TBR Pile Reading Challenge 2020

This is another highly interesting Reading Challenge I joined in 2016.

I don't think Evie from the Bookish Blog still carries this on, as I can't find it on her page but her words with which she started this challenge are still true: "We all have those books. We buy them, win them, they're gifted to us. Then we put them up on a bookshelf and there they stay, collecting dust, waiting for the time when we'll finally decide to pick them up."

After four years of participation, my TBR (To Be Read) pile is still a lot longer than it should because I just can't resist buying any new books and going to the library but I have tried to attempt reading more old books than buying new ones.

I could, of course, try to tackle the 50+ challenge but we all know that is not going to happen, instead, I tried to do at least 11-20 old books in addition to the new ones I'm buying and those I get from the library and wished to be pleasantly surprised at the end of the year. That happened, I have reached the 21-30 (First Kiss) and/or 31-40 (Sweet Summer Fling) in the last years, maybe I can get to 41-50 (Could This Be Love?) one day.

I have read
37 books in 2016,
32 in 2017,
38 in 2018 and
23 in 2019
of the books that had been waiting to be read for more than a year.

So far, I have already read these from my "old books" in 2020:
Stanišić, Saša "How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone" (Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert) - 2006
Kaminer, Wladimir "Mein deutsches Dschungelbuch" [My German Jungle Book] - 2003
Staël, Anne-Louise-Germaine de "Corinne ou l'Italie" (Corinne: Or Italy/Corinna oder Italien) - 1807
Giordano, Paolo "The Solitude of Prime Numbers" (La solitudine dei numeri primi/Die Einsamkeit der Primzahlen") - 2008
Undset, Sigrid "Kristin Lavransdatter" (Kristin Lavransdatter) - 1920-22 
Rand, Ayn "We the Living" (Vom Leben unbesiegt) - 1936 - 464 pages
Wilding, Valerie "Top Ten Classic Stories" - 2001
Stendhal "Le Rouge et le Noir" (The Red and the Black/Rot und Schwarz) - 1830
Northup, Solomon "Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana" (Zwölf Jahre als Sklave) - 1853

Brontë, Anne "Agnes Grey" (Agnes Grey) - 1847

Deary, Terry "Top Ten Shakespeare Stories" - 1998

Hustvedt, Siri "The Summer without Men" (Der Sommer ohne Männer) - 2011
James, Henry "The Europeans" (Die Europäer) - 1878
McCall Smith, Alexander "Espresso Tales" (44 Scotland Street #2) (Hausgeflüster) - 2005
Stephenson, Neal "Anathem" (Anathem) - 2008

Gorki, Maxim "The Mother" (Мать/Matj) - 1906/07
Hawking, Stephen "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes" (Eine kurze Geschichte der Zeit) - 1988

Baum, L. Frank "The Wizard of Oz" (Der Zauberer von Oz) - 1900

Kaminer, Wladimer "Die Reise nach Trulala" (Travel to Trulala) - 2002
Crafts, Hannah "The Bondwoman’s Narrative" - 1855-69

Grass, Günter "Grimms Wörter. Eine Liebeserklärung" (Autobiographical Trilogy #3) [Grimms Words - A Declaration of Love] - 2010
Dumas, Alexandre "Le comte de Monte-Cristo" (The Count of Monte Cristo/Der Graf von Monte Cristo) - 1844-46

Harris, Joanne "A Cat, a Hat and a Piece of String" (Katze, Hut und Regenschirm) - 2012 

Rutherfurd, Edward "Sarum: the Novel of England" (Sarum) - 1987

Marx, Karl "Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie" (Capital. Critique of Political Economy) - 1867

All in all 25 books that I eliminated from my ever growing pile.