In January, I foolishly decided to join Simon Thomas’s Century of Book Challenge, even though I knew that reading 100 books, one for each year in a century, from 1925-2024, would be tough because last year I only read 169. So, how am I doing?
I decided this accounting would make more sense if I listed the holes, so here goes. If you want to see the details, see my Century of Books page.
- 1925-1934: entries needed for 1926-31
- 1935-1944: entries needed for all years except 1936, 1937, 1941, and 1943
- 1945-1954: entries needed for all years except 1947, 1953, and 1954
- 1955-1964: entries needed for all years except 1958 and 1959
- 1965-1974: entries needed for all years except 1965, 1966, 1972, and 1974
- 1975-1984: entries needed for all years except 1976
- 1985-1994: entries needed for all years
- 1995–2004: entries needed for all years except 2004
- 2005-2014: entries needed for all years except 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014
- 2015-2024: complete!
Read since February 28th:
- The Circular Stairway by Mary Roberts Rinehart (unfortunately, it doesn’t fit in this project because it’s from 1908)
- Firebird by Zuzanna Ginczanka from 1936 and 2023
- Beginning with a Bash by Alice Tilton from 1937
- Mrs. Martell by Elizabeth Eliot from 1953
- Impact of Evidence by Carol Carnac from 1954
- Silence by Shūsaku Endō from 1966
- My Death by Lisa Tuttle from 2004
- An English Ghost Story by Kim Newman from 2014
- The Green Road by Anne Enright from 2015
- The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller from 2023
- The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon from 2023
- The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters from 2023
- The Hunter by Tara French from 2024
- Murder Road by Simone St. James from 2024
whatmeread 
You’re looking well on track! Have you got books picked for all the years?
No, that’s the problem. I had that hole at 2015, so I looked at all the books I have marked To Read and searched for one from 2015 to fill it. I have feeling I’m going to be doing a lot of that, as the books in my pile are not that varied in years.
Oh cripes, I think this sounds quite tough, there would be a lot of scrabbling around if I was doing it. It’s funny how we tend to read from the same years without even really noticing.
Yep.
Wow, it looks like you had a pretty good reading month in March. Too bad about the 1908 book not really counting for the challenge, but I don’t think it would be fair to expect ALL of your books this year to be for this challenge, y’know? If the point is to both challenge yourself and enjoy yourself, there’s got to be a little wiggle room.
The bigger problem is that a lot of them are going to fit into 2023 and 2024.
Well I’m stuck on mine and I’ve been doing it for nine years, although I wanted it to happen “naturally”. A friend did once buy me three books for years I didn’t have for my birthday, however!
Oh, you’re trying to do it in whatever time it takes? That’s probably more sensible than trying to finish it in a year. I guess I should do that. I have been ordering books to plug the holes, but they are ones that I already had on my To Read list. What a nice gift!
It was great of her. I do forget to check and then realise weeks later, and it’s been a bit stuck for ages around the 90s. I’m only missing nine, though! https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/about/a-century-of-books/ I should make the effort to clear those up. I must have something from 1919 knocking around, for example (I used to fill in years in grey when I had something to match a year so I knew it was coming, so this suggests not!).
That’s not bad at all! You should finish it off!