I’m absolutely a mood reader. My TBR is 100s of books big, I just scan through it and see what I feel like at the time.

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The greatest realisation I came to was knowing I would never finish my TBR. it grows far faster than I could possibly read them

I don’t organize it. I page through my kindle library til I find something that appeals to me at that moment. Figuring out a thing to read has never been a problem for me!

I have an order, but it’s kinda random, and if I feel like reading one more than another I will.

The order is more for when I don’t know which book to pick next but I want to read something.

I don’t care about TBR anymore. There are way too many. So I have hundreds of books in lists that WBNTR, would be nice to read. But I know I will never read them all, so I stopped thinking about it.

By originally date published, oldest to newest

Wait…we’re suppose to organize them!? 🤣

i have a ‘read next’ list. which is no more than 10 books that are loaded on my tablet and ready to be read at a moment’s notice.

i have a general TBR list which is a bit over 600, which i check when my ‘read next’ list needs to be refilled.

and i also have a subsection in the TBR list ‘complete’ for series that are done and i don’t have to wait for sequels to.

I have too many. They’re organised roughly by fiction and non fiction though, as I tend to read one of each at a time, so it’s easy to see what’s what.

I have two complementary systems:

1. An ever-growing list of books I want to read on Goodreads. In the past it grew faster than I went through it; this year I’ve been pretty good about reading books from the list, so it’s hovered around 200 books all year.

2. Piles of unread books left haphazardly around the house. I get around to reading some of them eventually.

I only barely organise mine and that’s stretching the definition of the word tbh. I have hundreds of unread books and I’m a huge mood reader so I’ve never ever managed to stick to a plan or system. the only thing I really do is loosely keeping track of upcoming sequels and such because I’m trying to kick the habit of buying a series when I haven’t even read the first book. so I have a little mental pile of “try to read these asap maybe” and that’s pretty much it.

I don’t usually keep a TBR, but I have one right now because I have a number of books I want to finish before year-end, and my strategy is simply not reading anything that’s not on that list unless or until everything is finished. I expect it to take me pretty much right up to December 31st or a couple of days before.

I will say, I see the massive TBRs people have on Goodreads and it just seems pointless and stupid. I don’t see what value a 1000+ book TBR has if you only read 20 books a year.

If you are someone who enjoys buying books, a complete ban will likely fail. If you are someone who prefers to read 1 book at a time, this will likely not be fun. If you are someone who hates to have a deadline to read a book, this will likely feel more like school or work than a fun leisure activity.

One of my goals this year was to finish the last 25 books that moved with me a few years ago. I read an average of 12 books per month (I’m retired so I have lots of time to read), but I actually listen to more books than I read in print and I have other reading goals. So I gave myself the year to read the 25, so that’s only 2 per month. I also joined a challenge to help me choose what to read next. I love participating in challenges, so I found one that is specific to TBR lists.

My suggestion to you is to think about what is most important to you when it comes to reading. Create a plan and review it regularly and adjust as necessary. If you love buying books and don’t think you’ll be able to not buy while you’re working your way through your currently owned and unread, maybe allow yourself a new book after you read 3 owned books. You may also want to try to read more than 1 book at a time to see if it works for you.

I do enjoy reading multiple books at a time, but I do it for specific reasons. I usually have a print, ebook, and audiobook going at all times. They have to be very different genres and I read each format at a different pace. I can listen to an average length audiobook in 2 days, ebook in about a week, but print can take me more than 2 weeks. That may also be because most of my print books are nonfiction which just takes me longer to digest the material than a fictional mystery.

I remember when I first started my Kindle reading experiences I had 300 books at one point and was freaked out thinking I had too many. My TBR list is broken into two categories. The first category is what I called “up next”, this is for the books that I really want to read and are putting it above all the others. And then the next is the plain TBR list which is books that are most likely to be the next in a series of books I’ve already gotten into. The best way to tackle it simply just pick a book and read it. Reading should not be considered a chore, you should never feel anxiety over your TBR list. If you’re reading actual books, consider putting them on your bookcase without the spines showing and do a “mystery book”. If you pull a random book out of your shelf not even knowing what it is, and open it to the first page without even looking at the title and just start reading, there is an actual game in that. Guessing what book you’re reading. It’s kind of hard to do on a kindle, but being able to pull a book off a shelf opening it up to the first page and not knowing what it is is very exciting. Only do it with books that you really certain you want to read.

My TBR is well past 100 books and I read at least 50 pages/day and tackle 3 or 4 books at a time.

My tbr is over 3000 books on Goodreads so . . . no real system.