Some alterations.

Taken tonight, has nothing to do with post :)

You may have noticed that I'm struggling with my 2012 Challenges. I've tried this month to make a dint in the pile, I really have: ten I've read so far for September, and I have had some very good reads out of them. I know if I set my mind to it, I can do it. I now have ten titles left, and for me that is not a staggering amount. It can be done.

Oh, but Lord, I don't want to any more. I was talking to Chinoiseries and she was saying she wasn't so into Robinson Crusoe, and I sympathised, and suggested she read what she craved from her "scary pile". I then told her I was ready, so ready, to read The Little Stranger because it seems everyone is talking about that right now, but I couldn't read it tonight because I "had" to read Aristotle.

I don't think that last sentence needs any deconstructing. It's madness, and so, following my chat with Chinoiseries (who, by the way, just rescued not only autumn but the whole of 2012), I've decided to alter my list. Furthermore, I had a look at the original sign up pages, and not one of them said you have to make your list ahead of time and stick to it. So, I'm making some changes, and honestly, I am so happy I have made this decision.

So, aside from my own challenges, I signed up for:

1. Mount TBR Challenge
2. Off The Shelf Challenge
3. Chunkster Reading Challenge
4. Greek Classics Reading Challenge
5. New Authors Challenge
6. Back to the Classics Challenge
7. Classics Challenge
8. European Reading Challenge

Since the beginning of the year, I have completed War and Peace in 2012, Les Misérables in 2012, and the Ireland Reading Challenge. A brief look through my "Read in 2012" pages tells me I've read at least twenty three chunksters (I aimed for thirteen), fifty new authors (I aimed for sixteen), over one hundred classics, closer to one hundred and twenty I believe (I aimed for nine for one challenge and seven for another, and that was stupid and not a challenge for me, and also at the least five for the European Reading Challenge (you'll for give me for not listing all of these just now as they're already up on the Books read: 2011 - 2012 page - I'll save that for the end of the year post!)

So what am I left with? Mount TBR and Off The Shelf, of which I've read forty six out of fifty one, and finally the Greek Classics Reading Challenge (one to go). Whilst, actually, I'm happy to stick with Aristotle (not this evening, though, and if another comes my way I may switch) for the Greek, I need to change my Mount TBR and Off The Shelf list.

The three I would like to keep are M. R. James's Collected Ghost Stories, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, and The Confessions by Rousseau. This leaves me with two more to pick, and I would like to pick Dead Souls by Gogol and Les Fleur de Mal by Baudelaire.

And I feel like I'm cheating, which is ridiculous because no where did it say the list you come up with at the beginning of the year has to be stuck to. I felt I ought to simply because I said I would, but this is getting to be a bit ridiculous now. Some books I'm flying through far too quickly, and others I'm dreading.  Furthermore, good Lord, I read twenty three chunksters! And fifty new authors! I will write, in detail, at the end of the year when it comes to reviewing this kind of thing, but you can see from my Books Read page what I have been reading. 

So, what more is there to say? I've needed to do this for a while, and I'm happy I've made this decision, and furthermore, I can look forward to autumn with more or less a clean slate and no books to dread! 

For now, I'm going to make my tea and have an early night, read The Little Stranger, and possibly still kick myself a little for dragging this whole thing out for such a long time!

Updated: Here's (roughly) how it stands now (not a comprehensive list, but I know I've done the minimum for most).