How a Growing TBR Can Enhance Your Reading Journey

After a touch of quick maths yesterday, I discovered that if I read on average four books a month (not an insignificant amount)  for the rest of my projected life, I will have read about half of my TBR as logged on the website StoryGraph. This being a website, and a relatively new one in the scheme of my own career as a reader, it doesn’t include most of the books I own and haven’t read, or books I would like to re-read, or books that have not yet been published but will be over the course of my natural life. Once again I have to confront the fact that there will never, ever, be enough time to read all the books I want to read.

Long TBRs have, apparently, been deemed a symbol of elitism (take that information with a pinch of salt, though, as I didn’t learn this organically through engaging with the take but from this booktuber). I can see vaguely what they mean: TBRs encourage us to spend money on books we’re not going to read or enjoy, or to hoard books, or to compare ourselves to what others are reading and enjoying. Bearing in mind that I am a professional book person twice over (as a librarian and as a PhD student), how can it be healthy for me to share such a long wishlist of reading?

Comparison can be healthy, though: it’s through others sharing their reading that I learn more about books I wouldn’t have encountered for myself, and whether that results in me reading them or not I appreciate the knowledge. A TBR is not a compulsion (hell, even owning books is not a compulsion to read them, and the more time I spend around book collectors the more I see this). Comparison, also, allows us to recommend books. Whilst this is perhaps more a feature of my life than others’ (my particular branch of librarianship is less research and more recommendation) it ought to go without saying that we all have different taste, and when you’re buying a gift for your bookish friend it can be beneficial to choose a book that doesn’t appeal to you but matches their interests. Hell, a whole list of mine within StoryGraph is books that I intend to buy for others – some of which I’d like to read myself, but more generally is where I place books that make me think of others and I therefore want to remember when the time is right.

More than that, however, is the key that my TBR is, really, for me. The list is an organic behemoth, it grows every time I so much as walk past a bookshop (most of the photos on my phone these days are me snapping pics of book covers that look interesting). It’s full of books I know I’ll like and have wanted to read for years, books I heard about on the radio or that some celebrity or academic mentioned, books by authors I liked. It’s got books that are out-of-print, books that are cultural juggernauts I think I ought to try, books that are literary or critical darlings. It has books for all moods, for however much time I have, for dumb ideas I might enact (can I read every bestseller of the 20th century? I don’t see why not). Every time I look through my TBR I think ‘why the fuck is that there’ about something, but I don’t remove it (or throw out the book if it’s a physical copy) because at some point in history I wanted to read an allegedly fake true-crime memoir of a Russian-Italian tattoo artist. I don’t think I ever will, but whilst it lurks on my TBR it will remind me that it exists, that it appealed to me, that I am not limited by my perception of what I think I like. I do not expect to read everything on my TBR, but I don’t know how I would cut it down without losing the mellifluous quality of media you haven’t engaged with, but might want to. I don’t want to make something pass a QC check to end up on a dumb list. My TBR is a ‘think about this later’ brain dump, and I don’t think that’s unhealthy, however long it gets.

Beyond its role for me is the TBR’s role for authors and publishers. When we tag something online as a ‘want to read’ it pushes it up an algorithm, it shows writers and readers and publishers what’s interesting to you and allows other people to choose to engage with it – especially important for people buying and selling books they need to reach a wide market. Whilst I might be happy enough sharing my own writing on a blog like this one, to make a living as an author you need concrete numbers and to be able to bend your style and ideas to what’s hot right now. Seeing what interests people, as well as what they tag as ‘read’, is core to your own explorations in art – by seeing, for example, that the romantasy-reading crowd is also interested in Italian literature, even if they don’t have time to read it, or the Taylor-Swift-lyrics-as-title readers are also shelving true crime, the writers and publishers can read around their fanbases’ interests and commission or create something which really speaks to readers – yes, for profit, but also for the satisfaction of a good job done. These are hypothetical genre crossovers, of course, but if my own compulsive buying of Dark Academia nonsense ebooks in search of one that speaks to me is anything to go by, no market is an island and readers will cast the net wide in search of that one book.

My husband’s solution for my overly long TBR is a bracket system, in which I cut it down by half by essentially Marie-Kondo-ing the online shelf. I may yet do this, as it’s a bit unwieldy at the moment (I found my current read by thinking ‘hmmm, I have time right now – let’s sort by page count high-low’), but I’ll be putting all my ‘forgotten’ books into folders and delving into them now and then, just as I do with my DNFs. One day, when I’m in a different mood to now, I’m sure something in there will appeal, and when that day comes I don’t want to be prowling the shelves in Waterstone’s without a clue.

On This Topic:

• I watch youtubers tell me about YA books because whilst I do read them for work and fun I have my own preferences and appreciate them branching out for me.
• I use StoryGraph rather than Goodreads for a) all its extra features, and b) it taking on Amazon. I also use Kobo not Kindle and buy independent or 2nd hand whenever I can and from Waterstone’s when I can’t. All of this is because I love bookshopping and workers’ rights.
• Try a quiz to find your next read?

To-Do:

• Read book group book – it’d be a DNF from me dawg if it hadn’t been chosen by my friend.
• Probably go through the 10+ tabs that appear to be books I want to read. When I say my whole life is books, I mean my whole life is books.
• Plan to go to Swindon.

Today’s Culture:

• I bought my friend this sketchbook for her birthday. I have the same one in autumnal and orange. It’s too heavy to carry around (doesn’t stop me trying) but it is cute and useful!
• We listen to Classic FM Calm – it’s a bit repetitive, and I’m not sure I always agree with their definition of calm, but it’s chill and nice and means we don’t have the TV on.
• Went to Surrey Docks City Farm with my friends and their kid, and it was so nice to see such a community-minded initiative nestled in the mean streets of London.