I have been thinking about writing this post for a while now but just haven't gotten around to it. Today I saw that Amber from Down the Rabbit Hole has a discussion post about tbr piles so I figured, I may as well make my post now.
This is a picture of my tbr pile from a while back. I've read some of those books now but I have gained a lot more since then.
How do I tackle my tbr pile?
With great difficulty thats for sure. I have tried so many things to whittle down my tbr pile such as:
I have stopped going to the library.
I just know that if I step foot into the library I'm going to walk out with a large pile of books. They all have return dates so I will have to prioritize those and my own books and review books will just get put on the back-burner.
I wrote a list and used a random number generator to pick what book to read next.
I wrote down a list of all the books I had to read and then numbered each one. Then I used random.org to pick out what book to read next. This actually worked pretty well but then I started getting a bunch of pre-release books for review so I had to push those up to the top.
I prioritized and made sure I would read all my review books first.
This is alright but I keep getting the feeling of being bogged down by having to read the review books and not reading any other books.
I tried to alternate between reading a review book and a book of my own.
I started to feel guilty about not reading my review books first.
I tried to read an ebook, an audiobook and a physical book at the same time.
This one is going alright for me but I keep getting carried away and so I start reading more and more books at the same time like right now I am reading Zombies vs Unicorns, Ladystar: The Dreamspeaker, The Summoner and The Last Days. None of them are getting read any faster by me reading them all at the same time.
So, what am I going to do now?
I keep stressing myself out with trying to read what I want, and what I feel like I have to. This is no good because then it makes my reading seem like a huge chore and the other day a friend and I were discussing work vs play and my friend said that often when we feel like we are doing something because we have to it isn't enjoyed as much as doing something because we want to. Which is entirely true. So I have taken a step back, looked at my books and am now thinking that I should just read the books I said I would read and review on the set dates. Then after that I'm just going to read what I feel like, and review the books that I read. I don't think it matters when I review a book, just so long as I do write a review for it.
I am also not going to buy any books for the month of June and possibly longer after that. I have plenty of books to read. I think my main problem is that I always think, but I want to read all those new shiny books as well. I think I'll use the rest of this year to try and read a lot of the books already in my tbr pile and from there see what happens.
My main goal is to not stress out over the fact that I keep buying more books. If I buy a book that I want to read when I've told myself I won't. Then thats fine. One day I will read all the books in my tbr pile. In the meantime, I can add to my collection of books with exciting new reading materials.
I think I've gotten a little carried away with this post so if you've made it this far, I'll be stopping my ranting now.
This has been my two cents about tbr piles, definitely check out Amber's Post if you haven't already!Source URL: https://free1image.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-tbr-woes.html
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