I think this has been fairly successful. From the huge stack of books I started with, only five were left unread. My goal was to read as many books as possible from off my shelves. I think the 15 books below makes that a success. An ulterior motive was to make room on said shelves by not putting back the ones I have no intention of reading again. A few of these might remain for the short term to give Lisa a chance at them.

Total Books Read: 15
Books Removed: 8

• The Crossing by Gary Paulsen
• We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee
• The Roar by Emma Clayton
• Thad Damous and the Intergalactic Conspiracy by Luke Samson (Thad Damous #1)
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park #1)
• The Message by K.A. Applegate (Animorphs #4)
• The Predator by K.A. Applegate  (Animorphs #5)
• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin (Earthsea #1)
• The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi & Holly Black (Spiderwick #1)
• The Seeing Stone by Tony DiTerlizzi & Holly Black (Spiderwick #2)
• Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo by Obert Skye (Leven Thumps #1)
• The Mayflower Project by K.A. Applegate (Remnants #1)
• Destination Unknown by K.A. Applegate (Remnants #2)
• His Majesty’s Dragon by Noami Novik (Temeraire #1)
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (Kingkiller Chronicles #1)

As you can see, I need to be more selective in the books I choose to have on my shelves and thus buy. (Note, I won at least one of these and none were purchased brand new.) That’s about $5-8 I could have spent elsewhere with over half not being worthy of my shelves.

All of this isn’t to say that all the books removed were bad. On the contrary, most were pretty good. It’s the re-readability that’s the determining factor and I’m very particular on books that I’ve already read. For a long time (when I was young and foolish) I simply wouldn’t reread a book. Ever. For any reason. I thought I knew what was in it so why waste my time. I wanted the new and shiny.

Anyway, so that’s my report on my first ever Bookshelf Blitz. I’m definitely going to do this again in a few months. February is looking like a good month to do it since the spring season for books doesn’t start until March. I’m also considering doing a modified version sometime between now and then that will focus on completing series I’ve started instead. There’s so many series I want to complete but put off for one reason or another. A Blitz focused on that would be helpful.

Let me know what you think and if you managed to finish a Blitz of your own.

Robert