First of all:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Muahahahaa.

But, yes, it really is the end of October, which means that the annual Halloween Bingo game has come to a close, and reading has returned to normal. That is, instead of focusing on mysteries and books with supernatural of criminal elements, I’m back at reading whatever my mood dictates.

All in all, I managed to read 17 books in October (well, the bingo game is a great motivator AND I have had a week’s holiday that I spent as a staycation). Out of those 17 books, 4 titles were on my dedicated Mt. TBR shelves (one of those was a DNF) and 8 titles were books I own but that were on other shelves. That is, they were Book Jokers (see explanation at the end of the post). (The remaining 5 books were ebooks.)

Fyi, the Mt. TBR books and Book Jokers were:

Death in Fancy Dress – Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) – 4*
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier – 5* (Re-read)
Strong Poison – Dorothy L. Sayers – 5* (Re-read)
Tragedy at Law – Cyril Hare – 4*
The Chinese Orange Mystery – Ellery Queen – 1*
The Fisherman – John Langan – DNF
Sincerity – Carol Ann Duffy – 4.5*
Starlight – Stella Gibbons – 4*
Genius and Ink – Virginia Woolf – 3*
Between the Stops – Sandi Toksvig – 4*
The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer – 3.5*
Selected Poems – W.H. Auden – 5*

As you can see from the above ratings, most of these books were excellent.

I can also announce that I have, in fact, reached my Mt. TBR goal.
I have 36 books left on my Mt. TBR Shelves. I have 46 Book Jokers that I have not yet applied against the project. So, I have indeed already read more books from my actual shelves than I aimed for this year.
I will keep on reading from the shelves, but there is no pressure to completely clean off the last shelf.

So, with all of this, and a little bit of shelf re-arrangement, my status update for the end of October looks like this:

End of October Mt. TBR:

End of September Mt. TBR:

End of August Mt. TBR:

End of July Mt. TBR:

End of June Mt. TBR:

End of May Mt. TBR:

End of April Mt. TBR:

End of March Mt. TBR:

End of February Mt. TBR:

End of January Mt. TBR:

Start of 2020 Mt. TBR:

The Stats:

Books read this month: 17 (October)
Mt. TBR Books read this month: 4
DNFs this month: 1
Women / Men / Team*: 56% / 40% / 4%
% of original Mt. TBR read: 52.7%

Book Jokers: Available swaps (not made yet): 46 (+8 from previous month)

(* – of all books read since 01 January 2020)

Link to the original Mt. TBR (2020) post.

Rules – same as previously – are that I picked a stack of physical books off my shelves at home which I would try to read over the course of the year. If I pick another (yet unread) physical book off my shelves, I get to take one off the Mt. TBR shelves and put it on the regular shelf – as a substitute (the “Book Joker”). In a change from previous years, new purchases (physical books only) will not be added to the Mt. TBR shelves – I will track these separately.