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 meant unread books - sorry, wasn't clear in opening post, @Another2Cats Finishing a part-read book counts too, but I'd be impressed if you remembered the first part of a book that you began to read thirty years ago!

There's great relief in deciding that you're never going to read a certain book and dispatching it to the charity shop, @MoistVonL It's like a burden lifted.

I have started Genghis Khan and I'm enjoying it a lot - go, past book-buying me! - but have temporarily got waylaid by the new(ish) Kate Atkinson.

Thank you @bibliomania Great idea for a thread. I did this on my Kindle last year and into this year. I culled quite a few books and that started on the ones that I'd had for more than 10 years. I've finished all those now and the longest one I have now dates to January 2020. I'll move on to that once I've completed my current Kindle read. I have no idea how long my longest unread physical book has been knocking about.

That's impressive, @Tarragon123 !

Wow @Tarragon123 thats impressive. I’ve made a start on my first of these books She-Wolves by Helen Castor about queens of England before Elizabeth I. It’s a long one so it’s going to take me a while but I’ve really enjoyed the first couple of chapters.

So I’ve just checked through my entire kindle purchases for 2012 (I have no way of knowing how old my physical tbr is so I’m not even going to try).
These are the books I have left to read
She-Wolves- Helen Castor (just started)
A Fraction of the Whole- Steve Toltz
Winter in Madrid- CJ Sansom
Letters from Six Sisters- The Mitfords
Pure- Andrew Miller and
The Making of Modern Britain- Andrew Marr

I’m going to try to read them all this year. Is the letters a good place to start with the Mitfords? I know only the barest facts about them (and not even all of them)

@ÚlldemoShúl I would consider myself the resident Mitford nutter/purist! Please do Six Sisters it’s my favourite ever non fiction

@ÚlldemoShúl Again it won’t let me tag you - dunno why I tried really hard !

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Im trying to read my oldies here not add more 😆
Do I need to read Six Sisters for the Letters to make sense?

No I meant read the Letters I was just shortening the title ! Get on it !

“Nancy was so jealous of Diana that she faked an engagement to a homosexual” was the moment I thought “I’m in!”

@bibliomania @ÚlldemoShúl thank you, but its really not that impressive. I think I read about 80? Maybe deleted another 10 or so? I'm down to 23 books on my Kindle. I'll add slowly to this because I don't want have another huge TBR pile again.

That said, my physical TBR is rather ridiculous. I think I have about 40, but I just cant cope with counting/logging them all just yet.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit that is funny! I’ll definitely get there this year.

@Tarragon123 I think my tbrs would horrify you- the physical is probably around 200, the kindle at least triple that…

Just been to check my physical books and to my relief, Tarka the Otter is not there. DF bought it for me when I was 8 and I’ve always felt guilty about not finishing it. I had a good clear out of books last year so it must have gone then. There’s nothing left that I haven’t loved and might want to read again. Nothing of mine that is, there is plenty that others may have brought into the house.

The book I've owned the longest is Downy Duckling and to be honest, I think I could finish it in minutes rather than weeks.😂

Good idea for a challenge, OP!

I’ve checked my Kindle purchases in my Amazon account and the first purchase I made, on my birthday in 2011, was Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson. I don’t think I’ve read it.

I’ll have to look in my cupboard for the physical book that I’ve had the longest, that I haven’t read. I would guess that I have a Kathy Reichs, an Agatha Christie, and a book called ‘Three Cups of Tea’ which was a gift from my ex-sister-in-law, some time between 2007 and 2010. I’ll come back to this.

Most of my physical books are still in boxes after several house moves, but the oldest on my kindle is How To Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds by Earl Nightingale, so I’ll be reading that.

@bibliomania Ghengis is also languishing in my TBR list, but he’s only been there since Oct 24. I’ll look forward to your review, I was thinking about reading it the other day. Maybe it’ll be next…

Funny, as if to prove how different everyone's reading taste is, from just the TBR titles mentioned so far, I notice the book I cited as my absolute favourite for years (A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth), one that my bookgroup universally voted their favourite read of that year (Pure by Andrew Miller), plus a couple of others that I really enjoyed (Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson and Winter In Madrid by CJ Sansom).

Fairly sure my oldest unread book is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which I bought circa 1991 because I liked the front cover...

Given someone is committing to getting to grips with Ulysses (which I chucked out after just a couple of pages, thinking "life's too short for this"), I'm feeling slightly honour-bound to put some effort into The Rubaiyat. I'm debating though whether the fact that it's poetry rather than a novel qualifies it for a challenge exemption :)

I hereby grant you permission to read poetry for the challenge @FlipFlopBattle [waves fairy wand].

Ha,, I actually meant the opposite - maybe it was exempt because it's poetry so I don't have to attempt it! But given it has been sitting there looking at me for a generation, I will bravely have a go at least...

Ah, the fairy wand was over-eager. Not for the first time either.

So many it's embarrassing:

Dickens: Bleak House
George Eliot: Middlemarch
Thackery: Vanity Fair
Ford Madox Ford: The Good Soldier
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway

Several were bought for an English literature degree but never read. Sigh...can't I just re-read A Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Right Ho Jeeves instead?

That's an impressive list, Dappy. You could sample one and if you hate it by page 25, you could quietly dispose of it - one way or another, you've reduced the towering tbr....

Bin them off, @Dappy777 !

It's so liberating to look at the book shelves and not have a faint whiff of guilt as my eyes drift past the "classics" I just can't be arsed to read. No Russian novelist for me, woohoo!

@Dappy777Of yours I have read them all except the Good Soldier and actually love the remainder except Brideshead which was just ok.

@Dappy777 I enjoyed Bleak House, loved Mrs Dalloway and found Middlemarch a bit underwhelming. I’ve read lots of Waugh which I’ve enjoyed, but not Brideshead.