The challenge is simple: read those books. The ones you bought on a whim while you were Christmas shopping for your uncle. The ones you saw reviewed somewhere and just had to have. The ones bought at the used bookstore because you read it once when you were twelve and couldn’t look up because you couldn’t remember the author or the title, but it just showed up one day on the shelf, tattered and worn and begging to be taken home.
(If you’re one of those people with an unbelievable amount of self-restraint, who never buys books you don’t have time to read, take an alternate version of the challenge and read the books you’ve been meaning to get around to forever. You’ve got a list, don’t you? Of course you do. Use that instead.)
Count every book you finish in 2012 that you own but haven’t read yet. (If you have a small TBR stack, you may want to include books you own and have been meaning to reread, but just haven’t gotten to, due to library books, review copies, giveaways, and other new books. If I did that, though, it’d be a five-year challenge, so this part is purely optional.) Here’s the catch, though – books you add to the stack throughout 2012 count as part of your total of unread books. Yes, that means it’s entirely possible to read nothing but books you already own and never make it past 10% read. But remember, we’re trying to decrease the size of the stack, not let it metastasize all over your bookshelves like some kind of fascinating but ultimately dangerous literary cancer.
Why join? For the joy and satisfaction of getting that stack down, of course. And throughout the year I’ll be giving away prizes for the most books read total, the most progress made, and one big end-of-year giveaway (I’m thinking bookshelves – a new home for all those happily read books). Plus you get to watch everyone else discover the joy of books they’ve been meaning to get to for ages.
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