500 book challenge

Good morning fellow booknerds!
I’m alive, and back, at least for right now.

That seems to be the standard for me. I start to say I’m going to spend more time blogging this year, post a few entries, and then poof disappear into the void without a word, until I come back again.

So if you have stuck around, yay! If you are new, yay! If you just clicked because of the title, also yay!

The other day I was scrolling Booktube, as you do, and came across a newish challenge. Now the challenge itself isn’t really new, because it’s been around in some sort of variant throughout the years, usually popping it’s head right up after Christmas because all the booknerds realized how many books they have and that they need to read them. I’m talking of course of the Read what you Own challenge.

This year a creator has made it where it’s a challenge to read a certain level of what you own before you buy a new book. 25, 50, 75, 100 books off of your shelves before you purchase more.
And then another creator decided to do a 500 book challenge, where you read 500 books that you own before you purchase more. And people started deciding that was a great idea.

I laughed a bit. And then counted Steve my TBR (side note for anyone who is new, I named my TBR about 6 years ago) And then realized how many books I had on him. Now I really don’t mind a big TBR. I would rather have options then run out of items to read. However I live in a small hobbit hole apartment, and I really don’t have the space that I need to have a TBR that is almost 500 books.

So I decided I was going to join, but I decided that I was going to have a few different parameters for the challenge. Mainly because book buying bans, well they just really don’t work for me. I could go strong for a few weeks and then I would break and buy a lot more then if I would just buy one or two when I wanted. So I will still be purchasing books- but with some guidelines.

Guideline one: Preorders and my monthly book box are still coming. However I have to read the books that come in from that either in that month or in the month immediately following so that they aren’t sitting on Steve for years.

So this means that if one of my books is a preorder to a continuation of a series, if I’m not up to where that book is in the series, then I have to at least read the next one in the series so that I can justify it

Guideline two: I can still buy books, however I am putting a limit on how many I can purchase. So instead of going slightly crazy like I have the past 3 months, I’m limiting my purchases to about 10 or so. It won’t roll over but that way if I do see a classic I want or find a new release that is something I’ve had my eye on, I can get it without any guilt.

Guideline three: Rereads count. Listen I only have 486 books on Steve, and I’m not going to buy more books just to make it to 500. And I have several series on Steve that I need to reread the first or second books just to remember what the series is about. So for this, rereads will definetely count.

Personally I’m not sure how this will work. Nor how long it would take. Though if we took the numbers from my last 2 years of reading, (2021= 300 and 2022=288) if I kept up that reading pace, it would take me about a year and a half to fully read 500 books. Of course that is still with me buying some books, but even then, really concentrating on what I physically own.

So I’m going to try to do this challenge. I’m not sure how it will go. If I’ll finish it with a smaller TBR or if I will completely fail and have a larger than ever one. But all I know is that it will be fun doing it. And I’m going to be keeping a record in here so that way I can make sure to have some accountability.

Have a great day, thanks for reading and hope you get to some books!

~Stephanie