Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion

The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge

Are you a few books away from being crushed to death under you personal TBR? Do you have waaay more owned books than read books? Do you love signing up for yet one more challenge?? If so, the Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge is for you!

The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge Rules:

The challenge is for those of us who buy more books than we ever get around to reading. The overall goal is to tackle as many titles as you can from your personal library and start making owned books more of a priority. As with our Incomplete Series Challenge, each participant will create their own thread, list out their unread/read owned titles, and come up with personal goals that suits your needs.

Pro tip: If you have too many books to list, you can always paste a link to a Goodreads bookshelf or any other database to your thread for quick access. Goodreads has a scan feature on the app that makes it super easy to upload all of your titles to a bookshelf.

That's it - track your progress, let us know how you're doing with updates, and have fun! If you want to get really serious about getting through the books you own, I have some Mini-Challenges below to give you some ideas on how to take this challenge to the next level (i.e. obsessively organized). :)

The Overflowing Bookshelf Mini Challenges!! :D

1. The Book-Buying Ban Mini Challenge:

Are your overflowing bookshelves caused by your inability to stop buying books? This 3 for 1 Mini Challenge will help you get through the books you already own while still allowing you to treat yourself to new books. (Nik's Notes: I've been using this challenge for a few years now and it has totally changed my bad buying habits - I love it! My favorite aspect is that it makes me really think about which books I want to spend my "reward" on, so I don't waste money on books I'm only kind of interested in).

How it works:
You must read 3 books from your personal collection for every 1 book you bring home (3 for 1 is an example ratio, so feel free to adapt it for your needs). The tracker should look familiar:

Niki's Book-Buying Ban Challenge [1]:
1.
2.
3.
Purchased:

Nik's Notes: You can also do a page-count version rather than a book count version (1500 for 1). The benefit is that you're rewarded for effort, as longer books carry more weight towards completion. If you think the page version will work better for you, here's how you adapt your tracker:

Niki's Book-Buying Ban Challenge [1]:
1. The Shadow of What Was Lost 602/602
2. Knight's Shadow 606/1208
3.The Aware 318/1526 <-the 26 pages over becomes my first entry in my next log.
Purchased: The Legion of Flame

The Borrowing Ban Mini Challenge

Are your bookshelves overflowing because you can't resist the call of free books from the library? (Or because you can't stop requesting ARCs from Netgalley?). The goal of this mini challenge is to help you reprioritize the books you actually spent money on.

How it works:
You must read 3 books from your personal collection for every 1 book you borrow from the library or request from Netgalley (3 for 1 is an example ratio, so feel free to adapt it for your needs). The tracker should look familiar:

Niki's Borrowing Ban Challenge [1]:
1.
2.
3.
Borrowed:

The Book Hoarding Mini Challenge

Are your overflowing bookshelves so stacked that you couldn't possibly read all the unread titles within the next 10 years? If so, the Hoarding Ban Mini Challenge might be the one for you!

How it works:
You must get rid of 2 books from your personal collection for every 1 you bring home. (2 for 1 is an example ratio, so feel free to adapt it for your needs). The tracker should be annoyingly redundant to list at this point:

Niki's Book Hoarding Challenge [1]:
Purchased:
Let Go:
1.
2.

The Book-End Mini Challenge

Is your bookshelf brimming with first-in-series, which would require you to purchase/borrow even more books to get through your collection? If so, the Book-End Mini Challenge might be for you!

How it works:
Line your books up approximately from longest owned to newest (or sort your online bookshelf by date added. Focus your reading on the books you bring home immediately (the front of the bookend) and the books you've been hanging onto the longest (the back of the bookend). This will help you think about the books you bring home: "will I want to read this immediately?" This is also an opportunity to look critically at the books you've been hanging onto the longest to see if you still even want to read them. This challenge pairs well with the Book-Hoarding Challenge. Possible log entries:

Niki's Bookend Challenge:
Newest:
1. Apex
2. The Stone Sky [Read] <-Moved to a completed section and replace with a new title.
3. The Shadow of What Was Lost

Oldest:
1. Aurian
2. Shatter Me [Got rid of] <-then moved to the "Let Go" pile and replaced with a "new" old title
3. Ghost King

Bill's FBR Challenge Masher Challenge

Do you love challenges? Do you also like killing two birds with one stone? If so, Bill's FBR Challenge Masher Challenge might be for you!

How it works:
Choose any of the other challenges offered by our group and try to completed as much of them as you can only using books you own.

Current FBR Challenges (with logs of their own):

The A-Z Topics Challenge
The Bingo Challenge
The Book Cover Challenge
The Incomplete Series Challenge

You may not own enough titles to complete the challenges entirely (the Incomplete Series Challenge would be difficult), so the goal is to get as many of them as possible with your current collection.

