It's just about the time of year when I'm frantically spending money on books for the subject areas I'm responsible for (almost all of the sciences) because none of the faculty members in those departments respond to emails and the money is a "use it or lose it" situation. This list may come in handy.

Well, I needed to read 22 books this month if I was going to pull myself out of the TBR-reducing-hole I'd dug for myself in June, and thanks to a reading binge, I pulled it off.  My total this month was 28 books.  6 of those were re-reads, but either way you interpret the parameters of my challenge, I still pulled it off.

I had 1 5-star read this month: Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World by Rachel Swaby and I recommend it to anyone - in either print or audio - that has an interest in women, history or science.  The bios are brief, but 90% of these scientists are ones you're likely to have never heard of before, so it's all new stuff and well-written.

I had 4 4.5-star reads too, including one Man Booker Prize winner; a first for me.  Lincoln in the Bardo was also the only fiction to make the cut this month.  

For July, since I was feeling chart-y this month:

(I just realised that second chart is mis-labeled; it should read "fiction/non-fiction" but I can't be bothered opening the program back up and fixing it.)

TBR Challenge update: 

July budget: -11

Books bought in July: 3

Books read in July: 28

Deficit brought forward to August: 0

# of books pre-ordered for August: 6

August budget: 7*

*: by my admittedly dodgy mental rules, because I went into July at a deficit, clearing it should start me back at zero, as though I'm starting over. So this month's budget is based on half the number of books I read in July *after* clearing that deficit.

So it would appear I have 1 book left to buy in August, except I don't.  I've placed an order for 5 books from Mysterious Books, which means I'm in the hole again by 4 books.  So far.  Hopefully it'll stay at 4; Halloween Bingo is coming up, but I have loads of books on my TBR I should be able to make work, so I'm semi-confident I won't need to buy any - at least until September.

How was your month?  :)

This was a lot of fun.  Johnson has compiled book lists, but not the usual "you must read" sort.  These are lists like Darwin's TBR, Oscar Wilde's bookshelf at Reading Gaol, the books on Scott's Discovery bookshelves (he had them in every room of the ship), books seen to be on Sheldon and Leonard's living room bookshelves in Big Bang Theory.  Fun stuff like that.

Some of the titles listed are no longer to be found (Henry III's books, for example; probably hard to find if not impossible, and expensive to boot), some of them don't exist (books never written list - how did The Giant Rat of Sumatra not make this list?), some have yet to be written (the future library), and some of them are all to readily available and might be the death of any reader's TBR.  Personally, I was doing pretty well until the very end, where he includes a list of books about books.  My kryptonite!  Aaahhhh... 

Queen Mary's Doll House.  I can't even.

The author failed here a tiny bit because before he explained the thing of wonder this doll house's library is (and it is, I assure you) he stole his own thunder by explaining that the doll house has running hot and cold water and flushing toilets.  

Oh, and a wine cellar.  With wine of course.  What kinds?  There's a wine catalog in the library, along with around 200 tiny, Moroccan bound books containing mostly unique, never before published works by authors like Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (his has since been published), Kipling, Wharton and Hardy.  

I can't even.

Ok, this book is cool.  It's not your typical book of 100 books to read kind of thing, but an eclectic collection of lists like Osama bin Laden's bookshelf (totally predictable, sadly), the books on Oscar Wilde's Reading Gaol bookshelf, Charles Darwin's To Be Read list.  You get the idea, but I'd like to focus on Darwin.  He had a TBR.  That he kept as a list and kept track of.  This book quotes his son Francis as saying:

"He had one shelf on which were piled up the books he had not yet read, and another to which they were transferred after having been read, and before being catalogued.  He would often grown over his unread books, because there were so many which he knew he should never read."

He also kept notes in his private journal about his TBR books, my favorite of those included in this book being:

"Read Aristotle to see whether any of my views are ancient."

I ❤️ Darwin.