writers & Company by Eleanor Wachtel. Wachtel is a CBC radio broadcaster who hosts a couple of book and arts-related programs. This is her second book of collected interviews she had with a wide variety of authors. I love to listen to her interview them on her *Writers & Company* radio show.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/11233795

the radio show: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany

Only one more to make your goal. Good luck.

>43 gypsysmom: - Thanks. I will definitely complete this challenge. My other one, the 75, no way. But I will chip away at it until the end of the year, no matter what. At least I will get closer.

TA-DA! I think this may be the first challenge I have actually completed. Of course, *8* should not be that difficult, granted, but still, I'll take it!

#8 - An Unfinished Conversation- The Life and Music of Stan Rogers by Chris Gudgeon

I can't believe how long I have had this book without reading it! That's mainly because I found it on a shelf that was not my regular BC bookshelf! Anyhow, I just devoured this book in the last 2 days and am happy I did. Now, I am pulling out all my Stan Rogers cds to listen to.

It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that this incredibly talented man died 32 years ago! That's nearly as long as he was alive! (he died at age 33). He left behind a huge body of work and a legend that will live forever, not to mention all the *what ifs*: the songs he could have/would have written.

There is a terrific radio programme on CBC radio called Rewind. It plumbs the archives of CBC and just very recently aired a 2-part show of actual conversations and interviews with Stan. I will include those links here, as a fitting tribute.

Stan Rogers, part 1: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/rewind/stan-rogers-folk-singer-storyteller-proud-canadia...

part 2: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/rewind/stan-rogers-folk-singer-storyteller-proud-canadia...

Congratulations jessibud2. Sounds like a great book to finish on.

Congratulations on achieving your goal.

Congratulations on meeting your challenge goal!

Congratulations on meeting your goal! I doubt if I'll reach any of my challenge goals this year. It's always fun trying, though,

#9 - I just finished My Own Country by Abraham Verghese. What a heartbreaking story. Verghese chronicles the story of his early years as a young internist in the United States as he begins to find a place for himself in his field of specialty, infectious diseases. As he settles himself and his young family in a small rural town in Tennessee, he finds himself treating some of the earliest patients with HIV AIDS. As the numbers grow, he is learning that he is not simply treating one disease; he is becoming the primary care physician for these patients at a time when very little was known about the disease, and very little could be done. Blood tests to test for it were only beginning to be done, and the stigma was enormous. Verghese was not only the doctor who cared for them, but he also began to trace how and where the virus was contracted and travelled, within the States in those early years. As he became more involved in the lives of some of his patients, he also chronicled the effect and the toll it took on them and their families, as well as on his own personal and family life.

More than once, Verghese reflects that he wants to learn how to help his patients have a good death; that their suffering with this disease is difficult enough throughout its duration. The physician, no matter how good, how competent, and how compassionate, still feels helpless at the end. It is vital that the patients themselves be a part of the decision-making regarding how they want to die, what measures they want or don't want, to be taken when that time comes. In this, I found an interesting overlap with *Being Mortal* by Atul Gawande.

This was not an easy book to read but it was one I could not put down. It's been 25 years since this book ended. I spent some time googling last night, to see what Verghese has done in the interim. I learned that he now teaches new doctors. From the Wikipedia article on him:

"Verghese became founding Director of The Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in 2002.12 His focus here was on medical humanities as a way to preserve the innate empathy and sensitivity that brings students to medical school but which the rigor of their training frequently represses. In San Antonio, besides developing a formal humanities and ethics curriculum that was integrated into all four years of the medical school program, he invited medical students to accompany him on bedside rounds as a way of demonstrating his conviction about the value of the physical examination in diagnosing patients and in developing a caring, two-way patient-doctor relationship that benefits not only patients and their families but also the physician.13 At San Antonio, he held the Joaquin Cigarroa Chair and the Marvin Forland Distinguished Professorship.14

After a relatively short, five-year tenure in San Antonio, he was recruited to Stanford University School of Medicine in late 2007 as tenured professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Associate Chair of Internal Medicine.15 His deep interest in bedside medicine and his reputation as a clinician, teacher and writer have continued to define his role at Stanford, where he is deeply involved with patients at Stanford Hospital and directs the third-year medical student clerkship. His writing and work continue to explore the importance of bedside medicine, the ritual of the physical examination in the era of advanced technology, where, as he notes frequently in his writing, the patient in the bed is often ignored in favor of the patient data in the computer.16 He is renowned at Stanford for his weekly bedside rounds, where he insists on examining patients without knowledge of their diagnosis to demonstrate the wealth of information available from the physical exam. This emphasis has led to the development of "The Stanford 25", a new initiative at Stanford designed to showcase and teach 25 fundamental physical exam skills and their diagnostic benefits to interns."

A quote rom his own website sums it up: “I still find,” he says, “the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at a computer screen, but going to see that patient. For it is at the bedside that I can figure out what’s important to the patient and how the data you have accumulated makes sense.”

Much as Verghese is the doctor we all want as our own, I am gratified to see that his reach in teaching young doctors may indeed carry further than it would if he had continued to practise medicine himself. Who knows, maybe the next generation of physicians will turn out to be more like him and learn to balance technology and humanity. And wouldn't that be a blessing...

>50 jessibud2: Nice review! I have that book and plan to read it when I have the chance. Have you read The Tennis Player by Verghese? If not, do so. I think you'll like it. It's about Verghese, tennis, cocaine, and a medical student.

>51 SqueakyChu: - Yes, I actually read The Tennis Partner before this one even though, chronologically, it follows My Own Country. I have now read all 3 books he has written and wish there were more. I plan to find and watch his TED talks.

>52 jessibud2: Sounds good to me!