The Book Pledge Challenge

Do you like challenges but don't have the time or energy to get really complicated with them? The Book Pledge Challenge might be the one for you!

How it works:
Decide how many books you'd like to read from your personal collection within a given timeframe. Then track your progress towards your goal:

Niki's Book Pledge Challenge [Goal: 5 by 12/2017]:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Overall, the Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge is designed to be as relaxed or intense as you choose, based on what types of goals you'd like to achieve. There's a lot of info in this thread, so please let me know if you have any questions. :-)

OMG, the timing on this is so spot on. I walked into a bookstore yesterday, just to browse, and walked out with three books... to add to the over 300 books I already own but haven't read. I'm out of control!

Of course, just buying more bookshelves is probably easier...but, no! Discipline. I need discipline. I will do this or risk death by book avalanche.

Veronica wrote: "OMG, the timing on this is so spot on. I walked into a bookstore yesterday, just to browse, and walked out with three books... to add to the over 300 books I already own but haven't read. I'm out o..."

Haha - I can TOTALLY relate to that! Buying a bookshelf always seems like the easiest solution. This is how we got into this mess. ;P

And if my husband ever figures out that all those books in my closet are unread....O_O

Nice job with the rules Niki but couldn't you have waited until Monday to post? Going to spend my weekend building my list now.

Veronica wrote: "And if my husband ever figures out that all those books in my closet are unread....O_O"

Cheaper than shoes or so I'm told.

That's the rationale I have ready to go should he ever ask. :-)

Veronica wrote: "That's the rationale I have ready to go should he ever ask. :-)"

lol totally cheaper than shoes, and much more compact! Plausible deniability is how I get through. :)

Bill wrote: "Nice job with the rules Niki but couldn't you have waited until Monday to post? Going to spend my weekend building my list now."

Thanks! Haha, I didn't think of that - I'll probably be spending the weekend scanning YA books into a bookshelf. Hopefully you don't have to cancel any big plans. ;P

Just one of my best friends wedding reception. They had a destination wedding so just having a lunch/drinks reception. Have other friends coming into town though so I'm sure Saturday night will be a complete loss.

Finally a challenge I don't need to join. Whew.

Bill wrote: "Just one of my best friends wedding reception. They had a destination wedding so just having a lunch/drinks reception. Have other friends coming into town though so I'm sure Saturday night will be ..."

lol - nope, can't get out of that. :)

Sunday is the day...

Angela wrote: "Finally a challenge I don't need to join. Whew."

::Angela rubs salt in the open wounds we received from books falling on us::

...it burns!!!!

I'll just have to dig you guys out. Off to get an excavator ready.

Angela wrote: "Finally a challenge I don't need to join. Whew."

Surprised you didn't run out and buy a bunch of books so you could join the challenge.

Oooohhhh. Nvm, that burned worse. Lol

But.... but.... what about sales??? What about second hand books??? 😳

Bill wrote: "Angela wrote: "Finally a challenge I don't need to join. Whew."

Surprised you didn't run out and buy a bunch of books so you could join the challenge."

Haha you're making me laugh. Tempting.

Also, I'm taking the spirit of this and applying it to my custom fabric addiction

Margret wrote: "Also, I'm taking the spirit of this and applying it to my custom fabric addiction"

Lol, you should start a thread thread. ;P

You could adapt the "reward" of the challenge to be a dollar amount rather than a single book purchase. I've fudged the rules before when the book outlet had a sale lol. I don't think I will going forward for the sake of helping my collection.

Thank you, Niki! I needed this!

I will organize the shelves this weekend and post my challenge. My books are mostly ebooks and audiobooks, so it is really easy for me to forget I own them.

Niki Hawkes wrote: "Bill wrote: "Just one of my best friends wedding reception. They had a destination wedding so just having a lunch/drinks reception. Have other friends coming into town though so I'm sure Saturday n..."

Trying to get it done tonight. I can deal with being tired on a Friday.

This is an intriguing idea, but it creates a problem for me. Most of the unread books that I own are the first book in a series...meaning that if I read it and like it, I now have a bunch more books to buy in order to finish the series. I may have to get a little creative if I'm going to participate.

I do find that using Goodreads' cataloging abilities helps me knock out my owned-but-unread books. Those books that I shelved over a year ago and have yet to read? Well, they start to burn a hole in my retinas any time I view my Own-TBR Goodreads shelf. And as a matter of habit, I tend to sort my shelf by "date added" when trying to figure out what to read next.

