TBR Support Group

While I did my very fun TBR Tag post last week, I thought about how I would ever find the time to read all the books. I mean, obviously I cannot read them as fast as they can be written and published, so we have a problem. And after reading your comments, I realized that my problem has not even reached the full scale calamity of some other TBRs out there. Some of you were in the thousands, some were well beyond that. I have seen some TBRs in the tens of thousands. I don’t know what to make of those, because I don’t think I could have interest in that many books!

So, I started thinking about it. Not just about how we can manage the massive amount of books we desire to read; alas I have no answers to those questions. No, I wanted to know how we got TBRs so huge (and ever expanding!) that we will never live enough years to read. This is what I came up with:

  • Series. I have books in series that may never actually be released (The Host, anyone?) on my TBR. Some are books so far down the line that they have neither titles nor covers. The apocalypse may actually come before these bad boys are ever written (Angelfall #5 has been on my TBR for over two years… and #3 still doesn’t have a title!). The problem with this TBR issue is simple: The books are staying put because you want to read the sequel, but there is nothing you can do to move the process along unless you plan on writing some fan fiction and pretending it’s the same. 
  • New books are always being announced. Let’s face it: the book market is not standing still for our TBRs. There are books coming out and being announced daily, and unless you are SuperReader, you are not reading them as fast as they’re being published. Sorry, it isn’t happening. This week, a solid five books that I really want to read were released. Will I read all five before next week’s batch? Um, no. So it stands to reason our numbers are going nowhere but up. 

  • I end up reading whatever everyone else is talking about, not wanting to feel left out. Maybe I wasn’t so sure I was going to read RandomBook. It seemed okay, just not my thing. But then. Then, the blogosphere imploded and readers everywhere were talking about this book. Maybe it’s positive, maybe not. Maybe it is polarizing. And now, I need to know what all the fuss is about either way. So onto the TBR it goes. 
  • Sales/Freebies. I need to go through these as well, because I bought so, so many books when I first got my Kindle, then added them all to my TBR. Then, I found out about Freebies. There are a few freebies I actually want to read, but most of them? Not so much. It’s time to purge!
  • Pretty Covers! These culprits! Underhanded and sneaky, the gorgeous cover is made to infest TBRs of unsuspecting readers. The Cover Lords know we can’t resist, and if enough of us cave, the scenario above will jump into action, and the Cover Lords have declared another victory on our TBRs. I am embarrassed to admit that I have added a “pretty cover”, read the synopsis, decided I wasn’t that interested, and still kept it on my list. That is how impressive the Cover Lords are. 
  • An author you’ve liked in the past wrote new stuff. Or is going to write new stuff. Or is thinking about new stuff, and there is a placeholder for a tentative 2017 release on your TBR (true story). Maybe this author isn’t even writing in a genre you like, but who cares, because it’s THAT author
  • Peer Pressure. Ah, how many peer pressure books I have on my TBR! I even have quite a few lurking on my shelves, on my Kindle, all over the place. Because when you trust a bunch of awesome bloggers’ opinions, your TBR is bound to grow. It makes for some amazing reading, but an utterly unmanageable TBR. 

  • Books you seriously do not care about reading. Guilty. So, so guilty. I have books on mine that I know full well I am not going to read. Ever. Even if someone came to my house and handed it to me with a nice cup of coffee and shooed me off to read it. We all have those, I am sure of it. Maybe you were interested at one point, then heard a lot of bad stuff. Maybe it suffered from one of the above syndromes, and the interest never kicked in. Maybe you just added it for funsies one time. I don’t know, but you did. We all did. So, since it is really the only TBR Syndrome we can really solve, I challenge you all to do it! Find one book, just one, that you really don’t want to read, and give it the heave-ho. I’ll do it too- just while writing this post, I have rid my TBR of six books! (And four of them I seriously don’t remember ever hearing of. Oops?)
So. Tell me your TBR number! Go ahead, it’s therapeutic, we won’t judge. (Much.) Now, I challenge you all to take off that one book you know you’ll never read. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Okay, which book have you made peace with letting go? Or is your TBR really under control? (In that case,  I think you should lead the next support group, ‘kay?) What is the one thing that most makes your TBR unruly? Let’s talk!

Posted September 15, 2014 by Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight in Discussion / 27 Comments

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27 responses to “TBR Support Group

  1. I now have 286 books on my TBR! I removed Get Even by Gretchen McNeil which doesn’t really count because I had it on there twice! But I don’t feel like swimming through the wreckage the is my Goodreads TBR shelf.

    See I don’t know half of what’s on there because I tend to ignore it, instead I add books I want to read or preorder to my amazon cart and then go through all 20 pages of “saved for later” every once in and while to clear it out. =)

    But the one thing that makes my list the most unruly would be that I add a ton of random stuff that I barely know anything about…and the I proceed to forget all about it.

