Michelle at Overdue Books has started the “From the Stacks” reading challenge. Here are the official rules:

So for this challenge we would be reading 5 books that we have already purchased, have been meaning to get to, have been sitting on the nightstand and haven’t read before. No going out and buying new books. No getting sidetracked by the lure of the holiday bookstore displays.

The bonus would be that we would finally get to some of those titles (you know you picked them for a reason!) and we wouldn’t be spending any extra money over the holidays.

The time frame would be Nov. 1st until Jan. 30 and there will be some small, fun prizes awarded to random participants and/or those with clever review posts. There will be one random drawing for a prize to those who submit their list of books in the comment section by Nov. 15th but feel free to join any time. There will be another random drawing for those who submit five reviews by Jan. 30 for a small gift certificate to Amazon.

I don’t buy very many books. I might have 5 books in the house that I haven’t read. I know I have two Cormac McCarthys and two Ngaio Marshes. I haven’t read anything by either of them before, and if I sign up for this I’ll feel obligated to read both books by each author and I’m worried that I won’t like one of them, or maybe both, but I’ll feel obligated because I signed up for this challenge. So I’m not signing up. But I’d like to encourage you to play if you have a lot of books in your to-read stack.