Project Shop My Shelves: Q3 2025 Update

October 12, 2025September 28, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Back in March, I decided that I wanted to start Project Shop My Shelves (known as PSMS going forward). The goal of PSMS is to read twice as many books per month than I buy, but there are a few sub-goals that are equally important:

Don’t buy new books unless they are from marginalized authors (indie or trad)
A 2:1 ratio of old books to newly bought books every month (or more if possible)
Read through the older books to finally get them off the TBR pile
Be realistic about my enjoyment of an author and what medium I prefer to read them
Post quarterly about my progress with this project

I figured now was as good a time as any to update my progress with this self-imposed project. TL;DR: I did better this quarter, so there is hope for me. Here are my stats for the third quarter of 2025.

Stats:

July: I bought 5 ebooks, 0 ARCs, 4 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 9 books, 3 of which were preexisting, 1:1 bought to read ratio.

August: I bought 7 ebooks, 0 ARCs, 2 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 8 books, 1 of which was preexisting, 9:8 bought to read ratio.

September: I bought 4 ebooks, 0 ARCs, 5 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 8 books, 4 of which were preexisting, 9:8 bought to read ratio.

Not going to lie, my ratio for July would have looked MUCH worse had I counted all the books I received for my birthday as part of my purchases. I decided not to lump them into it because I didn’t buy them and couldn’t control how many I received. I mention it because I did talk about it at the end of Q2 and debated how I would count them.

Buying Books: A Breakdown

The theme of my book buying this quarter was queer and neurodivergent with a side of nonfiction. Since I’ve been hard at work on The Reanimator’s Fate, a good chunk of my purchases have been nonfiction books related to research for book 4. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole in regards to antique books, book collecting, etc. The flipside of this is that I have been loving the Murderbot books, so I bought the first six books in the series. Oops, sorry not sorry with those. July’s purchases were graphic novel heavy since several series I enjoy released new volumes that month, and of course, I bought and read them.

I tried very hard this quarter to be more mindful about what I was buying. Most of the ebooks I bought were on sale for a very good price and were books I have wanted to read or by authors I enjoy. I am trying not to get ahead of myself and buy a whole series without having read book one yet, especially if it’s by a new to me author. It’s hard sometimes to not get excited about books that sound cool or buy a whole series to support a friend. Balancing being supportive of creators I’m friends with or who are marginalized with mindless consumerism isn’t always easy for me because I know how important sales are to continuing peoples’ careers.

Reading Books: A Breakdown

My reading this quarter was heavily skewed toward a handful of authors: Martha Wells (6), Veronica Roth (3), Elizabeth Lim (3), and T. Kingfisher gets an honorable mention with 2 books read. I have been in a bit of a reading slump due to feeling mildly fried by the world and writing, so I have been gravitating toward any book that catches my interest. Unfortunately, that often meant the brand new books I just bought, like the MurderBot books and Veronica Roth’s short stories/novellas. Part of this challenge is reading the books I own rather than books I recently bought, and while I have been doing this, it hasn’t been on the forefront of my mind. Elizabeth Lim’s books do meet this criteria as they have been sitting on my TBR for over a year (oops). If you’ve ever been in a book slump, you know how fickle your reading habits can be and how hard it can be to get through books that just aren’t doing it for you at the moment.

Quarter 4 Goals/Outlook

I’m hoping to keep my buy to read ratio for Q4 at 1:1 or better. October is a month where I have quite a few preorders coming up for graphic novels and manga I enjoy. On one hand, ahhhh purchases. On the other, I tend to read them immediately, which helps keep that ratio low. The rest of the year looks pretty empty in terms of preorders because I tend to scale back on my spending before the Christmas holidays. Much like my birthday, I don’t plan to count books given to me at Christmas as part of my purchases because I can’t control the volume of books I receive. In Q4, I am hoping that I will get over my book slump and read more than I have been. Usually, my workload peaks in November, and everything eases up after that. My hope is that will help make it easier to read without feeling like pulling teeth. I’m also planning to set aside purposeful time each day for reading because once I start, it feels less onerous and does refill my well. It’s amazing how reading helps, but my brain makes it so hard to start due to being fried. I’d love to know the psychology behind that. Because I don’t have a giant stack of preorders coming, this will also force me to read books I already own (hopefully). If you follow on me on social media, you may have seen me restock my TBR coffin, and I plan to use that to help me knock my TBR down a bit.

