What is this?

See here for full details on the event.

Post Your Update

• How did your week go?
• What books did you get through?
• How did you feel about them?
• What's up next for you?

Also, given that this is the last update thread:

• How was the month overall?
• Did you enjoy the event?
• Any breakthroughs, standouts, or lessons learned?
• If we did something like this again, what would you change or want to see?

What is this?

See here for full details on the event.

Post Your Update

• How did your week go?
• What books did you get through?
• How did you feel about them?
• What's up next for you?

(Optional!) Focuses for Week 4 (Last Week!)

• ANYTHING GOES!

Let's burn through these backlogs!

What is this?

See here for full details on the event.

Post Your Update

• How did your week go?
• What books did you get through?
• How did you feel about them?
• What's up next for you?

(Optional!) Focuses for Week 3

• Books with an aggregate review score of less than 4.0/80% on Goodreads, LibraryThing, or any other review aggregator
• Books that someone else recommended to you
• Non-fiction books

Let's burn through these backlogs!

What is this?

See here for full details on the event.

Post Your Update

• How did your week go?
• What books did you get through?
• How did you feel about them?
• What's up next for you?

Focuses for Week 2

• Books in a genre you don't normally read
• Books that you own physical copies of
• Books with more than 400 pages

Let's burn through these backlogs!

What is this?

First off, this is NOT an April Fool (I promise!). I know that many of us will be stuck at home for this month, I know that many of us could likely use something to pull our attention away from the news, and I know that many of us have accumulated quite the to-read list of books. As such, I'm thinking it could be fun for us to tackle those lists together and collectively clean up our clutter! Let's all burn through our backlogs!

The goal isn't necessarily to completely clear them, just to put a dent in them.

How does it work?

Your "backlog" is all those books you've been meaning to get around to read, but never have yet! For the purposes of this event, an item can be removed from your backlog in one of three ways:

• Finished: you completed the book

• Moved On: you tried it out, but it didn't hold your interest or wasn't for you

• Removed: you are choosing to remove this from your backlog without reading it, likely because it no longer interests you, but really for any reason at all

Use this thread to talk about your backlogs, plan for the month, and once you start reading, inform us of any backlog downsizing and their associated categories. Give us a list of the books you removed. Tell us why you moved on from what you were just reading. Gush about how a particular item held your interest long enough to see it through. The goal of this isn't to read every book you own; it's to explore what you already have in the way that's best, and most meaningful, for you. If you're not enjoying a book, dump it and move on!

If you're not sure what you might write, take a look at a previous backlog post for games to get an idea. Also if you want to keep track of statistics or anything else like that, go for it!

What's the timeline?

I will post an update thread weekly, each Wednesday, for the four weeks of April. At the end of the month, I think it would be neat to tally how many collective books we all removed from our backlogs, as well as what the best finds were from our collective digging into our libraries. I expect we'll turn up some good hidden gems, as well as interesting insights.

Each week, I'll also include some "focus" areas which can help narrow down choices for what to read. Those are just recommendations for fun, however. Read whatever you like, whenever you like, however you like! If it's in your backlog, then it's automatically a good choice!

Do I need to sign up?

You don't have to do anything to officially join or participate in the event other than post in these threads! Participate in whatever way works for you. Also, because this is ongoing, it is okay to make more than one top-level post if you're updating the thread with new information.

Focuses for Week 1:

• Books that have been on your to-read list for more than a year
• Books that have single-word titles
• Books that are less than 200 pages

Let's burn through these backlogs!

Meta Note: I am also running this same event for ~games as well. I am not active in the other media-focused communities on Tildes, but I encourage someone(s) to pick this up and run it concurrently for ~movies, ~tv, ~anime, and/or ~music (and any other places you think it might fit). I like the idea of it being sitewide, with people participating in their media format(s) of choice. Any runners for those groups have my full permission to steal this wholesale, tweak it for their target group, and post it there.

Here's a little setup I'm going to try out with my reading habits this year. I figured I'd share the idea, in case anyone else is interested in running it (or something similar) for themselves.

Rules

• I must complete one book for each letter of the English alphabet (26 total).
• A book fulfills a letter by having the title or any part of the author's name start with that letter.
• I do not have to go in alphabetical order.
• I CAN rearrange entries at will.

Example

I realize that's hard to visualize, so here's how the first few letters might look once completed (these books are placeholders):

A: Jeff VanderMeer - Annihilation
B: Tina Fey - Bossypants
C: Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama
D: Dava Sobel - Longitude

Explanations/Clarifications

Let's say the first book I read is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. I could have that count for K (Kurt), V (Vonnegut), or S (Slaughterhouse).

I'm choosing to ignore articles in titles. The Martian would thus count for M (Martian) rather than T (The).

If an author has a single name (e.g. Voltaire), I can only use that one letter (V). If an author commonly uses more than first and last names (e.g. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Hunter S. Thompson), I can use any parts (C N or A, and H S or T, respectively).

If the book title is/begins with a number or symbol, I can count it under the letter that corresponds to the name/pronunciation of the number or symbol (e.g. 1984 would be N (Nineteen) while 1Q84 would be O (One)).

As the process goes on and more letters get filled, my choices will get narrower. I am allowed to swap around books in order to accommodate new choices, but only within the parameters of the rules above. So if I initially had Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five down for S but then I decide to read Stanley Schmidt's The Sins of the Fathers, I can move Slaughterhouse-Five to V for Vonnegut since Sins can only work for S.

Purpose

I came up with this for a couple of reasons:

• It's a semi-fun way to jazz up my regular reading habits.
• It gives me a goal to work towards.
• It will help me narrow down choices from my immense backlog and interest list, especially when I have only a few spots left to fill.
• It's free-form enough that I don't feel boxed-in, but it's restrictive enough that it'll likely force me to read some stuff I wouldn't usually choose.
• 26 books for 26 letters is coincidentally perfect for an average of one book every two weeks, which feels like the right pace for me.

Process Note

I'm only going to count books I read with my eyes rather than books I listen to. This isn't because I have anything against audiobooks (I love them!) but because I've actually gotten TOO dependent on them and am not sitting down to read books like I used to. I'm hoping this can restart my reading habit. I put this here rather than in the rules because I don't want to restrict anyone else should they choose to do this exercise.

I plan to post updates on my "alphabet progress" in the scheduled "What are you reading these days?" threads.

Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts on this process. This is entirely theory-based at the moment, as I've never actually attempted it, so if there's anything I've failed to account for or any potential hiccups you see, let me know.

Also, if you're wanting to steal the idea, whether wholesale or in part, go for it! It is ripe for modding or tweaking. I'm considering doing a second, separate alphabet for myself that's limited only to graphic novels, for example. I also think it would be neat for people to do it in other alphabets, in languages other than English.

Furthermore, it's a generic enough setup that you could do it for more than just reading too. You could use the ruleset as written with music (using artist and album names) or movies (using titles and directors). Games are a bit tougher since you really only have the title to work with (since there's often not an identifiable "author"), but with some tweaks I think it could still happen.