The 2026 Read-What-You-Have Reading Challenge

Some of my kids and I are doing a challenge in the month of June to only read books that we are already own. The rules is that we have to read or reread books that are in our house or that are in my office--no buying of books or reading library books.

I don't remember who came up with the idea, but something like it had been bouncing around in my head for the past several months. We have the blessing of a good library near us that can do interlibrary loan, so we get just about any book that we need. We also budget money so that we can buy books each month. I often buy books for $4 to $6 off of eBay. I'm also given stacks of books as a pastor--from conferences or from other pastors that are clearing out their libraries. This is a chance for us to just read and reread the things that we have.

Since I may only read two or three books this month, I might extend the challenge a while longer. I'm reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose because the Lewis and Clark expedition started about an hour away from where we live. I'm reading Roy Peter Clark's book The Glamour of Grammar. I have Robert Caro's fourth volume of his Lyndon Johnson series. I've been rereading novels from my literature classes in college to see if they have grown as I have grown.

In Undaunted Courage, Ambrose writes that Meriwether Lewis's mother was proud of her bookshelf and read her whole life. I realized that even though they were wealthy, most of her life would have been spent reading and rereading the same books. You might have had the advantage of pamphlets, newspapers, and the latest books if you live a big city. If, however, you lived in rural Virginia or were poor, then your reading would have been mostly rereading. I've been imagining what my reading would be like if I lived in those circumstances.

If for the rest of my life I could only buy one or two more books a year and everything else had to be reread, then what would I read? I've thought about which shelves had the books that I would want to reread. I was thinking about the books that I enjoyed and thought most of when I returned to them. There are some books that I know I would be bored reading them again. We have one special shelf, though.

We have a large blue shelf in between our dining room and our living room that I could imagine rereading almost any book on the shelf and enjoying it. The bottom shelf has our encyclopedia set on it. The middle two shelves are filled with novels. They have our favorites like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings,the Green Ember series, Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, and Jan Karon. The top shelf is mostly filled with Christian theology and Christian nonfiction. There's a lot of John Piper up there I could imagine enjoying and learning from that shelf. In my office, there are different shelves that I used most often--mostly books on preaching, commentaries, biblical studies, counseling, and prayer.

If I could only reread, then I would want to be a lot more careful with the books that I bought. I would be paying more attention to Banner of Truth books. I would have Charles Spurgeon's sermons.

One of the things I hope to get out of this challenge is to just not be greedy and wasteful. I want to spend less time looking for more books, but instead I want to enjoy the books that we do have without adding more all the time. Every time I go to the library, I can usually find several books that sound interesting. I have lists of books that I want to read on my phone and in a notebook that I carry with me. I think it would do me good to be content with the books I have that I either haven't read or should reread.

I've heard that Nassim Taleb argues that having books you've never read is a good and humbling thing; he calls it an anti-library. It expands your mind and reminds you that there are many things you don't know yet. I don't feel the burden to have read every book that I have. Some people give me books that I haven't read yet. Sometimes they aren't worth reading, and I don't plan on keeping them. Some conferences give away books that just are not worth precious time that I have to read. Since the library and Amazon are filled with books I have not read and Banner of Truth has many books in their catalog that I've never read, I don't think humility about my knowledge is an issue.
If you could only read what you already have, what would you read?

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