Project Shop My Shelves

Project Shop My Shelves: Q2 2025 Update

June 29, 2025June 28, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Don’t buy new books unless they are from marginalized authors (indie or trad)
A 2:1 ratio of old books to newly bought books every month (or more if possible)
Read through the older books to finally get them off the TBR pile
Be realistic about my enjoyment of an author and what medium I prefer to read them
Post quarterly about my progress with this project

I figured now was as good a time as any to update my progress with this self-imposed project. TL;DR: I did not hit the 2:1 read:bought ratio, not even close. Here are my stats for the second quarter of 2025.

Stats:

April: I bought 11 ebooks, 0 ARCs, 5 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 10 books, 5 of which were preexisting, 8:5 bought:read ratio

May: I bought 3 ebooks, 0 ARCs, 10 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 8 books, 3 of which were preexisting, 13:8 bought:read ratio

June: I bought 6 ebooks, 1 ARC, 8 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 8 books, 3 of which were preexisting, 7:4 bought:read ratio

As you can see, I epically failed trying to hit that 1:2 bought to read ratio. Part of my spectacular failure is due to Indie April sales (hence the 11 ebooks) and a lot of preorders coming available in May. Combine that with being in a governmental stress-induced reading slump, and my reading and buying habits have been on the hot mess express.

Buying Books: A Breakdown

Something I did stick to was buying marginalized authors of the *cough* many *cough* books I bought, only 2 were by white cis het Christian authors (aka non-marginalized authors). My reading habits tend to be pretty varied, so I’m not surprised that this was the part I was willing to stick to. The worst part about trying to stick to this ratio is that there are a lot of marginalized authors I want to support, especially since I know publishing requires early sales, and for indies, I want to give them monetary support. I’m okay with putting my money where my mouth is. I just need to read more without wrecking my mental health in the process.

One of the points mentioned above is paying attention to the format in which I enjoy authors. So far this quarter, I haven’t had any authors that I think I’ll be shifting to a different medium. There are a few, not ones I read this quarter, who I have decided I will no longer be reading after I finish the series I am working through. Susan Dennard is one of them. I don’t dislike her books, per se. I just don’t have any desire to read more of her work after finishing the Witchlands. My brain bounces off her writing style, and there are certain things in her books that annoy me long-term. I also plan on reading an Alexis Hall book in ebook form because so far I have only read them as audiobooks, which I really enjoyed. I just want to see if I have a form preference or not where their books are concerned.

Reading Books: A Breakdown

I completely forgot to read the oldest books on my list. Oops. I’m sort of torn on this bullet point because I tend to be a mood reader, and I don’t want to force myself to read books that I’m not jazzed about. The problem is that less than half of the books I read were preexisting books. That means that I’m not reading what I have. Part of this was due to starting a new manga series, which was five books long. I’m glad that I’m somewhat staying on top of what I have bought, but because I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump, I haven’t been reading as much as I would like and therefore, am not reading my older books. Treading the line between reading more and burning myself out has been a struggle lately, but I am going to try to read more next quarter.

