With over 550 books on my Goodreads to-read shelf, I decided that something had to be done about it! These are not all books that I actually own, but at some point in the last five years I must have clicked the “want to read” button to add them to my shelf. The question is, do I still want to read all of these books?

On 8th June 2015 I used a random number generator to pick ten numbers corresponding to ten of these books and set myself the task of either reading the chosen books or making the decision to remove them from my shelf on Goodreads. No time limit, no pressure – and when I’ve finished with these ten books I’ll pick another ten. I will be keeping track of my progress on this page.

Here is my first selection of 10 books:

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood – READ
The Thief of Time by John Boyne – READ
Royal Mistress by Anne Easter Smith – READ
The Odd Women by George Gissing – READ
April Lady by Georgette Heyer – READ
The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman – REMOVED
Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac – READ
The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson – READ
Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown – REMOVED
The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini – READ

On 16th December 2015 – after finishing the ten books above – I posted a second list of ten, again chosen randomly from my Goodreads TBR. These are as follows:

A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey – READ
Ten-Second Staircase by Christopher Fowler – READ
The Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley
Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope – READ
The Reckoning by Sharon Penman
Restoration by Rose Tremain – READ
The Brontes went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles by Margaret George
The Last King of Lydia by Tim Leach
Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby – READ