Reading challenge: tackle the book that you have owned the longest

[bibliomania]

Its time has finally come - pick up the book that has accompanied you through the last umpteen house moves, or the one that has languished longest in the depths of your kindle. The challenge is simple: to read it between now and the end of June.

If you start it and it's not for you, maybe it's time to let it go to a new home.

With physical books, you won't always know which you've owned the longest, but go on - pick one!

I'm going with Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford. It was published in 2004 and acquired by me in December 2015. Its time has come!

I acquired 6 kindle books at the end of August 2011 - the day I got my first Kindle :)

Five were cheap/free classics of which I had previously read two anyway.

I will pick the sixth - Confessions of a GP by Benjamin Daniels. When I am near the bookshelves, I will guess at the oldest one there too!

Ah yes, I remember the new kindle and the first flush of enthusiasm for downloading classics, @SheilaFentiman !

I forgot to say in my intro that this is aimed primarily at tackling unread books - I'm not trying to come between any reader and the childhood favourite that they keep on hand, just in case it's needed.

For me, I haven’t a clue about my physical books but Kindle wise it’s Last Night In Twisted River by John Irving which I, like Sheila got with my first foray into ebooks in 2010 so fifteen years

I read a lot of John Irving once but sort of went off him and so its languished there. I don’t really have much desire to read it actually

I have squizzed through my old Amazon orders (2001 onwards!) and bookshelves. I have The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker from 2008 which I would like to read...

I’m going to aim to read She-Wolves by Helen Castor and A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz both on my kindle since 2012

I went off John Irving too, Eine. Sheila, I loved The Seven Basic Plots.

Just checked my Amazon account. Ignoring free classics, the oldest book on my kindle is Chances by Freya North - published in 2011, purchased in March 2012. Maybe its time has come! I'll start it when I finish my current book.

Yes, he gets repetitive and I found the portrayal of CSA in Until I Find You very disturbing

I think the others are Meany, Garp and Fourth Hand

I have a vague idea that I read New Hampshire Hotel but I didn’t read Cider House Rules I don’t think

Some of the phrases and scenarios from JI's books have stuck with me, though it's over two decades since I read them. I'm not necessarily sure I want to remember them, but I do.

Gosh the challenge of working out which is my oldest unread book will be a good challenge in itself.

I'm wondering if one of the oldest I might find will be book someone gave me and that I have no interest in reading; there's quite a few. 😬 I would find it hard to throw them out though as some sort of misplaced sense of guilt. I'm also always worried that I will be asked what I thought of the book given as a present.

I know I would be sad if a book I gave someone said they had no interest in reading. Maybe I'm just ridiculously thin skinned. There should be a rule that you never ask, as the giver, if the recipient read/liked the book you gave them. Although I'm sure I've broken this rule.

If it's old enough that you can't remember how old it is, the giver has probably forgotten too :)

Looking on Amazon the 3 books I ordered first, 2002, I haven't read; they are AJP Taylor: The First World War - An Illustrated History, AJP Taylor: The Origins of the Second World War and The Swordbeaers by Correlli Barnett. These books are from history reading phase. I'm still in my history reading phase. However, I'm more in the mood for reading non fiction and I can't find one on Amazon yet.

Here's hoping! ☺️

Find a novel!

The Rising of the Moon by Gladys Mitchell, bought in 2003. Many of my books were ordered on Amazon as a gift in those days or were more history.

I would have got The Rising of the Moon because I'd enjoyed the Diana Rigg series on tv a few years before. I started to read but probably put it down and wondered off to do something else. And then forgot to come back to it. Story of my life.

Woo hoo! good luck with your novel!

I never said I accepted the challenge!! 😳😆

Damn I'll have to now!

Go for it, tobee! And get rid of the ones you're never gone to read. If the giver asks, say unblushingly that you loved it but can't remember the details as it's so long ago.

Going with the The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters in Kindle form. Going to take a look at the physical books in a bit. I hope I haven’t still got Tarka the bloody Otter.

I’ve just done it!
I have a 1973 copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses borrowed from a colleague 30 years ago and never returned (shame on me). I now realize it’s not the best edition-no line numbers, no chapter breaks, no commentary, but I’m using it as atonement!

I’ve joined a Ulysses reading group and the expected time of study and discussion is 12 years, so I’m pacing myself. I also read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man on holiday for fun last week.

There are lots of books I own but haven’t read, but I would like to reread the Frederica Potter series by A.S.Byatt in chronological order this time. Or Anna Karenina (oldest Kindle).

😆👍

That's definitely some kind weird thing with books @Sgtmajormummy. Books loaned are never returned. Books borrowed are never returned. I don't know why.

I've still got a copy of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case by Agatha Christie loaned by my sister's ex boyfriend in about 1983.

Maybe that should be another challenge - return all the books we've ever borrowed to their rightful owners. Heh heh heh!

I hate lending books. I'd rather buy someone their own copy.

Respect, @Sgtmajormummy !

I’m trying to tick things off my bucket list while 12 years is still a viable timeline!🤣

"...pick up the book that has accompanied you through the last umpteen house moves,"

Do you mean the book that you have owned the longest, or the unread book that you have owned the longest?

The book that I have had the longest I got from a school book shop in 1975 when I was ten.

It is "Stig of the Dump" by Clive King, first published in 1963.

I just got it off my bookshelf to check the date it was published and I noticed this sentence from the bottom of the introduction, how times have changed (or maybe not):

"Stig of the Dump is published for the first time in this Puffin edition. It will suit boys of seven to ten particularly, but it will please adventurous girls as well"
.

If you mean unread books then I don't have any books that I've never read.

I do, though, have quite a few books that I have got part way through but never finished.

The one part-read book I have had for the longest is "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth. First published in 1993 and I bought the book in 1994.

I just noticed that I still have my place marker in the book. I got up to page 998 (out of 1,349). I literally haven't opened that book since 1994.

Although I have a feeling that I'm likely going to have to go back to the start and begin again.

My oldest book is The Discontented Pony which I used to have read to me every night when I was 2. Still on my shelves.

Although the oldest book on my shelves is with Children Of Willow Farm or Complete Works Of Shakespeare, both given to my dad when he was a kid around 1950.

Oldest unread book just went to the charity shop last month - Les Miserables, bought it in the mid 1980s and finally accepted I am never, ever going to read that bastard.
(see also War and Peace and Sister Carrie - I was going through a classic novel
phase that Virginia Woolf killed stone dead, so they just languished.)