Quarter 3 Goals/Outlook

Void staring has been a major issue for me in quarter 2. A lot of it is due to external stress and strife (aka the US government is stressing me the hell out 24/7). It makes it very hard to focus or get a whole lot done. I’ve also been struggling to write and rewrite the beginning of The Reanimator’s Fate (TRM #4). The good thing is that I think I have finally found my footing, so there’s a good chance that balance may actually be returning to my life in the near future. I’m also debating trying to listen to an audiobook while playing Coral Island. I haven’t tried to do so, but I know one of my friends often does this. This will help me get through some of the older books on my TBR while still doing something fun and relaxing. As of right now, I don’t have a lot of preorders set up from July to September, but my birthday is coming soon. I was debating whether to have my birthday haul count as books bought or not, but I ultimately think they should count since they are new books added to the TBR pile. I’ll make sure to specify that next quarter, so you all don’t think I just have a shopping addiction. I will keep the 2:1 read to bought ratio, but if I haven’t done this once by the end of the year, I might pull it back to a 1:1 ratio to make it more realistic.

Project Shop My Shelves

March 23, 2025March 19, 2025 Kara Jorgensen3 Comments

As I was perusing my bookshelves the other day, I realized that I have a problem: I buy too many books. Well, not exactly. Over the past few years, I have reined in my book shopping habit, but what I didn’t account for is that I never truly get ahead of what I have on my shelves, so the books stack up. I have books on my shelves that I have been “dying to read” since 2016 when I was in grad school. That is, uh, not great. The funny thing is that I made a To-Be-Read section in my bullet journal where I list out all the books I own, books I want to read, forthcoming books from authors I love, and that spread has gotten progressively longer year after year.

This year I decided that I want to do something about it, and I’m going to call this Project Shop My Shelves. My goal with shopping my shelves is to actually read the books I already own and read double the amount I buy. Yes, I will be curtailing my book buying. With the buying, I have had a few reservations about this. I want to support my fellow indie authors, especially during this politically horrible time, and I want to buy trad pub books from marginalized creators because if they don’t have a good launch, they’re less likely to get future publishing deals. The book buying ban will be mostly focused on white cis het authors because, frankly, they can wait for me to buy their books. In order to get ahead of my buying, I want to make it a habit to read at least double the amount of books I buy, so if I buy 3 new books, I need to read at least 6 books. I’m not sure how I’m going to count advanced reader copies (ARCs) yet, but I don’t get them that often, so they may be an exception to this rule as I’m doing promo work my reading them.

In order to make a dent in my rather embarrassing TBR pile, I think I’m going to try to read the books that have been there the longest. Maybe not all at once, but I would like to make a point to move them to the done pile if possible. There are some that have been there since at least 2016. I have removed books that I think I am no longer the audience for and donated them to a local book drive, so my hope is that I will still enjoy the ones that remain, even if I’m nine years older. If I find I don’t really jive with a series or book I bought back then, I will move it to the donate pile and make a note of it. In the same vein, I want to be realistic about my enjoyment of certain authors. Sometimes, we buy things because we think we should like them, and we really don’t. I have a few authors where I like a specific series, but I think once I finish that, I won’t be invested in their work anymore and that’s okay.

Going forward, I also want to be mindful about the medium in which I buy an author’s books. There are some authors that I enjoy much more in audiobook than I do in ebook or paperback (like J. R. R. Tolkien). As much as I like having the physical copy of their books, if I’m not using it to teach a class, it doesn’t make sense to have it if I don’t read it in that form. At this point, I have a tendency to buy duplicate copies, one in ebook/paperback and one in audiobook, and I want to not do that if possible.

I’m hoping to post about this project once a quarter and track my progress as I try to cull my tbr pile to a more manageable level. If I can’t read more or read faster, I can at least read with more purpose, and that’s what I plan to do. Project Shop My Shelves starts in April, so I hope you will join me in knocking down your tbr pile and reading what you have.

Once again, here are the main parts of Project Shop My Shelves:

Don’t buy new books unless they are from marginalized authors (indie or trad)
A 2:1 ratio of old books to newly bought books every month (or more if possible)
Read through the older books to finally get them off the TBR pile
Be realistic about my enjoyment of an author and what medium I prefer to read them
Post quarterly about my progress with this project