Across from where I blog sits this lovely bookshelf, stacked with books I'm going to get to!
Do you Goodreads? You should. If you're any kind of a reader, it's a fantastic way to keep track of the books you've read and the books you want to read. I've been a faithful user for years now.
In many ways, the genesis of this blog began in December of 2016. I was sitting on the couch one day, sorting through all the books I'd added to my To Read list on Goodreads. (If you're not familiar, you can mark a book as 'Want to Read' on Goodreads, and those will go on a particular list called 'To Read'. After you read and review the book, you can switch it from Want to Read, to Read, and it will no longer be on that To Read list.) And in scrolling through the pages of books I'd decided looked interesting enough to spend my time reading (one day), I started feeling something I don't often feel when I'm checking out books...dismay. Frustration. Displeasure.
Why? Because the number of books on my To Read list had crept up to 332 books.
That's a LOT. And I say that as someone who regularly reads over one hundred books per year.
How did I get to this place? How had I decided that 332 books looked fascinating enough to read and yet done nothing about them other than let them sit around in a computer database? Why hadn't I put some of those books in my head? The worst part of this was that I knew that some of those books had been on some form of my want-to-read list since...gulp...the early 2000's.
Egads. I'll take my literary spanking for that.
And that was that. I sat there on my couch and went, "Okay, this is ridiculous. This has got to stop." I pulled out some paper and began making a list of all the books from my list that could be found at my local library, along with the Dewey decimal numbers. (I adore my library and their collection, as you'll see, is fantastic.) With my small handwriting, the list stretched over four pages and contained over a hundred books! I clipped it together, and on my next library trip, I took it with to start reading down the list.
And I did! It took quite some time, and I took pauses to read from my kindle, but I eventually read every single book my library had from my To Read list, and then I moved on to the libraries with which my library had reciprocal borrowing privileges. I got *most* of those done (some of the books were either no longer part of those libraries' collections, or were checked out or lost, dangit), and at that point, I moved on to books available via interlibrary loan.
As my library has a policy of only allowing four interlibrary loan requests per week, sometimes there's a bit of lag between when I finish one book and when my next book arrives, so that's where that lovely little shelf above comes in. That's not my only bookshelf, oh no. That's just my upstairs bookshelf, and the contents will change (and have already) as I read through the books I own. Most of the top shelf, I'll read and pass on (we have several Little Free Libraries within walking distance of my house, and I've already read and donated three books this spring!).
What I'm currently reading. Choosing Simplicity is a library book; the others are mine.
(And yes, that's the French version of Harry Potter! More on that in another post.)
As of today, my Goodreads To Read list is down to 177 books, which means that in a year and a half, I've read 155 books from that list! Not too shabby, and I think that definitely counts as getting it done (or at least, lodging myself firmly on the path to completing the task!).
It's interesting- before starting to read down my list, I never realized how much I enjoy reading about food. As I mentioned before, food waste is a huge issue for me, and I tackled several books about that, but food politics, history, what constitutes healthy food, and the processes of learning to cook all appeared multiple times on my list. I wouldn't have necessarily named most of those as subjects of interest, but they've been firmly cemented there now. Another fringe benefit of tackling a major project and sticking with it!
Do you have a To Read list? How many books are on it? What's stopping you from getting that number down? I'm much more selective these days about adding new books to that list; I really want to get that number close to zero before I start filling it back up again (and I'll never let it get so out of control again! 332? What was I thinking???). I'd love to hear your experiences with managing your To Read list.
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