Today (20th February) is clean out your bookcase day. No one seems to know how or where it started from, but annually some people use this day to tidy up their bookcase. Wikidates has some information and tips on how to take part if you want to know more. Personally I keep a pretty organised bookshelf, so when I clean out my bookcase it means actually reading the books! Instead of tidying my shelves I decided to use today to do something I keep saying I’m going to do and have failed to do for two years now. I’ve been gathering a collection of books on my shelves from gifts, competition wins, trades and charity shop hauls for years and never getting around to actually reading them. 

So as of today I’m starting an annual twelve-month challenge which will begin on March 1st and end on February 28th/29th. Every February 20th I’m going to post my new Clean out my Bookcase challenge with twelve books, one for each month, to start to clean these books off my bookcase. If this sounds like something you’d like to do too, then please go ahead, I’d just appreciate a link back to this post 🙂

The official “rules” I’m setting of the challenge for myself are as follows (feel free to create your own if you’re joining in!).

1. One book from this list a month – I have plenty of other books to read from various sources (reviews, the library, etc.) so I’ve chosen to limit it to just one to ensure I actually get them read.
2. Read the books in order – One of the reasons I’ve been so bad at reading these books is because I’ve no idea where to start! It’s procrastination by too much choice. To combat this I’ve selected specific books for each month.
3. If I fall behind, skip that month’s book – Due to my health conditions there’s a good chance I’ll fall behind at least once. I don’t want my guilt to eat me up or ruin this challenge, so I’m letting myself know now before I start what to do if something goes wrong. I have times during the year when I can catch up on reading, so I’ll hold onto those books and read them then.
4. Do not read the sequel yet – If I love a book I’ll grab the sequel straight away and two of the books on the list I have the sequels sitting there too. I’m going to have to be good and not read them. This is probably going to have to be the hardest rule to follow!

Now comes the fun part 🙂 Here are the twelve books that I have chosen for my 2022 Clean out my Bookcase challenge!

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child – not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power – the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

Alice Wyndham has been plagued by visions of birds her whole life…until the mysterious Crowley reveals that Alice is an ‘aviarist’ capable of seeing nightjars, magical birds that guard human souls. When her best friend is hit by a car, only Alice can find and save her nightjar.

With Crowley’s help, Alice travels to the Rookery, a hidden, magical alternate London to hone her newfound talents. But a faction intent on annihilating magic users will stop at nothing to destroy the new aviarist. And is Crowley really working with her, or against her? Alice must risk everything to save her best friend–and uncover the strange truth about herself.

Sixteen-year-old Nathan lives in a cage: beaten, shackled, trained to kill. In a modern-day England where two warring factions of witches live amongst humans, Nathan is an abomination, the illegitimate son of the world’s most terrifying and violent witch, Marcus. Nathan’s only hope for survival is to escape his captors, track down Marcus, and receive the three gifts that will bring him into his own magical powers—before it’s too late. But how can Nathan find his father when there is no one safe to trust, not even family, not even the girl he loves?

Zane has always enjoyed exploring the dormant volcano near his home in New Mexico, even though hiking it is challenging. He’d much rather hang out there with his dog, Rosie, than go to middle school, where kids call him Sir Limps a Lot, McGimpster, or Uno — for his one good leg. What Zane doesn’t know is that the volcano is a gateway to another world and he is at the center of a powerful prophecy.

A new girl at school, Brooks, informs him that he’s destined to release an evil god from the ancient Maya relic he is imprisoned in — unless she can find and remove it first. Together they return to the volcano, where all kinds of crazy happens. Brooks turns into a hawk, a demon attacks them in a cave, and Rosie gives her all while trying to protect Zane. When Zane decides to save his dog no matter the cost, he is thrust into an adventure full of surprising discoveries, dangerous secrets, and an all-out war between the gods, one of whom happens to be his father. To survive, Zane will have to become the Storm Runner. But how can he run when he can’t even walk well without a cane?

Feisty heroes, tricky gods, murderous demons, and spirited giants are just some of the pleasures that await in this fresh and funny take on Maya mythology, as rich and delicious as a mug of authentic hot chocolate.

When thirteen-year-old Matt Thorsen, a modern day descendant of the Norse god Thor, was chosen to represent Thor in an epic battle to prevent the apocalypse he thought he knew how things would play out. Gather the descendants standing in for gods like Loki and Odin, defeat a giant serpent, and save the world. No problem, right?

But the descendants’ journey grinds to a halt when their friend and descendant Baldwin is poisoned and killed and Matt, Fen, and Laurie must travel to the Underworld in the hopes of saving him. But that’s only their first stop on their journey to reunite the challengers, find Thor’s hammer, and stop the apocalypse–a journey filled with enough tooth-and-nail battles and larger-than-life monsters to make Matt a legend in his own right.

Authors K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr return to Blackwell in the epic sequel to Loki’s Wolves with more explosive action, adventure and larger-than-life Norse legends.

