Because my whims wax and wane with the moon (or the next literary longlist, book festival programme, social reading opportunity, etc), I am in the habit of purchasing material for that whim, then moving onto the next thing, leaving an unread stack behind. Over the years this has resulted in an ever-increasing TBR.
This year *** will *** be different and hopefully the following strategy will make it so.
1) Purchases. There will be no book-buying ban, but purchases will need to be read promptly. The stack of unread 2019 purchases may not exceed 3 at any given time (except during August, Edinburgh Book Festival time when all bets are off!) So I fully expect the new releases featured below to join the stacks in the next 3 months, and, more importantly, most of them to have been read!
2) I will approach the existing TBR by means of a monthly prompt, which will be chosen when I wrap-up the previous month. The aim is to read 3-5 associated books, all of which must have been on the TBR at 31.12.2018. January’s prompt is Starting in Scandinavia. Thanks to Danielle for this idea.
3) I shall continue my ongoing reading projects, i.e Walter Scott Award Winners, translated German Book Prize Winners, the 3 remaining chapters and associated Krimis for my (much delayed) Crime Writing in German Project and as many books as it takes to complete my second circuit of Around the World with Pushkin Press. I may even complete one or two of these this year!
4) 2019 is the centenary of the Weimar Bauhaus and the perfect time to kick off my Weimar Republic Reading Project. I’ve obviously had this in mind and been stockpiling for a while.
History and reportage, contemporaneous German novels , historical novels set in the period. No doubt I’ll be adding to these stacks throughout the year. I am particularly looking forward to the first English translation of Gabriele Tergit’s Käsebier Takes Berlin. I hope to read 10 books for this project during the year. I might even complete my re-read of The Magic Mountain! I’m still sitting on the bench at the half-way point.
5) I’ve joined the Reading Through the Ages Goodreads group. It has a bingo card with 25 categories. I’m not attempting to complete the whole card. 10 categories will suffice. Who knows, I may complete a line or column along the way.
6) I’d like to reread 4-6 pre-blog favourites, starting with Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Apologies to Annabel – I haven’t started the read yet, but it is on January’s TBR.
7) I’m reducing the total number of books I want to read this year from 100 to 80. I need to make time to read at least 3 books in German and the 3 chunksters, pictured below.
And finally,
8) No target TBR reduction. I worked hard to achieve a measly reduction of 26 last year. This year, by controlling my purchases and reading the books I already own, I hoping a better result will simply materialise of its own accord. (Though I realise I may be playing with fire …)
Lizzy's Literary Life (Volume One) 
As I said to Annabel, I hope you have a better experience re-reading ‘The Name of the Rose’ than I did. I really enjoyed it the first time round, but found much of it failed to excite when I already knew where the ‘discussion’ was going. May your re-read fare better.
I love the idea of your Weimar Republic Reading Project, Lizzy! I am looking forward to your reviews 🙂
A great plan and I bet there will be lots of us modeling our own reading plans on it.
My big plan is to reorganize my book shelves so that TBR “marches” in two directions. (1) from a hall book case outside the bathroom into my bedroom (2) from a hall book case near my apartment entrance toward my dining table or reading ‘easy chair’
And (3) newly purchased books go on a small shelf table from which the books can go in either direction. It’s a small shelf so it will have to be limited (though I’ve already ordered several books from recent posts here!)
(4) books already read that I want to keep in a big bookcase in the middle of it all.
We’ll see how this works. I think it’s a little nutty, but who knows.
Laura, I love the proposed flow of your bookshelves ….
Thanks! It’ll be fun (and funny) to see if it works out! BTW, I loved Hilary Mantel’s Place of Safety. It’s a chunkster for sure, and I had a couple of false starts before I realized I had to wait for the right time, when I could stick with it. But absolutely loved it.
Good luck! The Weimar reading is especially appealing. And I can understand you cutting down the number of books – those chunksters really *are* chunksters! 😀
This is a great plan – look forward to hearing how you get on.
I’m exhausted just reading about the reading plan…… But there are some really interesting approaches that you are taking. I like that idea of having no more than 3 newly purchased books at any one time
There’s potential for a lot of cross-overs in there, so it’s not quite as exhausting as it seems. I also toyed with throwing in an alphabet soup of authors, but am hoping that’s something that will also come naturally. Besides I need to save a few ideas for next year!
Ah so that’s your cunning plan….