Andrew, I am going to join the challenge, but I already decided that I will make exceptions for books belonging to the series that I am reading. Those can be bought anytime and won't count for this challenge. :)

I agree - totally cater to your needs with this. I like Miche's idea to not count continuation purchases. I'm probably going to get around that by starting with books I have the whole set for and by utilizing the library (which imo is the lesser of evils when you're trying not to be buried lol). Perhaps I can even create a mini challenge that suits your needs. ::percolates::

I'll have something tomorrow - I have an idea I think will work. :)

I'm going to try to do Scott's A-Z challenge only using my owned books. Got plenty of time to think on it since he set it for next year. ;)

Bill wrote: "I'm going to try to do Scott's A-Z challenge only using my owned books. Got plenty of time to think on it since he set it for next year. ;)"

That is a great idea!

Bill wrote: "I'm going to try to do Scott's A-Z challenge only using my owned books. Got plenty of time to think on it since he set it for next year. ;)"

Ooooohhhh!! Bill just leveled up haha. That's an awesome idea! :)

I'm going to set up my challenge tomorrow. Love the idea of mixing the two challenges, Bill. :)

Niki Hawkes wrote: "I agree - totally cater to your needs with this. I like Miche's idea to not count continuation purchases. I'm probably going to get around that by starting with books I have the whole set for and b..."

I think I figured out what I'm going to do. I'm basically going to go through my shelf and place all my unread books in categories for why I haven't read them yet (maybe it's the first book in a new series, or it's a book I got for free and don't care that much about, etc). Once I've categorized, I can then focus on the categories that are easier to knock out while sprinkling in a new series periodically. I also will sort them by how long they've been cataloged on my Goodreads shelf, so that I can focus on books that have been ignored the longest.

Bill wrote: "Veronica wrote: "And if my husband ever figures out that all those books in my closet are unread....O_O"

Cheaper than shoes or so I'm told."

I have a book problem and a shoe problem.

Bill wrote: "I'm going to try to do Scott's A-Z challenge only using my owned books. Got plenty of time to think on it since he set it for next year. ;)"

That will be a cool trick if you can pull it off.

Yeah. Will see how it goes. At 260 books with about another 100 kindle books to go so there will be plenty of options.

Tammie wrote: "Bill wrote: "Veronica wrote: "And if my husband ever figures out that all those books in my closet are unread....O_O"

Cheaper than shoes or so I'm told."

I have a book problem and a shoe problem."

Eh. I'm sure your husband has a collection of his own even if it is just debt. :)

Bill wrote: "Tammie wrote: "Bill wrote: "Veronica wrote: "And if my husband ever figures out that all those books in my closet are unread....O_O"

Cheaper than shoes or so I'm told."

I have a book problem and ..."

LOL, yes he does! He's a gamer. Way too many games.

Andrew wrote: "Niki Hawkes wrote: "I agree - totally cater to your needs with this. I like Miche's idea to not count continuation purchases. I'm probably going to get around that by starting with books I have the..."

Cool beans - I'm glad you came up with a solution that will work for you. :) Even so, you inspired another mini challenge (The Bookend Mini Challenge), which hopefully will help others who have a ton of first in series and don't necessarily need to focus on not buying/borrowing books. It looks like we had thoughts on focusing on oldest books owned. Looking forward to your list. :)

Added: The Bookend Mini Challenge ^^

I will be doing this one too :D

Also added: Bill's FBR Challenge Masher Challenge

I feel like a moron, but I can't figure out how to create a new discussion topic for my Overflowing Bookshelf challenge. Whenever I try to create a new discussion, I get a virtual finger wag via this error message: "Sorry, you must verify your email before posting a new topic."

I've tried logging out and back in. I've checked my email to see if there's some kind of of message waiting from GR to confirm I'm a real human. Neither of those things worked. So now I just feel like an idiot, and one who is without his own Challenge. :(

That's frustrating! Clicking on create a new topic usually lets you create one immediately. I'm not sure why it's giving you an error. I can go in and make one for you, but you wouldn't have as much autonomy on it. Let me know. Maybe your account will finish its freak out soon.

Niki Hawkes wrote: "Also added: Bill's FBR Challenge Masher Challenge"

About time someone named something after me. ;)

It was only fitting considering you inspired this whole shindig.

Got my challenge post up. For whatever reason, it worked fine from the GR app but not from a Regular ol' computer. *shrugs*

Bill always has the coolest titles.

Oooh I need to join this one.

I love your new puppy pic! :)

Thanks! That's Toben. We've had him for....5 years now? He was 2 when we got him.

Margret wrote: "Bill always has the coolest titles."

Are you bragging because you gave me my series challenge title?

Elizabeth wrote: "Thanks! That's Toben. We've had him for....5 years now? He was 2 when we got him."

He looks like the sweetest bear-dog I've ever seen haha.