I buy too many books.
LibraryThing tells me that:
- I have 1,720 books unread books in my library, which is 11 years worth of reading
- 1,348 of the unread books have been in my library for more than two years. In my experience, the longer they sit there, the more my desire to read them wanes.
- In 2023:
- the number of unread books rose by 77 books year on year.
- I added 243 books to my library but I only read 108 of them.
I don’t want to continue to buy books and then let them go to waste so in 2024, I’m going to confront my book-buying addiction and get on top of my TBR pile by doing four things.
- Any book I add to my library in 2024 will be read in 2024.
- During 2024, I will read or discard the 135 books I bought in 2023 but have not yet read.
- I will read 30 books from my TBR pile, choosing 3 a year from 2012 to 2021.
- I will reduce my TBR pile by identifying books to move from my ‘To Read’ shelf to an ‘Unlikely To Read’ shelf.
To help me shape my reading, I’ve identified the 30 books from my 2012-2021 TBR pile. I’ve picked them because they’re all books that I still have an appetite for. Here they are:
Mike Finn's Fiction 
Happy New Year Mike! I feel we should be in a circle….my name is Andrew and I’m a bookaholic… but loving the aspiration around your tbr pile and the courage to make yourself accountable to your followers!
Christmas is always tricky, in that I ordinarily get an influx of titles that challenge my structure around not expanding my shelf space. I may even have detected a smirk when my better half presented me with a nicely bound set of the works of D.H.Lawrence, but I set about the rejig yesterday, with only minor ‘casualties’.
Of course, the advent of e-books has thrown up the possibility of endless shelves (I do have some of those too), but my focus on the ‘’old school’ conundrum of space at least concentrates the challenge on the bit of the iceberg I can see!
May I wish you a fruitful and reading-filled 2024!
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Happy New Year Andrew. I’m afraid sites like mine are enablers for bookaholics and I make no apologies for it ☺️.
My problem is what my mother used to call ‘having eyes bigger than my stomach’. I want to sate my appetite, not exceed it.
Almost all the books in my TBR a digital as I can’t read regular-sized print anymore. Having my books on limitless, invisible shelves has made it even easier to over-buy.
I hope 2024 will be a great reading year for you.
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I like some of the things you are aiming to do, but I don’t think I could do the getting rid of books bought in 2023 and not read in 2023/4. Part of that is because I actually bought a record amount of books in 2023, probably 5 years worth of books. Part it is because I have so many books that are hard to find and getting rid of them means not finding them again.
Your 30 list looks like a good range. I started reading Jane Harper’s The Survivors when it first came out, but it was around the time I had too much going on in my life that torpedoed my reading back to fluff or easy rereads. I do want to try again with it, but I leant it to my aunt in 2021 and haven’t gotten it back yet. I look forward to seeing what you think of Priory of the Orange Tree. The more I hear about it, the less I think I will like it – so it is currently in danger of the very rare occurence of being unhauled without even an attempt to read it. Austenland is a book? I saw the movie and thought it was fun. I look forward to reading your thoughts on it too.
Best of luck with your goal to read down your TBR.
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