#Start-On-Your-Shelf-a-thon Challenge

Good morning bookworms!

Do you remember in 2019 when I used to post monthly updates on all my challenges? What the f*** happened to moderately organised Meeghan? I think she fell down a well and Lassie wasn’t nearby. (Shout out if you’re old enough to understand that reference…)

So, for a bit of context, many, many, MANY months ago (like, back in January which is almost HALF A YEAR ago), I said I wanted to do some challenges, but I hadn’t quite figured some stuff out yet. This was mostly because I was 2 months behind on blog-hopping, we were in the middle of bushfires, and life was hard. Well, as you may know, life got worse. And then I decided to make it harder by deciding to revamp the whole blog and go self-hosted… well what a year it’s been. And now we’re in June, and I still haven’t gotten around to this. But hey, better late than never, right?!

So, um, yeah. This is my sign up post for The Quiet Pond’s #StartOnYourShelfathon… which I sorely need to finish signing up for because my backlist is getting bigger, and I’m not doing anything about it. Let’s get started!

What is #StartOnYourShelfathon?

#StartOnYourShelfathon is a 2020 star-themed readathon hosted and run by CW from The Quiet Pond. The aim of #StartOnYourShelfathon is to read as many unread books on your bookshelf as you can between December 13th 2019 and December 31st 2020.

#StartOnYourShelfathon isn’t an ordinary readathon too! The mascot of #StartOnYourShelfathon is Castor the Star Collector who is also a sloth friend of The Quiet Pond, who has lost all the stars he has collected over the years and needs your help to find them again.

For every book that you read as part of #StartOnYourShelfathon, you collect a star that you can add the star to your ‘star map’. Read books, collect stars, give yourself an amateur star-collector name, and create constellations! You can read Castor’s story and find information about and resources for the readathon here.

Stars

These are the stars you can add to your map as you progress:

• Yellow stars: For finishing an unread book as part of the readathon
• Blue stars: For finishing a readathon goal you set for yourself
• Red stars: For reading and finishing an unread book that ended up being a new favourite!

My #StartOnYourShelfathon Goals

Now, this is going to be interesting. I currently have 315 unread books on my shelves. This is a mix of physical backlist books (272 books), physical new books out this year (20 books) and unread physical and digital ARCs (23 books). Unless I quit my day job (#tempted), it’s unlikely I’ll be catching up by the end of 2020 or 2023. So, these are my FINAL realistic-ish goals I have set for this year:

1. Read 50 backlist titles
2. Read 10 ARCs (but if I hit this one a couple of times that would be great)
3. Read 10 books published in 2020 that aren’t ARCs

Which means that since I half-assed signed up for this in January, I should technically have 9 ‘backlist book’ stars, 8 ‘ARC’ stars and 3 ‘2020 published’ stars on my map already. Which gives me a whopping total of TWENTY YELLOW STARS!!

Let’s be honest though, this is pretty awful for 5 full months into the year, especially when I had read 36 backlist books by the end of May last year. As per previous year challenges, I will NOT be adding Kindle Unlimited books to this list. It’s not that they don’t deserve my stars, it’s that I shouldn’t be reading them when I have other books to prioritise…

My TBR

So, because this is a slightly different format than the Beat the Backlist challenge, I’ve made a slightly different TBR for it. Or… I’ve mashed up all of my spreadsheets into one GIANT spreadsheet, which you can find here: Meeghan’s giant TBR

Yep, I half-assed made a google doc sheet that you *should* be able to look at. If you’re interested in making your own copy of this let me know and I will change the permission.

I am also going to update this regularly. Hopefully more regularly that I’ve been updating my Backlist TBR!! ? ? ? *kill me*

Challenge check-ins

The other thing I’m going to start doing again is the monthly challenge wrap-ups to hold myself accountable. I’ll do a half-year progress report in July, and then monthly posts after that.

Which means you’ll get to see a monthly progress update on my star map!! that I haven’t started yet…

Keep your fingers crossed for me!! I think I’ll need it!!