The long-awaited TBR post

I'm fully aware that the only one who has long awaited this post is me, but too bad. It's my blog, I'll bore when I want to.

So! My personal TBR Pile Challenge! (The real TBR Pile Challenge from roofbeamreader can be found here.) A quick rundown of the rules:

1. The book must have been in my house at least one full year.

2. The book must be previously unread by me.

3. All books must be completed by December 31, 2012.

The real TBR Challenge involves 12 books, but requiring myself to read so many books at home crimps my library-borrowing style, and library borrowing is one of my few certain pleasures in life that doesn't cost money and doesn't involve the consumption of butter and flour -- so, six books.

So, without further ado, my TBR Pile Challenge Books for 2012 are:

1. The Journals of Lewis and Clark, edited by Bernard DeVoto
2. Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose
3. The Ohio Frontier, R. Douglas Hurt
4. Democracy in America, Alexis de Toqueville, abridged and with an introduction by Thomas Bender
5. The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen
6. Drosscape, Alan Berger

You may note a certain theme. A certain level of... chewiness. A possible, er, reason these all were abandoned not long after being started, or bought, or picked up off the departmental free table back when I was part of a department. Nevertheless: six. I can do six books squeezed in between reads that require less effort.

It actually helps that we have a theme going. I'm a themey kind of reader. I will forge my way through the falling-off cover and creatively abysmal spelling and maddening uncertainty about daily location of The Journals of Lewis and Clark, and invigorated and refreshed, I will stretch and hop to the next book, Undaunted Courage, which will feel like a candy-covered romp in comparison, plus I have faith it will have maps for dummies. Then I'll reach backward a little, explore the Ohio frontier, all the time wishing I could hop in the car and go search some of these places on foot (in lieu of that, there will be lists). Then I'll be fired up for de Toqueville (and chances are I'll read two and a half chapters and founder on the desire to read something with an actual plot and neglect the whole project until fall--still, I'll be halfway through at that point, so who cares?)

Anyhow. Happy reading. I love a good reading project.