Joining the #StartOnYourShelfathon!

The #StartOnYourShelfathon is hosted by The Quiet Pond.

This challenge is meant to help us with our growing pile of unread books sitting on our bookshelves. I wish I could say that I will to READ ALL THE BOOKS I own, but, according to Goodreads, I have 721 books I own but not read. I also have another 184 ebooks that I own but have not read.

So, yeah, I am not going to be able to read all of the books by the end of this year.

But I do want to get a pretty good amount done.

Here are some goals I have! Let's see what I can get done!

1. Finish off the 2013 books

This is my main goal this year. I have 76 books I own but have not read that I added in 2013. A few of these may end up getting removed or might be DNFs, but I want to clear this shelf.

2. Have less than 700 books on my books I own but not read shelf

This may sound easy, but I am still going to be getting books throughout the year. I could put myself on a book buying ban but let's be realistic, that's not going to happen. I am trying to be careful about money, but I actually don't spend a lot of money on books. I go to a lot of used booksales, and that is the real reason why it is hard for me to get under 700. When you go to a sale where a bag of books is $5, you stuff that bag full. I also get books from trade on Paperbackswap but I put stuff on my wishlist far in advance and sometimes I can be waiting years for a book, so when one comes in, I do request it. I do preorder books, but not often and I use giftcards. Preordering does support authors a lot. Speaking of...

3. Read preorders right away (and read previous preorders that I still have not read)

A lot of my preorders are books I am super excited to read so I read them right away, but sometimes they end up getting pushed aside in favor of library books. I am going to try to read my preorders right away, or at least by the end of the year.

4. No Kindle Freebies

Most of my 184 ebooks are ebook freebies. I found that most of the ebook freebies I have are not my kind of books anymore (dystopian or paranormal heavy) and I am more likely to give up on some of them due to the writing. I do find some good books in the kindle freebies sometimes, but I feel like most of the books I get are just meh. So, no more kindle freebies.

5. Get rid of books I don't like

I have a bit of a hoarding problem when it comes to books (as you could probably tell from my large number of unread books). I tend to keep every book I buy or win, even if I don't like them. In some cases, I think I keep them in hopes that if I try again I will like them more (this is especially the case for books in which I am the black sheep and everyone else loves them). Sometimes they are books I won or got signed before I read the book and I feel bad getting rid of them because the authors were so nice. But there is no reason to keep books I do not like, so I will be donating or trading these books. I have been doing this lately, but I want to keep doing this so I am putting this here to remind myself that any books I read in this challenge that I did not like should not go back into my library.

6. Read (or try to read) 2 ebooks a month

This one is pretty self-explanatory. As I kind of mentioned, I used to download so many ebooks just because they were free. I wasn't worried about whether I was going to get to them. Now I want to clean them out. If I DNF some ebooks that's fine, but I just want to try.

That's a lot of goals and some are more like resolutions than goals but I am really trying to clean up my TBR! I am combining this challenge a bit with the Cleaning Out the TBR Closet Challenge on Goodreads. In this challenge, I am trying to read books added to my TBR in 2013-2017.  That challenge includes books I don't own, but I am going to list how many unread books I own per year (as in, year added to Goodreads because I only started keeping track of when I bought books in 2015). I am counting both ebooks and physical books in my total.

2013: 76

2014: 133

2015: 107

2016: 184

2017: 173

2018: 103

2019: 66

2020: 0

I am not going to post a specific TBR because, as you can see, I have a lot to choose from! 

But, I am posting books I preordered and still need to read as well as the ones I am waiting on.
OWN

WAITING ON



The Quiet Pond has included starmaps to use as part of the challenge as well as stars. I will be using the below map.

I will be using my own system of stars though. Each year will have a different colored star. (My list of books I own per year above is keyed to the star colors).

Example: The stars above are all 2015 stars because they are yellow. The outlined star would mean that I read an ebook. The third star, which is slightly different from the first, means it was a preorder.

I will update my progress with my monthly reviews! If you wish to join, make sure you check out The Quiet Pond!