One of my bookish goals for 2016 was to read more of the books sitting on my TBR shelves, since I physically cannot stop myself from buying more books. April was not a great month for this–almost every book I read this month was from the library. Not that this is a bad thing–I love libraries and I think supporting them is vital–but my TBR stacks could really use some love. A lot of this was due to Dewey’s Readathon; having lots of shorter book options is helpful for me during Readathons, and I tend not to buy shorter books because of how quickly I finish them. I tend not to buy YA for the same reason, but sometimes I get into YA moods and am forced to hit the library repeatedly. Another issue is that April was apparently some kind of library book sale bonanza–three local libraries close to me held book sales, and the selection was just too good at all of them for me to pass up adding some great books to my collection.
So, in May, I’m looking to switch things up and focus on those TBR shelves by joining #smashyourstack, a month-long challenge hosted by Estella’s Revenge (http://estellasrevenge.blogspot.com/2016/04/smashyourstack-read-your-own-books-in.html). I heard about this from Janani @ The Shrinkette’s blog post (https://theshrinkette.wordpress.com/2016/04/26/smashyourstack-read-your-own-books-in-may-2016/comment-page-1/#comment-147) and was inspired to join!
Here is my goal for the month: I’d like to read 7 books from my TBR shelves. It’s a little ambitious for me since the majority of the books I buy tend to be really long, but I’ve picked up some enticing-looking shorter books recently that would be perfect to incorporate into this kind of challenge. I’m not going to avoid the library completely, because that is my only source of audiobooks, and I’ll go further and say that I can read one print book from the library if I’m hitting a reading slump, or something like that. But otherwise, it’s going to be a TBR party for me in May. It also helps that Bout of Books is May 9-15, which will help me kickstart this challenge!
beachesandbooks 
I hear what you’re saying about reading your own TBR pile but what I really hear is ‘libraries selling their own books’ and then I am wondering why I haven’t heard anything from my library about this ….. and while I am thinking that I am checking my wallet for cash and I have some …. so bring on that library sale.
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Check on your library’s web site! Some libraries do annual sales but a lot of them will do sales every couple of months or so depending on how many unneeded book donations they’re getting. I love library sales because you get cheap books and are also supporting your library!
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Yay for epic library sales!! Good luck with reading your own books! 7 sounds ambitious to me, but you can do it!! Definitely agree with the shorter books for readathon, I chose novellas for that reason.
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Thanks! I might fall wayyy short of 7 books, but at least I’m starting off ambitious, lol.
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Heh start out strong, it’s way to go! 🙂
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Library book sales are my weakness too! The main library (conveniently located opposite my kids’ preschool) has sales three times a year and I buy heaps of books from them! And yes my money goes to a good cause after all!
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OMG, yes! Library book sales! But this just adss to my teetering TBR pile. Perhaps I should join this #smashyourstack challenge. It will help with the #readmyowndamnbooks challenge, too.
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You definitely should 🙂
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