Jocelyn (The Reading World)

I’ve been thinking a lot about my TBR piles lately. I have this weird love-hate relationship and at the moment I’m feeling very stressed over it. You know that feeling you get when you see the piles of books you have on your shelves to read and you get that feeling that you have books coming in faster than being read? How do you deal with that?

I recently watched a vlog about killing their TBR and taking a minimalist approach to their bookshelf. I love that idea but I can’t help but feel like that would never work (for me anyway). I buy or receive books and I have every intention of reading them but then more books come in and those are new, exciting and shiny and they distract you from the books you already have.

I’m not the kind of person that can just organise my reading and have a pile of books to read and not waver. When I finish one book I tend to pick up whatever I’m in the mood for at the time. I love this reading on a whim approach to reading and it takes me through some interesting journeys but it isn’t very efficient. What about all those ARCs that I should be reading or those new books on my bookshelf? I have to force myself to read my book club books at times and that isn’t really ideal but it needs to be done.

This is a bit like a rant at the moment but I don’t know the answer, what should I do with my TBR? I’ve thought about culling my bookshelf and even getting rid of books I’ve not read just so I can have room for new books but that sounds scary. I know I can buy the book again if I decide I need to read it but giving up books is hard, too hard in fact. I probably can look at my shelves and wonder about some of the books. I know I’ve brought books in the past, excited to read them but then I lose interest and they just sit there waiting. I know it is the hype that is problem but I tend to think that my reading tastes have evolved so much that I’ve outgrown those books as well.

I need to take a year off work and dedicate my entire time to reading the books on my bookshelf; I think that is the only way I’m going to get a handle on my TBR. I’ve tried giving up buying books for a year but that didn’t work, it just forced me to use the library more, and I still use it frequently. I know, as far as problems go, this is a pretty decent problem to have but I just felt like ranting and wanted to know if people had advice for dealing with a TBR that won’t stop growing.

My thoughts:

This is something I've started to think about as well. In my first five years or so of indulging in my reading habits the general sensation was that I never had enough books to read. I absorbed everything I could find in the school library, the bookstore etc. so quickly it felt like I was starving. Finding Goodreads then was like the biggest blessing that could possibly happen to me and my list grew, grew, grew, and grew....until now I face the opposite problem: my to read list is over saturated. I don't feel much like reading because every book seems to have the same importance. It's like the problem of hoarding, you're flooded with stuff that you can't distinguish their value individually. Thus reading feels like a sort of mindless chore that will never end and I hate that idea with a passion.

So I've decided to deal with it by deleting stuff I probably won't have time for from my to read list. No doubt that will be a big task and an emotionally hard one at that, because it's tempting to cling to every single title, but once it's done, I imagine I'll finally feel that I can relax and take my time with every book I read. I feel like I haven't experienced that in years.