Tackling my TBR Pile (Phase 1)

Image credit: Google art; 

Image of brown dots text Books on My TBR

I've done this once before, ignorance is bliss until it isn't. I love books, that's it- full stop. If I want it, I got it- as the contemporary poet Ariana Grande would say. I'm no longer pressuring myself to slow down buying books or feel bad for something that brings me joy. What I will do, is try to make the list manageable. So here's the plan...

1. Find out the actual damage of my physical TBR (baby steps)- ebooks and audiobooks will be phase 2 (and a lot smaller than my physical TBR); ✔
2. Get the number under 100 by the end of the year; ⚠
• Statuses I'm using to track- Read, DNF, Unhaul 
• Prioritize ARCs
3. Don't stress about progress, do what I can. 😬

Phase 1: Physical TBR breakdown

DO NOT JUDGE ME I'm sensitive already about what I'm about to share. So here we go!

What does this chart mean? Welp, at the beginning of logging my physical TBR I had 218 unread books. I went ahead and unhauled 13, so I'm working with 205 unread books. Yikes, the number is enough to make my stomach hurt but here we are. Some interesting tidbits now that the information is staring at me:

• The oldest book on my TBR was published in 1982, which is a 38 year spread, but the majority of the books were published in 2020. From the looks of it I went hamm on new releases last year. Typical!😚
• The shortest book is coming in at 60 pages and the longest at 746 pages (with an average book length at 308 pages). 
• The genre I need to chip away at the most is Nonfiction. As you can see nonfiction is almost half of my unread books, romance coming in at a distant second. 
• As a side note I plant to prioritize ARCs that I have not read at this point and then moving on to Nonfiction as my second priority. 😑

Now with that out of the way. My plan will be fluid. I also want to avoid being too hard on myself, so to inner me, don't freak out. Honestly, I've had a few days to really sit with this information and I've decided setting a reading TBR will set me up for failure. I'm not good with a set TBR; therefore, I think a better strategy will be to read 2-3 books a month which would round out to be 24-36 books by the end of the year.

Report progress on social media

But in order to hold me accountable, I will share my progress on social media and a year wrap-up on the blog. 

Wish my luck!

What are you doing to tackle your TBR? I'm open to suggestions and recommendations. 👀

Happy Reading!