At the end of July I hit on an idea for reconciling my growing TBR Pile of Doom with my  intractable hunger for more books:  for every four TBR books I read, I’d allow myself to buy one book.  In hopes of keeping myself driven, I’m going to take a page from Sarah’s book and do a monthly face-the-verdict, though not one as numbers-oriented as hers.   I made….definite progress in August, reading TBR material almost exclusively.

TBR Titles Read in August:
The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton. Purchased 2018.
How Dante Can Save Your Life,  Rod Dreher. Purchased 2019.
American Illiad: The Story of the Civil War, Charles Roland. Library discard.
The Left, The Right, and the State, Lew Rockwell. Purchased 2018.
Reluctant Witnesses: Children’s Voices from the Civil War,  Emmy E. Werner. Library discard.
The Great Ron Paul: The Scott Horton Interviews, 2004-2019, Scott Horton. Purchased 2019.
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust. Library discard, picked up in 2018.
To the Ends of the Universe, Isaac Asimov. Library discard; acquired 2016.
Go Directly to Jail: The Criminializaton of Almost Everything, ed. Gene Healy. Purchased ~2015.  Re-read for a review.

TBR Scheduled for September:
The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff. Purchased 2019.
The School Revolution, Ron Paul.    Gift from a friend in 2018.

Reward Books Purchased:
Obey Little, Resist Much: Remembering Ed Abbey, ed. James Hepworth
The Putin Interviews, Oliver Stone

I had to hit the ground running in August, because in September I have the Brothers Karamazov to finish — my deadline is September 21st, the date I accepted the Classics Club challenge. If  I don’t make it, I’m not sure what will happen —  an attack of disappointed English teachers?   — but I don’t want to tempt fate.