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

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

Monthly Review

January 2025 Wrap-Up Post

February 2, 2025February 2, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

How have these past two weeks been so, so long. Also, to everyone in Canada, Mexico, and China, yes, this is the stupidest timeline and the US deserves all the hate it gets globally. ANYWAY, let’s remind ourselves what I was supposed to get done this month.

Finish writing “AUE”
Edit and format “AUE”
Pay Q4 2024 taxes (bleck)
Set up my syllabi and Blackboards for my courses
Send out my newsletter (with “An Unexpected Evening”)
Start planning out TRM #4
Blog weekly
Read 8 books

Books

My goal was to read 8 books this month, and I read 10. All links below are affiliate links that give me a little kickback.

The Reckless Decade by H. W. Brand- 4 stars, a nonfiction book about the 1890s. This was WAY too timely for what’s going on. If you want a hint as to how we might get out of this, I think this book might be helpful to a point.
Calling the Spirits by Lisa Morton- 4 stars, a nonfiction book about seances throughout the ages. It starts with necromancy and goes all the way to modern ghost hunting shows. It was quite interesting and research for a potential book.
Toad Words & Other Stories by T. Kingfisher- 4 stars, I read books 3-5 in rapid succession, so I’m not sure which was which. Overall, I really enjoyed T. Kingfisher’s commentary on fairytales and her retellings.
The Halcyon Fairy Book by T. Kingfisher- 4 stars, see #3.
Jackalope Wives and Other Stories by T. Kingfisher- 4 stars, see #3.
Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (#10) by Seanan McGuire- 5 stars,
Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher- 4 stars, a beauty and the beast retelling with a beast who has been stuck in a time loop for centuries and a gardening beauty named Bryony. This was a really interesting mechanism for BatB as it reminded me a bit more of Eros and Psyche, but I wish there was more emotional intimacy built between the MCs as that is my jam.
Fever by Jordan L. Hawk- 4 stars, a horror story set during the Canadian gold rush featuring a cabin in the woods, queer characters, and plenty of spookiness. This is good horror for people who are big babies… like myself.
Boyfriend Material (#1) by Alexis Hall- 4 stars, a disaster gay needs a fake boyfriend for a fundraiser and winds up fake dating a fussy lawyer. Soon, fake dating turns to real dating turns too real turns to much more. On one hand, I wanted to shake Luc, but both MCs deserve each other as they are both annoying.
She Loves to Cook & She Loves to Eat (#5) by Sakaomi Yuzaki, 5 stars, the two MCs finally move into together, so we get house hunting, LGBT+ struggles in Japan, and a hint at their new life together. This series is so sweet and cute, and the food always looks impeccable. I love how mental health and the characters’ sexualities are handled.

Admin/Behind-the-Scenes Stuff

Postponed the release of “An Unexpected Evening” because my brain broke somewhere around January 20th and didn’t recover in time to finish writing the story
Wrote some of “An Unexpected Evening”
Started zapping my partner’s face 3x a week because we must achieve gender euphoria, even in hellish times
Started working on a writing notebook to keep track of all my writing stuff for the next year (we’ll see how this goes)
The Reanimator’s Remains (TRM #3) made it to the next round of the Indie Ink Awards in several categories (a huge thank you to all who voted!)
Had several mental breakdowns due to the state of the US
Called my reps nearly daily about various issues
- Democracy.io can be very helpful if you want to email all your reps at once
- You can also call the Capitol switchboard and ask for your rep by name- (202) 224-3121
Paid my 2024 Q4 taxes (bleck)
Set up my syllabi and online stuff for my classes
Started teaching my classes
Kept up with my arm/shoulder workout

Blog Posts

Writing

When I tell you this month has been hard, I mean it. At the beginning of the month, I was struggling to get back into writing because I took a month and a half off after the release of The Reanimator’s Remains to avoid burnout. I needed the break, but the problem with a break is getting back into the routine of writing. I also ended up rewriting and restructuring “An Unexpected Evening,” which made it significantly better but threw me off my game. My confidence was mildly shaken by having to fix it, so when January 20th rolled around and all hell broke loose, my brain just noped out of writing completely. I kept hoping I could wrangle it, but if you have been following politics in the US, you can understand why this was nearly impossible (and made worse by my classes starting). I think I’ve finally regained equilibrium and am hopeful that I’m finally back on track for real this time. The good thing is that I think you will enjoy this silly story… novella? Not sure, it’s grown a bit according to my guestimated word count. I seriously appreciate all of you so much for your kind words when I announced that I had to push the short story’s release back.

Hopes for February

Finish writing “AUE”
Edit “AUE”
Send it out to my newsletter peeps first (everyone else gets it a month later)
Reread The Reanimator Mysteries books 1-3
Start proofing the audiobook for The Reanimator’s Remains
Read 8 books
Blog weekly
Send out my monthly newsletter
Maintain my fragile sanity
Perpetually bug my congress people

Uncategorized

On Forgetting to Read Sequels

September 17, 2023August 26, 2023 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

I recently discovered a less than desirable reading habit I now possess, and I’m hoping that, in pointing it out to myself, this will somehow hold me accountable. In turn, I’m holding you all accountable for this bad habit as well.

