January is always an exciting time! Everywhere you look you can find all the favourites list of the previous year in book-tube, book-tok, articles, other book blogs. My TBR gets refreshed and I always look forward to reading all the different recommendations.

I intentionally do not read or listen to the synopsis since I tend to lean towards certain genres more. Also it’s more fun to discover what the story is all about as I read through it. I do have some inkling on the genre but beyond that not much to go on so hopefully I have a mixed bag of everything.

I have divided my TBR into two main categories.

Category 1: Books that I have planned to read this year as part of a reading challenge.

These books I am committed to read this year. It’s still missing #14 which I will find later. (More posts to follow later on the reading challenge…)

  1. Tom Lake – Ann Patchett
  2. How High We Go In The Dark – Sequoia Nagamatsu
  3. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
  4. Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingslover
  5. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
  6. The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese
  7. Breaking Free – Vasanthi
  8. Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan
  9. Pyre – Perumal Murugan
  10. A Mussoorie Mystery – Ruskin Bond
  11. Things We Lost In The Fire – Mariana Enríquez
  12. Lapvona – Ottessa Moshfegh
  13. Crying in H Mart – Michelle Zauner
  14. To Be Decided

Category 2: Books the random name picker site will pick and I will read each month.

It’s like randomly picking the title from a jar but without the fancy jar and the cute little paper chits. These are the books I added to my TBR while browsing through other people’s favourites. I will keep adding to my TBR through the year but 12 will come out of this category(one per month).

  1. Red Rising – Pierce Brown (Red Rising Saga #1)
  2. Fourth Wing – Rebecca Yarros (The Empyrean #1)
  3. Mr Einstein’s Secretary – Matthew Reilly
  4. Better Than the Movies – Lynn Painter (Better Than the Movies #1)
  5. The Book That Wouldn’t Burn – Mark Lawrence (The Library Trilogy #1)
  6. The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos #1)
  7. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
  8. Assasin – KR Meera
  9. Any Man – Amber Tamblyn
  10. Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
  11. Mistborn Trilogy – Branson Sanderson
  12. Lonely Castle in the Mirror – Mizuki Tsujimura
  13. The Grace of Kings – Ken Liu (The Dandelion Dynasty #1)
  14. Terms and Conditions – Lauren Asher (Dreamland Billionaires #2)
  15. The Poppy War – R.F. Kuang (The Poppy War #1)
  16. The Kiss of Deception – Mary E. Pearson (The Remnant Chronicles #1)
  17. The Shadow of What Was Lost – James Islington (The Licanius Trilogy #1)
  18. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
  19. The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
  20. The Farseer Trilogy – Robin Hobb
  21. Educated – Tara Westover
  22. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy – Nathan Thrall
  23. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder – Holly Jackson (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #1)
  24. Warbreaker – Brandon Sanderson
  25. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
  26. Anxious People – Fredrik Backman
  27. Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus
  28. Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata
  29. The Spear Cuts Through Water – Simon Jimenez
  30. Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata – Devdutt Pattanaik
  31. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
  32. Billy Summers – Stephen King
  33. Blood Over Bright Haven – M.L. Wang
  34. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
  35. Titanium Noir – Nick Harkaway
  36. She Who Became the Sun – Shelley Parker-Chan (The Radiant Emperor Duology #1)
  37. Emma – Jane Austen
  38. None of This Is True – Lisa Jewell
  39. The Seven Year Slip – Ashley Poston
  40. Tress of the Emerald Sea – Brandon Sanderson (Secret Project #1)
  41. Legends & Lattes – Travis Baldree (Legends & Lattes #1)
  42. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
  43. The Inheritance Games – Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Inheritance Games #1)

Even though I have very specific number of books in each category, those are just baselines. As someone who likes lists and plans I have a lot of fun preparing them. I don’t follow any of them that rigidly nor do I stress too much about the goals. It’s a nice to have but not essential for your reading.
Read what you want, when you want and that’s all there is to it. It’s your own journey, have fun.

Happy Reading!