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

Mid Year Check in, goals, life and other random tidbits

Hello fellow Booknerds!

I’m just going to pretend that we didn’t really have that 8 month sabbatical and that everything is fine. Actually everything is going good- I needed to take a space back to really think about what I wanted to use this space for, and what I was going to do with it.

Here’s the thing, I want to blog. I miss it honestly, I miss having a longer type conversation of what I’m reading and what I think about and stuff like that, longer conversations that insta won’t really allow you to have. But more than that, even though I do the weekly updates for how many books I read I feel that sometimes that is just so cut and dried. And sometimes the nuances that I’m feeling about a certain book, don’t really come through for a star rating. Or maybe someone doesn’t understand why I rated a book a certain way. And besides books I want to be able to write about other stuff too.

Which seems weird, like what is life outside of books? But I do have things outside of books which is odd but true.

So let’s chat for a bit about some stuff that has happened in the past 8 months, some stuff coming up and how I’m looking on my goals for the year.

In random news, I’ve been doing a lot of training at my job. Virtual and in person, travelling (thankfully not too much) but I did just get back from a trip to California- which was gorgeous though I didn’t get a chance to really see any sights.

I also got my 4th tattoo this year. It’s one that I had planned out, and somehow the execution is even better then what I was hoping.

I joined up with a friend for a summer reading challenge where I am trying to read as much as possible off of Steve my TBR and so far it’s going quite well, though I would like to read a bit more, but that’s normal for me.

And for the first time in my entire time of working (ever) I have pto and I’m going on a trip in October, for 2 whole weeks, which I’m so excited about.

Now for the bookish goals? Well I personally think that I’m doing quite well on that front, mostly. There are some things that I would like to get done and dusted that hasn’t happened yet but hopefully soon! (Especially since at the time of writing this I technically only have about 4 months left in the year) So let’s go over what my goals were for the year and what I’ve accomplished so far!

Goal One was to read 300 books: At this moment I’m at 181, so I feel rather confident on this point, hopefully I can get a few more done and dusted before the end of the month!

Goal Two was to read 85K pages, and I’m sitting at 47K right now so I should be able to complete this one (I hope so at least since it seems like I always fall just a bit short of the page counts)

Goal Three was to get 150 books off of Steve my TBR. This honestly wasn’t going as well in the beginning of the summer but now that I’ve been doing a summer reading challenge with a friend, I have bumped this number up to 84 read so far off of him. So if I keep at this pace I should have no problem to get this goal knocked off.

Goal Four was to get through 12 tomes (over 500 pages) and I made the caveat this year that they had to be books that were new to me/off of Steve for this to count. And I’m actually at 5 tomes so far, so that’s always a great thing!

Goal Five was to complete at least 3 series. *crickets* Look I’m trying but I get so distracted by new shiny’s and by trying to read other books that my series goals have really fallen by the side, well really I’ve launched them off the side of the boat without a care because I have been focused on standalones. I am trying to do better on this part though, maybe in September I can actually finish some of the half-started ones?

Goal Six was 22 books by 2022. This is also a goal that I completely forgot. I have read 2 of them, and I think that I happened to get rid of both of them, which makes me realize a lot of those books were ones that I bought because of wanting to read what everyone else was reading. Which is not a good idea for my bookish goals for sure.

And finally Goal Seven was to read at least 5 TBR vets (books that had been on Steve for at least 3 years). I have actually read 3 of them so far. And of the 3, I enjoyed one. Again, a lot of the books that have been on Steve are ones that were purchased because they were hyped or popular or someone told me that I should read it (even though they didn’t have the same taste as me).

So this is just my little bit of a catch up. I think I might start doing my weekly wrap-ups on here as well as doing them on insta, so I can give a bit more of a review for everyone.

Anyways, hope you have had a great day!

And remember, life is too short for mediocre books! Happy reading!

-Stephanie