No More Book-Buy Bemoaning
Regular readers know, I have a LOT of unread books. I write about them often. I read them less often. I fret and make vows, then break them, and fret some more after the book-buy buzz has worn off. I don’t think I’m alone. A reader suggested recently that I made a from-the-shelves challenge. I got inspired, so here are two related shelf challenges for the new year.
Who’s with me? Ideas? Suggestions? If you think these sound good, spread the word to the book-blogging community, and I’ll firm up details to launch at the new year.
2010 Balance the Books Challenge
I buy and borrow new books more often than I read books on my shelf. Often, the newly purchased books gather dust, and become old books. Next year, in 2010, I want to balance my reading. For the year, I’d like to read a third new books, a third borrowed books, and a third books from my shelf, whether first or re-reads.
I hope to get a color chart to track the progress with red/yellow/blue for each category. My ideal is to read as many shelf books as I borrow or buy new. I’ll do a post on or about the end of each month so readers can post progress reports.
Clear The Shelves Challenge (2010 and Beyond!)
In an effort to chip away at the nearly 200 books I own but haven’t read (and want to!), I challenge other readers to read at least 25 books a year that have been on your shelf for over a year. I’ll do quarterly posts for readers to post progress reports. At the end of the year, we could chip in for a gift certificate for the reader with the most shelf books read.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I have been trying to employ the strategy of having to read and bring back at least 10 books before I return to the used bookstore, but I still keep accruing more books because I inevitably wind up buying more than 10 on my trip. I suppose I could say that I can only buy as many books as the trade-in credit I get, but that doesn’t seem to be working either.
I think I am going to try to have 50% of my reading be books I already own for next year. And however many books I read this year, I will say that 50% of that number is the total number of books I can purchase next year. I won’t limit library borrowing since that doesn’t cost me money and really can curtail my spending somewhat by sating my impulse to acquire new books (which tends to strike once per month).
October 8th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I’m totally up for the clear the shelves challenge. The other sounds like it has lots of maths. I don’t like maths.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
I’ve been telling myself that I’m going to use Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing as inspiration to keep my book buying under control next year (you’d think my husband being out of work would be inspiration enough), but I’m still waiting to see if the Book Depository will actually send it to me–they cancelled my first order over the weekend. I will definitely be on board with a challenge to clear the shelves.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Oh, that sounds like a lovely book, and I”m already tempted to go to amazon uk since I just finished girl with dragon tattoo and want to order the sequels pronto. Must. Resist. Impulse. To Buy Books.
October 9th, 2009 at 10:29 am
I think that I have, maybe, 5-7 unread new books currently. That’s because the majority of my books, hundreds of them, are down in storage in the states. I haven’t seen them in two and a half years. I miss them. I’m sure there are more unread books down there.
You know what my problem is, I re-read a lot of books. Instead of reading the new ones, I pick up old favorites and read them again and again.
October 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Jodi, I don’t see re-reading as a problem, more of a lost art. I have Lizzie Skurnick’s book, Shelf Discovery, on my request queue at the library and it’s about the joys of re-reading. When are you and your books going to be reunited? And did you have a lot of unread ones there?