Happy Friday lovelies! Stop & Chat is back with a discussion even I’m a bit lost on…. What exactly do you, I, WE, mean when we utter the TBR acronym? After cataloguing all of my books I discovered I own 563. 563 books! Now this is pretty darn cool to me considering just under two years ago I barely had 200! But I’m getting off track. Of these 563 books I own, and love so very much, 391 are UNREAD (at the time of writing this of course 😉 ). So, does this mean I have 391 books on my TBR? What about all the books on my goodreads shelves? What about the 1,030 books I have on my “to read” shelf? Is that my “TBR”? Why did my mind instantly zero in on the numbers here?
Naturally this lead me to question if quantity affected this answer and so I asked twitter how many books they own, including ebooks, but have not read and you know what? I was shocked by just how many people are in the same triple digit boat as I! But what shocked me even more was the tone that came with each answer. Guilt? Shame? Resentment? With each tweet I received they sounded less like replies and more like confessions. And it wasn’t until the next day that I realized even my tweets, starting from the first one, were filled with shame too! But that makes no sense! We’re book nerds! We have a passion for books that most people dream of finding. Why, of all things, should we feel shame in the fact we own more books than we’ve read? How is this a source of guilt?! And why do we constantly reference our “never ending” TBRs when it comes to joking but when it comes to reality we get all sheepish and self conscious?
A TBR is a TO BE READ list right? Books To. Be. Read. Why would having hundreds of books on this list embarrass us? Isn’t this one of our goals as book nerds? Isn’t that what a TBR is about? What do you think? What do you consider to be a TBR and do you think a certain number should be the cap? Are you embarrassed by the number of unread books sitting on your shelves? On your iPad? On your kindle? Let’s talk about it below!
I am not ashamed about owning more unread books that read ones, but I do feel bad for all those poor books I still haven’t got around to reading, that are there patiently waiting for the time they are chosen to be read, you know??
I don’t think anyone should feel bad … we all have hoarding tendencies for something 🙂
I was just thinking about this too when I recently took inventory! I own 483 physical books (about 100 eBooks) and I haven’t read 211, so it’s not quite as much as you, but still a lot. I definitely think I’ll get to all (or most) of them eventually! When I say TBR, I usually differentiate between physical TBR and Goodreads TBR although all of my physical unread books are included in my Goodreads TBR. Honestly it doesn’t matter to me; if I want to read a book at all, whether I own it or not, it’s on my TBR. I’m not ashamed of having so many books (or unread books)! I’m trying to build my library as much as I can with things I know I’ll like, so I’m careful. I have a lot of series books where I’ve only read the first in the series but I know I’ll love the others. I have tons of books that have been hyped and books that seem perfect for me but I just haven’t read. And then there’s that ARC shelf of books that I requested years ago, books that I would *like* to read (not ‘love’ to read) so I won’t toss them because I did promise a review. My Goodreads TBR, on the other hand, has over 1,000 books and I haven’t given up on that either. (I read approximately 100 books a year, so it’s still possible within my lifetime, right?)
Oh I’m totally embarrassed by the number of books sitting unread on my Kindle ahaha. My “to-read” goodreads shelf just consists of all the books I haven’t read yet but it actually includes a ton of books that I might never read, do not own, might own, and definitely own (usually in the form of ebooks). I only check it when I want to decide whether there’s a book on it that I can borrow from my school library instead of buying. My tbr only really consists of everything I own and I have a separate list for keeping track of books I want to buy (which after being bought will be added to my tbr). I don’t know if that makes sense haha, it’s bit complicated. But at the same time, having a neverending tbr is very reassuring because I don’t have to worry about ‘running out of books to read!” 😀 And there’s always something in there that will cure my reading slump.
I just noticed that my Goodreads TBR is much different than the TBR I catalogue in my reading journal or keep up with physically. For instance, my TBR on Goodreads is for books I don’t own, so that if I’m out and about at a library or bookstore, I have something quick to reference.
But at home, I have two stacks of books that I would like to read before I pass them on to someone else, sell, and/or donate.
I don’t think anyone should be embarrassed. Reading is a past time and hobby that one can invest their time (and money) in.
For a cap, I think that’s dependent on the individual. A few months back I deleted everything on my Goodreads TBR because it was in the hundreds and there was books on there I had not interest in reading anymore, so I just started over. I always make sure it’s under 50 books and/or kept to 1-2 pages.
I’ve never felt any shame or any negative emotion when it came to my TBR. I have a TBR that easily exceeds 600 and its rising every day but you know what? That makes me happy because I know that I will ALWAYS have something to read.
It’s strange, truly, how people can respond with shame or embarrassment when sharing their TBR numbers, because as you said, we are book lovers! We should be rejoicing every time we add a new book to our TBR!