    This was a really fun post to read!

    • I think removing duplicates totally counts, especially with your teeny tiny TBR 😉 I actually managed to delete 40 books from mine last night after I typed up the post! I did the random adding too- especially when I was new to Goodreads. Now, I am far more selective!

  2. Ugh, I have like 500+ books on my goodreads tbr. But my actual PHYSICAL TBR in my house?? Only about 30. I’m happy with that. 🙂 A lot of them I’ve won too, so I don’t feel like obligated to read them ASAP. I actually read more library books than books I own, I don’t even know why! It’s very hard to give awesome books back to the library. I’m also a very peer pressured reader. But I’m not ashamed. I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT! Plus I think being a peer-pressured reader is good. I’ve read so many books that I almost always have at least ONE book I can talk about with other people. Common chatting ground. It rocks. 😉

    • WOW only 30!? Um, that is awesome! My Goodreads is well over 850, and my actual owned books is probably hovering around 200 (though this is mainly Kindle books). I just counted my physical books… yikes- close to 60. What happened?! I’d better start reading!

      And YES that is why I must read the books everyone else is- so I know what we’re chatting about! It is hard to comment and tweet and stuff when you know nothing about the books everyone is reading!

  3. I’m guilty, too. “An author you’ve liked in the past wrote new stuff.” I love The Hunger Games Trilogy and by that makes Suzanne Collins as my favorite author. I’m looking for any updates about her planning/releasing a new book and here it is, Year of the Jungle released last September 2013. The genre of this book isn’t my cup of tea but, it’s written by my favorite author! So, I’m still keeping it in my TBR list. I’ve got about 213 and hourglass is the book I think I’ll never read. 🙂

    • Ohh, 213 isn’t so bad! And YES- I totally tried to force myself to add Year of the Jungle but… I couldn’t do it. I knew I would not like it, and then my feelings would be conflicted.

  4. I have over 2000 books on my Goodreads TBR shelf. I really should go through them and delete a few hundred or more and leave the ones I absolutely know I want to read. The higher it gets the more I feel like I’m standing in quicksand! I also own over 1,000 books and have probably read 10% of them so my personal library basically is a TBR shelf. (Why so many? My local library has a sale twice a year where I can fill a whole banana box with books for $5. It’s a deal I can never seem to pass up!) I even made a goal to visit the library less this year and read more of my own books but I ended up not reading as many as I usually would if I borrowed from the library! It’s a neverending struggle!

    • WHOA! That is a lot of books! I love your library’s deal though, that is SO nice! And I can imagine that your TBR feels overwhelming. But think of it this way, if you never read the books, you only spent $5, and you can always pass them along!

  5. Uhm, my number is 1637. It’s out of control. But I can’t help it. Really, I can’t. Honest. They’re just too pretty looking all innocent like they never jumped onto goodreads TBR on their own. I just took off Black Ice. It’s a no no. I don’t even know how it got there…I think mine suffers from all of them really, the pretty covers are the biggest culprit though because it’s just, oh, pretty. You’re mine. Don’t care what you’re about, but you’re mine. then series’, series’ that I’ll probably never read since I wait until all the books are out and then get intimidated because there’s six…And then the author one, I don’t buy every new book of an author I’ve previously liked but I do have a few auto-buy authors. 😉

    • I agree! I swear books I never added end up on my TBR! Books about stuff I seriously never, ever wanted to read, by authors I have never heard of, and with ugly covers 😉 I agree though- it is SO hard not to add something, because you want to add it “in case” and so you “don’t forget”. I do this constantly!

  6. At the moment I have 633 books on my to-read list, how did that happen? I think most of the reason you listed here are responsible. There just are so many books and just like you I also add next books in a series to my to-read list and all the placeholders for books by my favourite authors go on there.
    I think I am doing okay with freebies and not downloading them unless I really want to read them, but pretty covers get me quite often or recommendations from others and then years later I wonder why that book is even on my to-read list at all. Or I change my mind and some of the books on my to-read list don’t seem that good anymore. Sometimes I actually remove some. I wish we had time to read all the books we wanted!

    • I wish we did too! That would really solve the problem, no? I am good about not getting freebies and cheapies now, but back when I started, I would one click anything under $3. It was insane. I am glad I got myself together! Then I started scouring bargain racks at the bookstore. Then I had to stop myself again- I won’t buy it unless it had been a book I’d explicitly wanted to read before seeing it on sale. I just removed a TON, but now I am adding them back (not the same ones, but still!) so it’s a mess again!

  7. Ugh! My Goodreads TBR pile is totally unmanageable. I think I find myself in all the examples you mentioned above (I’m that guilty!). But, I actually don’t care. If I want to read a book, I’ll buy it when I want to read it. I also mostly read Kindle books, and I also don’t watch much on discounts, because when I buy books on discount I end up spending even more. Also, I don’t have much unread books on my shelves, only around 20-ish, so I guess that’s good, because I only buy print versions of books that I KNOW are going to be amazing.