Priya worked hard to pursue her premed dreams at Stanford, but a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease during her sophomore year sends her back to her loving but overbearing family in New Jersey—and leaves her wondering if she’ll ever be able to return to the way things were. Thankfully she has her online pen pal, Brigid, and the rest of the members of “oof ouch my bones,” a virtual support group that meets on Discord to crack jokes and vent about their own chronic illnesses.

When Brigid suddenly goes offline, Priya does something out of character: she steals the family car and drives to Pennsylvania to check on Brigid. Priya isn’t sure what to expect, but it isn’t the horrifying creature that’s shut in the basement.

With Brigid nowhere to be found, Priya begins to puzzle together an impossible but obvious truth: the creature might be a werewolf—and the werewolf might be Brigid. As Brigid’s unique condition worsens, their friendship will be deepened and challenged in unexpected ways, forcing them to reckon with their own ideas of what it means to be normal.

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle.

Edinburgh student, Rose MacLeod, has been losing time for as long as she can remember. Days and weeks disappear, leaving terrifying gaps in her memory. Now she is seeing horrifying visions; waking nightmares of violence and death. Around the world young women like her are being killed and Rose has a ringside seat.

Mal Fergusson was raised to hunt demons in the cities and mountains of Scotland. With his father dead and his brother in a coma, he no longer believes in the grand battle between good and evil. Instead, he scrapes a living as an investigator and occasional hitman for the supernatural Mafia of Edinburgh and tells himself that as long as he doesn’t kill humans, he isn’t truly lost.

Tensions are rising in Scotland’s capital and Mal must capture Rose to keep his demonic boss sweet – but is he really willing to harm an innocent to do so?

However, there is more to Rose than meets the eye…Can they solve the puzzle of her impossible life before it’s too late?

Orphaned when still a toddler, Nicholas Withybeck knows no other home than Locksley Abbey outside Nottingham, England. He works in the scriptorium embellishing illuminated manuscripts with hidden faces of the Wild Folk and whimsical creatures that he sees every time he ventures into the woods and fields. His curiosity leads him into forbidden nooks and crannies both inside and outside the abbey, and he becomes adept at hiding to stay out of trouble.

On one of these forays Nick slips into the crypt beneath the abbey. There he finds an altar older than the abbey’s foundations, ancient when the Romans occupied England. Behind the bricks around the altar, he finds a palm-sized silver cup. The cup is embellished with the three figures of Elena, the Celtic goddess of crossroads, sorcery, and cemeteries.

He carries the cup with him always, listening as the goddess whispers wisdom in the back of his mind. With Elena’s cup in his pocket, Nick can see that the masked dancers at the May Day celebration in the local village are actually the creatures of the wood: The Green Man—known to mortals as Little John—and Robin Goodfellow, Herne the Huntsman, dryads, trolls, and water sprites. Theirs are the faces he’s seen and drawn into his illuminations.

Guided by Elena along secret forest paths, Nick learns that Little John’s love has been kidnapped by Queen Mab of the Faeries. The door to the Faery mound will only open when the moons of the two realms align. That time is fast approaching. Nick must release Elena so that she can use sorcery to unlock that door, allowing Nick’s band of friends to try to rescue the girl. Will he have the courage to release her as his predecessor did not?

It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise. For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.

Gabriel de León is a silversaint: a member of a holy brotherhood dedicated to defending realm and church from the creatures of the night. But even the Silver Order couldn’t stem the tide once daylight failed us, and now, only Gabriel remains.

Imprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to destroy, the last silversaint is forced to tell his story. A story of legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith lost and friendships won, of the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for humanity’s last remaining hope:

The Holy Grail.

Sixteeen-year-old Meredith is fed-up with her feuding family and feeling invisible at school – not to mention the witch magic that shoots out of her fingernails when she’s stressed. Then sweet, sensitive Jack comes into her life and she falls for him hard. The only problem is that he is periodically possessed by a destructive centuries-old curse. Meredith has lost her heart, but will she also lose her life? Or in true fairytale tradition, can true love’s kiss save the day?

The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn’t appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage.

Dubbed ‘The Three’ by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children’s behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival…

As there is a chance that I may mark any of these books as DNF (did not finish) I’ve selected five extra books as backups to replace them.

1. The Murmering Bones by A.G. Slatter
2. Shadowmancer by G.P. Taylor
3. A Darkness Forged in Fire by Chris Evans
4. Such Pretty Things by Lisa Heathfield
5. The Shadow by Marianne Curley

Thanks for joining me for my clean out my bookcase challenge! I hope you enjoyed reading all about the books on my bookcase and my plans to read them. If you would like to add any of the books to GoodReads you can find them on my shelf for this challenge here.

Have you read any of these books? What books are currently sitting on your bookshelf waiting to be read?

Let me know in the comments <3

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