The Cheapskate Reading Challenge

UPDATE: For anyone looking for an easy way to keep track of the points for the books you read, I’ve built a simple spreadsheet, available for anyone who would like to use it. All you need to do is:

1. Hit ‘Make a Copy’ or you won’t be able to enter any data.
2. Then just enter your book titles and select the category of each book from the dropdown menu.
3. The spreadsheet will assign each book the proper amount of points and give you a running tally.

Reading challenges are a great way to give you a little extra motivation. However, the ones I’ve been doing the past few years aren’t always the best for reading the books that have been sitting on my bookshelf long enough to collect a respectable layer of dust.

This year, I looked for something to specifically pointed toward reading books that I own. And while challenges like Beat the Backlist were very close, I still wanted something a little more specific. So I’ve come up with a challenge of my own: The Cheapskate Reading Challenge.

If your bookshelf has way too many books on it that you just haven’t been able to get to, I encourage you to join the ranks of the cheapskate. The challenge has been designed to not get in the way of various programs you might be involved in. ARCs, subscriptions, library books, it’s all good here.

Basically, the Cheapskate Challenge is a point system to be played out over the year with the main goal to have a score in the black and not in the red. Here’s the breakdown.

Those with Audible, or Scribd, or KU, or any other number of subscription services might not like that they give ZERO points, but let me explain. There’s great value in those subscriptions. It’s an efficient way to spend money, but it still ends with money being spent.

Books that result from a gift (whether you’re given a book or a gift card) can be considered a book you already own.

If you like this challenge, please feel free to join in and tell your bookish friends who have bookshelves filled with shame. Also, feel free to use all graphics included in this post and declare that this is the year you’re finally going to read those books on your shelf. Shout it out in the comments and come back once in a while to let us all know how the challenge is going.

Fun fact about this post: I know I’m a little late to the party to be putting a reading challenge out there, but it just came to me yesterday!