    • See, I feel like my Goodreads TBR is like, judging me. Like, “I know you are adding books and NOT READING THEM”. (Obviously, I have issues ) I have become like, a book hoarder too. I think I may need *actual* book therapy perhaps 😉

  8. I have a 1705 on goodreads, but its going down because I started taking off books I’m not interested in reading and some of them are maybe’s. I made a new shelf of books I want to read in the next 5 years or so and for books I own, right now its 214. And of course that list will grow because of what you said, with new books coming out and books in a series. I’m also starting not to count the next book in a series until I read the one before it. Great post!

  9. I don’t have very many on my TBR list… probably because I don’t keep a physical list. That’s the key, I think…if it’s not important enough to withstand the brain melts that happen on a daily (hourly) basis, I probably don’t want to read it THAT much.

    • Oh dear, but my brain would melt ALL the books away, even important ones (but never yours, my brain won’t be allowed to melt yours away, promise!). That’s the catch with the TBR- I need it because of my poor child-riddled brain, but then it looms over my head.

  10. LOVED this post! I can totally relate. The feeling of the never-ending TBR is so frustrating :/ And every time I read a book that’s only so-so, it aggravates me even more! I could’ve spent that time reading one of other million books on my list, ugh!

    Oh my god, I don’t even want to say my number…My Goodreads TBR list is at 2190. Of which I own 580. I’M SO ASHAMED OF MYSELF!!! But I’ve actually been reading a ton this year, so that makes me feel kind of better. I’m putting a decent dent in that pile, especially from the ones that I already own. And I’ve been buying less, too, so that’s good! But it’s the “adding to Goodreads TBR” thing that I need to fix. And the “getting rid of books I’ll never read” thing, too.

    • Aw thanks! And YES- it is infuriating to read a “meh” book. I almost wish I’d read a bad one, cause at least I could have had a few eye rolls 😉

      WHOA. 2190?! And you OWN 580!? I. Wow. I mean… I hope you live to be like, 120 😉 But no seriously, I understand completely. New books come out and… you hear ALL the good things. It is so easy for the pile to get out of hand. Glad you are making a dent though, that is great progress!

  11. My TBR is at just 729 books. I was able to get my TBR WAY down by only adding the book I need to read next in a series. I LOVE series and always have a ton of books coming out for different series. There’s also those series that I started, but haven’t gotten around to reading more than 1 or 2 books of them. It was pointless, for me, to have 10 books of a series listed at TBR. I now just do the next one, two at most, and that decreased my TBR by half.

    Lucky for me, I don’t read what everyone else is reading, nor do I have any peer pressure. I don’t read what everyone else does, for the most part, and only one person is able to successfully recommend me books. I’m just too picky. My TBR comes almost completely from GR recommendations and my own search for books that interest me.

    After I did the TBR Tag I mentioned that I’d delete a few books. There were 2 that had less than a 3 star rating on GR, so those are easy to take off. Just really quick, I removed 9 books from my TBR with under a 3.5 star rating on GR. If I haven’t gotten to them now, I’m just not going to. The lowest rating was The Stonehenge Gate by Jack Williamson overall rating on GR just 2.85. TBR at 720. 🙂

    • Whoa, nice job! I am impressed! I deleted about 40… and then added a bunch of new ones. I definitely have a peer pressure problem, and I am glad for your sake that you do not 😉

  12. Haha, I’m pretty sure that every single point you mentioned applies to me :/ Between having hundreds on my Goodreads TBR, the piles of books that I own but still haven’t read, and all the new releases my TBR is pretty massive. Occasionally I go through my list on Goodreads and delete ones that I know I’m never going to read so that also helps a bit. Great post 🙂

  13. Okay, how did I not see this post? Basically, everything on here speaks TRUTH.

    Girl, you know what my TBR number is AND IT’S GROWN SINCE THEN IT IS UNSTOPPABLE I NEED HELP (It’s now up to 2500. Oops). I’m joining this support group, mmkay? I know I’m like late and stuff, but I’d be a fantastic group member. Just saying. And also. I will try to knock one down. Maybe. BUT WHAT IF SOMEWHERE DOWN THE ROAD I MIGHT WANT TO READ IT BUT CAN’T REMEMBER IT? WHAT IF IT BECOMES ONE OF THOSE HYPED BOOKS THAT EVERYBODY LOVES? WHAT IF I’M MISSING OUT ON SOMETHING GREAT? These are thoughts that plague me when I’m thinking about cutting some of those books out. I know I need to do a cleanup, I know! But… *sigh* it’s just so hard.

    • 2500!? Good lord! Don’t worry, I have the exact same thoughts. It’s because we are bookish and crazy, it’s okay 😉 Our TBRs will just end up in the millions by the time we are old ladies.

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