This month’s theme is about the best bookish gifts you’ve received, and aside from books themselves, I have the perfect example this month! LookHuman.com have some great bookish t-shirts, and I now own an obscene number of them because my family/partner are good to me and it was my birthday on the 20th. Here’s the list (with links, if you click):

• If I Can’t Take My Book, I’m Not Going (grey raglan)
• I’d Like You More If You Were Books (grey unisex t-shirt)
• High Shelf Esteem (blue raglan)
• Reading Is My Superpower (black unisex t-shirt)
• My Weekend Is All Booked (black raglan)
• If You Walk A Mile In My Shoes, You’ll End Up At the Bookstore (grey raglan)
• I Like To Party and By Party I Mean Read Books (grey raglan)
• Sorry, I Can’t, I Have Plans With My Books (grey raglan)

I’m a bit addicted to the raglans, they’re cosy and perfect for curling up to read in! Now if they came in more colours, I’d be set for life.

As for a general update, here goes. Green is for good progress or sticking to a target; orange is for marginal or in progress things. Red is for an uh-oh.

• 36/51+ already owned books read from prior to 2015 (last one recorded: The Magus, 22/08)
• Spent: £21 out of ~£30 budget (budget is 10% of my income) for January
• Spent: £20 out of ~£25 budget for February
• Spent: £22 out of ~£25 budget for March
• Spent: £15 out of ~£16 budget for April
• Spent: £45 out of ~£30 budget for May
• Spent: £18 out of ~£40 budget for June, plus stuck within holiday budget
• Spent: £45 out of ~£50 budget for July
• Spent £51 out of ~£60 for August

Yep, that is the sign of someone who got paid a lot this month. Too bad it doesn’t seem to be a repeat job.

Here’s my more general progress on resolutions:

• No books impulse-bought (being maybe a bit fast-and-loose with my definition here)
• Read every day 
• Bed before midnight
• Up before ten every day
• Only bought one book from a series at a time (couple of lapses, but mostly for deals/sets)
• Posted to the blog every day
• Commented on at least one other blog every day
• Tithed 10% in every month so far
• Done 6o hours volunteering total
• Reading/reviewing books from NG/etc (66% ratio; steady progress)

So that’s all pretty good, as long as I keep behaving myself. (Or, alternately, keep getting well paid jobs. Sadly, this is not likely.)

I already did this month’s prompt for the #ShelfLove challenge last month, but what the hey — I’ll do it again. My favourite book since I picked Tropic of Serpents last month has to be Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. It swept the awards when it came off, and swept a lot of my friends off their feet. I bounced off the first time I tried to read it, but once I got into it, I gobbled it up and immediately read the sequel, Ancillary Sword. You can find my review here!

As for a general update, here goes. Green is for good progress or sticking to a target; orange is for marginal or in progress things. Red is for an uh-oh.

• 32/51+ already owned books read (last one recorded: Fire, 20/07)
• Spent: £21 out of ~£30 budget (budget is 10% of my income) for January
• Spent: £20 out of ~£25 budget for February
• Spent: £22 out of ~£25 budget for March
• Spent: £15 out of ~£16 budget for April
• Spent: £45 out of ~£30 budget for May
• Spent: £18 out of ~£40 budget for June, plus stuck within holiday budget
• Spent: £45 out of ~£50 budget for July

Here’s my more general progress on resolutions:

• No books impulse-bought (despite a recent spree, that was still books I considered for at least a day first!)
• Read every day 
• Bed before midnight (couple of issues lately with work)
• Up before ten every day
• Only bought one book from a series at a time
• Posted to the blog every day
• Commented on at least one other blog every day (back on the wagon with this now)
• Tithed 10% in January, February, March, April, May & June; not picked a charity for July
• Done 55 hours volunteering total
• Reading/reviewing books from NG/etc (63% ratio; still making steady progress)

So that’s pretty good progress, as long as I behave myself for the last eleven days of July! Yay me.

Since I’ve run out of reviews to post right now — I know, I don’t know how that happened, I had one day off reading and suddenly it’s a week later and I’m still playing catch up — I’m going to post my #ShelfLove January update today. The January post encourages us to share our TBRs, lists or pictures, whatever works. Well, I already have my TBR shamefully displayed on my site: hit Mount TBR and it’ll show you my acquired/unread lists for the last five years. Gulp.

But here, also have a picture of the new set of shelves my dad hacked together for me. It’s on wheels, the top serves as a desk (with my standing desk on top), and there’s two sides. I got just about all my books out of boxes and onto the shelves with this baby!

It doesn’t look like much extra space, but it’s something. And yes, you can see another set of shelves immediately behind it, the side of a large bookcase to the right of it, and there’s another set out of sight. And that box you can see is full of books. Almost all of those are books I haven’t read yet.

And then… at my parents’ house, I have a set of shelves that double as a coffee table, a shelf above my mirror, five shelves around my desk which is currently also piled with books, a small set of shelves by the door and a set of shelves up to the ceiling directly as you enter the room. And boxes. Lots of. Fortunately, most of the books here are books I’ve read, though I think there’s another box worth of Christmas books going back to where I normally live when I go…

From this you can tell that A) I have a lot of books and B) my father is wildly indulgent, though he pretends not to be, and continues pulling ideas for more bookshelves out of his hat.

In terms of sticking to my goals, by the way, I’m doing well:

• 6/51+ already owned books read
• Spent: £6 out of ~£30 budget (budget is 10% of my income)

As for my other resolutions:

• No books impulse-bought
• Read every day
• Bed before midnight… mostly
• Up before ten… mostly
• Only bought one book from a series at a time
• Posted to the blog every day
• Commented on at least one other blog every day
• Tithed 10% already this month (to Stonewall)
• Done two hours volunteering
• Reading/reviewing books from NG/etc… in progress

I’m never very good at these, but let’s see what I can do… I’m joining in this challenge from Chapter Break. I don’t think I’d make it the whole year without buying books (in fact, I know I wouldn’t), so I’m choosing the “set a budget” option…

Goals: 

• 51+ already owned books read
• Stick to budget of 10% income spent on books

I went for a percentage rather than a fixed thing so that if I get a windfall I can splash out, and if I’m having a short month, I am correspondingly reined in. (For the curious, 10% is also the amount I tithe to charities; 20% or more goes into my savings.)

Wish me luck…