… in my to-be-read pile. Goodreads is awesome, but when you have 457 books in your to-read pile and that’s not counting all the various sequels and series and AIIEEE I WILL NEVER MAKE A DENT IN MY TO-READ PILE!
pant pant
I have read 93 books in 2008. I have added more than 93 books to my to-read pile in 2008.
I think I need an intervention. And a reading plan.
Is anyone else dumbfounded by the sheer number of books out there you want to read?
Think how many of them will turn out to be crap by the tenth page.
I only have about ten things in the pile at any given time (knock wood), but I do get stressed that I never have time to read. Last week I went three days in a row without once picking up a book, and man, I was getting surly. If I could just have a guaranteed fifteen minutes a day…
I see the title of this thread, and it makes no sense. “Too many books” - no such thing.
I don’t even know how many books are on my to read pile anymore. I know it is well over 500, probably closer to 1,000. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay out of used book stores.
I have, by actual count, 470 unread fiction paperbacks and hardcovers on my shelves at this moment. This does not include books I have not yet unpacked from a recent move, nor does it consider all the non-fiction books I’ve already unpacked but have not yet tried to sort in any meaningful manner.
This also does not take into account the series and other books by authors that I read, but haven’t gotten around to trying to keep updated. In some cases this is because of the aforementioned unpacked and unread books; I’ve already found too many duplicates when I’m unpacking, thank you.
I only keep about 60 in my to-read list, mostly those I already have in the house or am planning to acquire very soon. The problem is, I’m a moody reader and sometimes I’ll look at that list and not be happy with a single thing on it. I’ll be actually pacing around the house, unable to settle on a book. So maybe I need to increase the size of my list.
as most of them are non-fiction it is slow going. some times you need to have a bag of m&ms (light, fast, silly fiction) between the 4 course dinner (big, plodding biography).
so today i picked up 3 chocolate snacks from the used book store to go with the 3 boxes of main courses.
This is such a novel idea to me. My pile is never bigger than like 3 books - that being the amount I might borrow from a friend at one time. If I go to a bookstore and buy books, I get right down to the business of reading them - I can’t stop! I’ll miss sleep to finish them.
Ok, my way isn’t great, I’m just amazed at the poster who has hundreds of unread books on their shelf. Crazy. I’m jealous… can I borrow a book?
I admit I’m a bit older than most posters on this message board and I’ve been buying books for a lot longer, but I’ve got about 4,ooo books in my house, more than half of which I haven’t read yet, but I’ve never bought a book that I haven’t wanted to read…and I keep buying more.
Audiobooks! Audiobooks are the answer! I love them because with audiobooks I can read when I need my eyes for other things. I can read while driving, or walking, or cleaning my apartment. I can read while I look at a sunset or watch puppies and children play! I can read while pretending to listen to boring people! Suddenly you can read while you do anything!
Libraries have lots of audiobooks, and there are tons of great sites to buy them on the web. I use Audible.com a lot, but there are other sites, some of which, like librivox.com, have free, public domain audiobooks. Go look into audiobooks, you won’t regret it.
Tell me about it, jsgoddess. Fortunately I’m not in the same situation, but I do have a stack about four feet thick of anthologies where I’ve read only a few stories out of each of them and need to go back and read the rest (roughly a decade of The Year’s Best Science Fiction series make a notable portion of that pile). There is, after the mail arrived today, six novels sitting in my read immediately pile and I think two more in the mail. Then there are the novels in my “read soon” list which are similar in number.
Fortunately I’ve not gone around purchasing any book that catches my fancy. I used to do that but setting some goals for myself have given me direction and I keep the books awaiting my attention to a minimum. Unfortunately it has resulted in my “I’ve got to go back and read more from that author!” list expanding to the point that when I finish off my goal I’m going to be drowning.
Just Some Guy, me too, with the anthologies. I think I have to have them even though short fiction isn’t my favorite way to read.
For a couple years, when I was flush, I spent more time browsing and buying than I did reading. When the bookcases filled up, I piled them on the floor and filled closets and cupboards. When I finally realized what I was doing, I started giving them away. A Unaboarder visited and left with a couple hundred. I put a bunch more on Amazon and donated some to the library, and gave them to friends with instructions to keep them.
I feel much better now. I probably have about 50 unread books in the house (not counting the anthologies), my buying is down to two or three a month, and I feel more like a reader than a buyer.
Once in awhile I find myself buying something that I gave away, but I don’t care. My addiction is under control!
I own 1785 books at last count all catalogued in alphabetical order on an Excel spreadsheet.
This uber-geekery is a result of the problem the OP mentions, not having the time to read all what I want to read and not knowing what to read next.
So I use the random-number function on a calculator to select what to read next based on an alternating fiction then non-fiction basis.
Sounds silly but it works really well, you don’t know whats going to turn up next but because its a book you’ve bought you know it’ll be one you’ll probably like.
Currently reading:
‘Bomb Alley - Falkland Islands 1982 - HMS Antrim at War’ by David Yates. An interesting enough book about what its like as an ordinary seaman at war but I could have done with less of the authors reminisces about his on-shore activities to be honest.
Up next:
‘Empery’ by Michael P. Kube-McDowell - A sci-fi novel, no idea if it’ll be any good or not but the plot-summary got my attention.
‘Red Square At Noon’ by Natalia Gorbanevskaya
‘The Man Who Invented Hitler - The Making of the Fuhrer’ by David Lewis (hmmm…to non-fiction books in a row, my masterplan has obviously gone wrong somewhere)
‘Dark Rain’ by Conor Corderoy
‘Fighter Missions’ by Bill Gunston and Lindsay Peacock
Right now my too many problem seems to be that I’m currently in the middle of about 16 different books. I’ll be reading something (okay several somethings) and then I’ll buy more at my weekly bookstore trip. I immediately suffer from the “ooh shiny-ness” of the new books and start reading them too. Every once in a while, I’ve been making a concerted effort to stop being seduced by the new ones, and go back and finish off some of the in progress ones.
According to Goodreads, I’ve read 111 thus far in 2008, so it’s good to know that I’m finishing some. I really do like Goodreads, by the way, because it does help track what I’ve read, though I don’t think I’ll ever attempt to go back and catalogue pre-joining books that I’ve read. It seems like a pretty daunting task to me to do that.