Monday, April 16, 2012

TBR blues

One of the downsides of the amazing book-blogging world (and it's just a teensy one, I love you all!) is the tendency to become hyper-focused on the NEXT! BIG! THING! We're all so eagerly posting our WoW books, and scouring the upcoming release catalogs, and pestering our favorite authors to spill about their next books on twitter (is that just me?) that any book that we don't get to within a month or so of its release tends to fall to the wayside. At least for me! Especially since I do my book-reading the cheap and legal way, through my friendly local library!

**disclaimer, I also work for my friendly local library. However, I do not get a monetary bonus for reminding you about the inherent awesomeness of libraries.**

 But that means that the books aren't sitting around my house, they are mostly at the library and once they move from the new display to the general collection is it a lot harder to remember how awesome they were and how I totally planned to read them.

SO! I have been trying to keep an electronic list, a virtual TBR pile that won't drive my clutter-phobic husband up a tree. Each time a new book order rolls in, I peer through, grab the ones I absolutely MUST read (trust me, Black Heart never hit the shelves before I'd checked it out) and then added everything that sounded good as "I Plan to Read" on Shelfari, my handy-dandy internet tool for remembering all the books I read. I have a memory like a sieve, and even before I started slacking on my reviews, I never reviewed EVERYTHING I read. But I don't want to forget them, and I like knowing how many books I've read each year.

Anyway, the point of this is, I've been putting books on there for less than a week, and I already have 20 books on my list. I kind of find it stressful, really. Like they're all looking over my shoulder, and possibly judging.


How do you keep track of books you want to read? Does your TBR pile/list intimidate you?

2 comments:

  1. I'm a Goodreads junkie, but also I use post-its, and put them, in order on my bookshelf with read-by dates... OCD much? I know. I have to do it that way though. Otherwise, once it goes on the shelf, it gets forgotten. Forget about the Kindle...

    Great post!

    Karis @YA Litwit

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    Replies
    1. Read-by dates, interesting! I've found that I can't plan out what order I'll read books in ahead of time, because I have to be in the right mood for a book and it's hard to anticipate. Maybe an online calendar with pop-up reminders and a 3-month or so lee-way?

      Thanks for replying, and for the ideas to ponder! :)

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