I’ve been noodling over how to better attack my owned TBR (to be read) and the volume of print books I have in my home that are unread. From my thinking over this, Project 100 Unread was born. The intention of this project is to read down/unhaul books from my collection until I have 100 unread books (ideally less, but I can settle for 100). At the time of writing this post, I have 317 unread print books in my home (which is a lot considering that I also don’t read print copies, which is a blog post for another day). And I expect this number to honestly grow over the course of the year, which makes this challenge particularly daunting.
Since creating this challenge, I’ve been pondering how best to structure the challenge for myself and find the balance between overwhelming and not giving up because it’s too structured. I love supporting authors so telling myself I can’t buy books isn’t going to work for me. Only allowing myself to read books I own creates another sure fire way to fail at this challenge.
So then how do I structure a challenge that is basically fail proof? First, I don’t try and tackle this in a short period of time. This is a long term project that will always be a work in progress. Second, I don’t restrict what and how much I can read from this TBR. And finally, I give myself grace in the process.
Here are my general ground rules:
- By January 1, 2030 (barely under 6 years from today [2/11/2024]) have 100 or less unread print books in my collection.
- I can get books off the TBR in a few ways:
- Read them (the obvious).
- Unhaul the book if I’m no longer interested.
- DNF (do not finish) and determine if it’s a DNF forever or only for now. The books will then fall into the above two ways to get a book off the TBR.
- Be mindful of the books I’m purchasing/preordering. I’ve already modified my book box subscriptions (Steamy Lit is my current ongoing subscription) to help with this.
- Give myself grace if I’m not successful. This project is supposed to be a fun way to get through the books I purchased because I was excited about them, and then let them sit on my shelf for a stupid amount of time.
And that’s really it! Again, I don’t want this to project to be too challenging or too restrictive. I plan to provide periodic updates on my progress both here and other places on the internet (still working through what that looks like). I hope you’ll stick around to join me on this journey!
Let me know in the comments what reading projects you have in progress!
