Goodreadance 2021 // How I’ve tidied up my Goodreads shelves and unhauled books

Folks, it’s that time of year again. No, not that time of year. (I mean, it almost is, but that’s not what I was thinking of.)

It’s #Goodreadance2021 season.

Goodreadance, or the Goodreads Spring Cleaning Challenge, is an autumnal project hosted by Shealea, with the aim of spring cleaning your Goodreads account and general TBR during the fall months.

This can include catching up on reviews, updating your GR shelves, removing books from your TBR that you’re no longer planning to read, and tidying or unhauling physical books, too.

For full details on how the challenge works and how to participate, check out Shealea’s post.

This year’s #Goodreadance is taking place from September to the end of November, and I’ve done a good old tidy up during the past two months, so I thought I’d share my progress.

Unhauling physical books

To kick start this year’s challenge, the first thing I did was go through my current physical books and pick out those I wanted to unhaul.

I’d been planning to unhaul some of these for a while, so it was satisfying to make the concrete decision to take them off my shelves.

I find that once I’ve physically removed a book from my shelves and put it in an unhaul pile, it severs my connection to the book. As soon as a book leaves my shelves, I can mentally let it go (I’m sure there’s a psychological reason for that).

I’ve sold my copies of Caraval, Into the Crooked Place, Wayward Son and TBS/TMO, as they were special editions, and I’ve donated some of the other finished copies to charity shops or my library.

I’ve also passed on some of the ARCs in this pile to a few friends who have reached out.

Removing books from my Goodreads TBR shelf

Although I always find this difficult, I also find it very satisfying to comb through my TBR and remove books I just don’t think I’m going to read.

Plus, it’s not like removing them means I can NEVER read them. If I end up picking them up one day (even though they’re not on my TBR) then good!

Books removed from my TBR

I added this to my TBR when it was on Kindle Unlimited a while ago and sadly it’s no longer on there anymore.

I may still read it in the future, but I have a lot of Netgalley ARCs to get to, so it’s not a high priority right now.

I unhauled my copy of this a while ago because I’d had it for a few years and hadn’t read it. I feel like I’m more likely to pick this up on audio at some point, rather than physically.

Again, I may still read this in the future, but I’m just not in the mood to pick it up right now.

This is pretty hard to get hold of in the UK (without using Amazon), and it’s slipped down my TBR as other books have released this year, so I’m removing it for now, but I’m hopeful that I may still read it in the future.

With the recent announcement that Seven Seas publishing will be releasing Mo Dao Zu Shi in the UK in December (SOON), I’m removing this edition from my TBR and will be adding the new version instead.

I’m removing this because I’ve actually already read it!

I picked it up earlier this year on audio, but for some reason the hardback edition was still on my TBR shelf by mistake.

The hardback for this seems super expensive at the minute and my interest in picking it up has dipped since it released. This isn’t the fault of the author or the book, it’s more that I’ve been moving away from YA contemporaries recently.

I’ll likely wait to read this until the ebook releases, since there doesn’t appear to be one available in the UK at the moment.

Updating, adding, and deleting shelves

When I was working on a blog post recently, I realised I should branch out and add a few more shelves to my Goodreads collection to reflect my reading (and also make my shelves a bit more fun).

The shelves I’ve added are:

I added the ‘Latine authors’ shelf because I realised I had a shelf for Latine rep, but not Latine authors. Similarly, I added the Achillean shelf because I had an m-m romance shelf, but not an Achillean shelf (and not all Achillean is more inclusive). I also can’t believe I didn’t have a fake dating shelf until recently? It’s one of my favourite tropes. Who even am I.

Most of these shelves only have a few books on them because they’re new, but I’ll be adding more to them as I read more books and make more updates. Although the ‘Yes, I cried’ shelf may stay minimal because it’s *rare* for me to cry at a book.

That’s pretty much it for my Goodreadance 2021 updates. I’m pleased with the progress I made because I unhauled over 20 books which freed up space on my physical shelves. I also tidied up a lot of my GR shelves so they feel fresh and better organised now. A big thanks to Shealea for hosting the challenge again this year.

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Did you take part in #Goodreadance2021, or do you regularly edit and update your GR shelves? Do you unhaul books often? Have you read any of the books I’ve unhauled? Let’s chat!