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Read What You Own Challenge 2025: The Shelf-Care Edition

foreverfree's profile picture foreverfree Host

39 participants (239 books)

01 Jan 2025—31 Dec 2025

Overview

Is your bookshelf starting to resemble a  Jenga tower, teetering with unread books? Do you have novels that have been in your possession longer than some houseplants you’ve managed to keep alive? It’s time to give those books the attention they’ve been silently yearning for.

Challenge Overview:
• Duration: January 1 – December 31, 2025
• Objective: Read 12 books from your personal collection that were owned before January 1, 2025. Yes, those ones you’ve been “meaning to get to.”

• Flexibility: Any genre, any length, any format. If it’s been collecting dust in your domain, it qualifies.

• Community: Share your progress and connect with fellow participants using the hashtag #ShelfCare2025.

Happy reading!

Challenge Books

All books added
Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

Negroland: A Memoir

Margo Jefferson

272 pages • paperback • 2015

nonfiction history memoir race emotional informative reflective slow-paced
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

288 pages • paperback • 2005

fiction dystopian literary science fiction emotional reflective sad slow-paced
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Caitlin Doughty

257 pages • paperback • 2017

nonfiction science travel informative reflective medium-paced
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides

529 pages • paperback • 2002

fiction lgbtqia+ literary emotional reflective medium-paced
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman

173 pages • paperback • 1995

fiction dystopian literary dark mysterious reflective medium-paced
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Shane Hawk, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

Shane Hawk, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

400 pages • paperback • 2023

fiction horror mystery short stories thriller dark mysterious tense medium-paced
My Annihilation by Fuminori Nakamura

My Annihilation

Fuminori Nakamura

250 pages • paperback • 2022

fiction crime challenging dark mysterious fast-paced
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Tender Is the Flesh

Agustina Bazterrica

211 pages • paperback • 2017

fiction dystopian horror literary dark tense medium-paced
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

Our Wives Under the Sea

Julia Armfield

228 pages • paperback • 2022

fiction horror lgbtqia+ literary science fiction dark emotional mysterious slow-paced
A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers

A Certain Hunger

Chelsea G. Summers

254 pages • paperback • 2019

fiction horror thriller dark funny medium-paced