One of my reading challenges this year is to read more of the books on my shelves. I set myself a goal to read 75 percent of the books that I buy between December 2016 and December 2017. In order to win, I really should be limiting the number of books I acquire but instead, I’ve been expanding my personal library like all the books are about to be banned.

I had 9 books that I bought before December 1st that I wanted to include, plus another 60 (yep, 60) books that I got in the six months between December and May. And if that wasn’t enough, in June, I bought or acquired 14 more books in these categories:

science 

• The Physics of Everyday Things/ James Kakalios

business

• The Icarus Deception /Seth Godin
• Meatball Sundae /Seth Godin
• All Marketers Are Liars /Seth Godin

Short Stories 

• Can’t And Won’t /Lydia Davis
• The Thing Around Your Neck /Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• New York 1 Tel Aviv 0 /Shelly Oria

Novels

• Small Great Things /Jodi Picoult
• The Sympathizer /Viet Thanh Nguyen
•  The Master /Colm Toibin
• Brooklyn /Colm Toibin
• The Interestings /Meg Wolitzer
• The Circle /Dave Eggers
• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves /Karen Joy Fowler

Fourteen books in a month looks good on my shelf but it makes my reading challenge that much harder. I have to go get reading now before I become overwhelmed by my TBR. Watch my YouTube video if you want to know a little more about the books and why I chose them

Below, I’ll list all the books I’ve acquired so far during the challenge and whether I’ve read them.  You’ll notice the list includes the books I got in June. I’ve also removed the books that I received for review purposes so all those wonderful books I got from Blogging for Books and read as soon as I got them, unfortunately, they don’t count towards my total.

This is a little tedious but I have to post my list for accounting (!) purposes so I understand if you don’t want to scroll through 78 titles so I’ll say bye here and I hope you have a wonderful weekend. 

Books I bought (red means I’ve read it)

1. Everything Is Illuminated /Jonathan Safran Foer 
2. The Road /Cormac McCarthy
3. The Perks of Being A Wallflower
4. The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Nighttime /Mark Haddon
5. And The Mountains Echoed /Khaleid Hosseini
6. A Thousand Splendid Suns /Khaleid Hosseini
7. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings /Maya Angelou
8. Daring Greatly /Brene Brown
9. Made In America /Sam Walton
10. A People’s History of the United States /Howard Zinn
11. American Slavery
12. The 80/20 Principle
13. Travels With Epicurus
14. The Book Thief /Markus Zusak
15. The Time Travelers Wife /Audrey Niffenegger
16. Reading Lolita In Tehran / Azar Nafisi
17. The Goldfinch /Donna Tartt
18. Ghana Must Go /Taiye Selasi
19. The Corpse Exhibition And Other Stories Of Iraq /Hassan Blasin
20. Purple Cow /Seth Godin
21. The Da Vinci Code /Dan Brown
22. Little Bee /Chris Cleave
23. Then We Came To The End /Joshua Ferris
24. The Good Luck of Right Now /Matthew Quick
25. The Bees /Laline Paul
26. We Need New Names /NoViolet Bulawayo
27. Us /David Nicholls
28. The Husband’s Secret /Liane Moriarty
29. A Visit From The Goon Squad /Jennifer Egan
30. Bird By Bird /Anne Lamont
31. The Dinner /Herman Koch
32. The Vegetarian /Han Kang 
33. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close /Jonathan Safran Foer
34. Anna And The French Kiss /Stephanie Perkins
35. The Luminaries /Elizabeth Catton 
36. I Am Malala /Malala Yousafzai
37. Bel Canto /Ann Patchett
38. What The Dog Saw /Malcolm Gladwell 
39. The Sun Is Also A Star /Nicola Yoon 
40. The Four Agreements / Don Miguel Ruiz 
41. Breakfast At Tiffany’s /Truman Capote
42. Not That Kind Of Girl /Lena Dunham
43. A Brief History Of Seven Killings /Marlon James
44. Boy, Snow, Bird /Helen Oyeyemi 
45. Go Set A Watchman /Harper Lee
46. Diabetes for Owls /David Sedaris
47. The Little Red Book of Selling /Jeffrey Gitomer
48. Linchpin /Seth Godin 
49. Man’s Search for Meaning /Viktor Frankl 
50. The Prophet /Khalil Gibran 
51. Think and Grow Rich /Napoleon Hill
52. Hagseed /Margaret Atwood
53. The Girl On The Train /Paula Hawkins 
54. The Fault In Our Stars /John Green
55. Run /Ann Patchett
56. Born To Run
57. Where’d You Go, Bernadette
58. The Handmaid’s Tale
59. The Longevity Book
60. The Casual Vacancy
61. The Sympathizer /Viet Than Nguyen
62. The Interestings /Meg Wolitzer
63. Can’t and Won’t Stories /Lydia Davis
64. The Circle /Dave Eggers
65. The Master /Colm Toibin
66. The Icarus Deception /Seth Godin
67. All Marketers Are Liars /Seth Godin
68. Meatball Sundae /Seth Godin
69. Can’t And Won’t /Lydia Davis
70. The Thing Around Your Neck /Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
71. New York 1 Tel Aviv 0 /Shelly Oria
72. Small Great Things /Jodi Picoult 
73. The Sympathizer /Viet Thanh Nguyen
74. The Master /Colm Toibin
75. Brooklyn /Colm Toibin
76. The Interestings /Meg Wolitzer
77. The Circle /Dave Eggers
78. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves /Karen Joy Fowler

And my results…. of the 78 books, I’ve read a grand total of 22. Yikes! According to the challenge, that’s “Money Sitting on the Shelf”. What I plan to do differently in the second half of the year, is just to read more of the books I buy. I haven’t reserved anything new from the library in a while and I’m trying to read the stack that I am really interested in, then it’s time to start focusing on my own shelves. I have lots here to keep me busy.

If you’re interested in any of these titles, click here to shop my shelves at Book Depository and support my book buying fund.

Linkup: Bookdate