I read book 1, really enjoy it, buy book 2, then forget book two exists or put it off in favor of another stand alone or book 1, lather-rinse-repeat. I also do this with later sequels/subsequent books in a series, so no, it doesn’t get better if I’ve read book 2.

I was making the slips for my TBR coffin the other day when I realized how many of the papers in it are actually sequels/not book one in a series that I enjoyed. If you have not seen the TBR coffin, I will link to the Tiktok here. You might be wondering why I buy book 2 if I don’t plan to read it.

Well, I do plan to read it, and sometimes I buy book 2 ahead of time, even if I haven’t read book 1 yet because I want to support the author or I already like this author, so I’m fairly certain I will get to the series and enjoy it.

After thinking about why I tend not to read book 2+ in a timely manner, here are some fairly obvious reasons why this happens:

there’s a big gap between books 1 and 2, which causes me to forget everything in book, so I tell myself I need to look up a synopsis/summary of book 1 before reading book 2. I put that off and forget.
my to-be-read pile is just really big and new things tend to get preference, unless that new thing is a sequel (see previous bullet)
they are heavy books (in terms of message or world-building), and I need to be in a specific mood or headspace to read them
sometimes I get nervous book 2 won’t be as good as book 1 and put it off.
other times, I enjoyed the series so much that I don’t want it to be over, and I put off reading the last book
but mostly, I just forget they exist because out of sight, out of mind

No matter the reason, it’s a bad habit that I’m shaming myself for. What is especially funny to me is how I have tried to work around this by waiting to read a series until I have all of the books (or wait until close to the last book’s release day), and the outcome is still the same. From now until the end of the year, my goal is to read as many of those sequels and subsequent books as I can. One way or another, I am determined to break this awful habit and actually read what I have.

What sequels or subsequent books do you need to move up your TBR?

Book Reviews

12 Queer Books to Read Now (Pt 2)

June 12, 2022June 11, 2022 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Last week I posted a list of 12 Queer Books to Read Now (Pt 1), and because I read a shit ton of queer authors, I wanted to do a second post full of authors you can check out. I may also do a list of authors I have on my to-be-read pile but haven’t gotten to yet. We shall see. You may have also noticed that I changed the title from queer authors to queer books because I don’t think an author needs to be out to write a queer book, so this is more inclusive.

Anna-Marie McLemore– McLemore’s books are an auto-buy for me because their books are so rich with texture, magic, and queer characters. Many of their characters are also neurodivergent and/or trans, which speaks to me. I highly recommend Lakelore or When the Moon was Ours.
Tehlor Kay Mejia– Mejia has teamed up with McLemore before, but I also really enjoyed her dystopian, Latinx fantasy duology We Set the Dark on Fire, which has a really interesting sapphic couple at the center of the story.
Keito Gaku– Gaku’s 4 volume manga Boys Run the Riot is the first I’ve read featuring a trans masc character by a trans masc author. The story is about friends, fashion, and going after who you are and what you want to be.
Margaret Owen– I adored all three of her books so far (with Little Thieves being my favorite), which all feature lots of queer characters and have asexual rep as well. If you like heroines who are a bit rough around the edges and softer, dorkier love interests, her books are for you.
Talia Hibbert– While Hibberts Brown Sisters series is M/F romance, Dani Brown is bi and Hibbert is nonbinary, and that queerness shows in the books. Hibbert’s books have queer side characters with the promise of future queer stories. Also, great neurodivergent rep in the Brown Sisters series!
Lara Kinsey– Kinsey writes quite a bit of f/f romance, and I absolutely loved Budding Romance and Blooming into You. She manages to cram so much development into novellas. They’re perfect if you need a short, compelling piece.
KJ Charles– I would be remiss if I didn’t include KJ Charles’s books on the list. Her queer romances are *chef kiss* and run from magical fantasy to political intrigue.
Joanna Chambers– Chambers’s work is reminiscent of KJ Charles’s as they both write historical, political/historical focused MM romance. My favorites from Chambers are the Winterbourne series, which are shorter and follow different characters. They’re soft and sweet and just warm.
P. Djèlí Clark– I don’t think Clark has a single book that doesn’t have a queer character. The main pair in A Dead Djinn in Cairo is sapphic, and his books have complex characters, amazing stories, and interesting magic with lots of rich texture.
Yuki Fumino– Fumino’s I Hear the Sunspot is one of my favorite manga series. It features a very slow-burn MM pair and talks a lot of deafness and what it’s like to be hard-of-hearing with an immense amount of detail. One MC is losing his hearing and the other works for a company that tries to make things more inclusive for the deaf community.
E E Ottoman– Ottoman is a trans masc author who writes some really fantastic romance featuring trans characters. They’re smart, cozy, and usually have quite a bit of heat.
Nina Varela– Crier’s War and its sequel were books that I read and sort of sat there in a daze after because I enjoyed them so much. A robot princess, a human girl in the midst of starting a rebellion, and the collision course that brings them together. Who can ask for more?

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope you have a bunch of new books to add to your TBR pile and stay tuned for EVEN MORE authors to add in a future post.