https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/
Hello,
Sometime in 2017-18 I was able to zero my TBR, and then shortly after, I bought 30+ books. But I wanted to share the feelings of not having a TBR and the process of getting it that way.
I will say that I don’t have a large TBR. Generally, I have 20-40 unread books on me and most of them were bought together. So when I made the decision to zero my entire TBR, I have roughly around 35 books in my TBR.
So, let’s jump to some quick statistics:
I generally read 70 books a year. And I read about 4 books a month, which is a book a week. So, for me to have read of my TBR I would have to read ONLY my TBR books for 8 to 9 months.
However, I made the decision to zero my TBR in 6 months.
Which is, A) unrealistic, and B) highly anxiety inducing now that I think about it. And I made this decision was a way to combat my anxiety of having a TBR.
So, I did end up doing in about 6 months, but I didn’t read half the books I owned. A lot of the books that I had in my TBR were books that have been there for two or more years. So, immediately my response was to unhaul a lot of the books there. I unhauled books like Winterspell by Claire Legrand, but I also unhauled Children of Blood & Bone by Tomi Adeyemi because I was certain it was too big of a book for me to properly fit into my challenge.
*Side-eye Priory of the Orange Tree that I’m trying to read by the end of June even though I’m less than a 100 pages in*
Though I did unhaul a lot of books that didn’t interest me anymore, I did unhaul books that I didn’t think would fit time-wise. Apart from that, I DNF-ed a lot of books.
I switched by anxiety from one from to another. So instead of picking the books up in my TBR because I was interested, I ended up picking them up because I wanted to get rid of my TBR pile. So books like the entire Magnus Chase series by Rick Riordan weren’t given the rating that I would’ve given them if I read them when I wanted to. A lot of books did interest me either got lower ratings than normal or didn’t even end up getting finished because I felt pressure to read so much in such a short period of time.
I was able to zero my TBR in the end, but it wasn’t an entirely pleasant time. I kinda fucked myself up by setting that pressure for myself. I did learn that I REALLY can’t be forced to read. Actually, my 2017 Goodreads challenge shows that I only read 7 books that year.
Yeah… that was a complete failure.
But we are all better now. LOL
Anyways, those were my thoughts on my stupid decision from the past.
See you in the next post
K.W. & her TBR Cart
