Or in other words: the different ways we manage our TBR lists.
For those who are new to the bibliophile jargon, TBR stands for To Be Read. It's the list of books you plan to read in the future. The problem is that adding books to a TBR is a lot faster than actually reading a book and moving it from TBR to Completed.
My current TBR is 1,284 books. That's modest compared to the lists of many of my bookish friends. So, the question comes up a lot--How should we manage our TBRs?
If you're into apps, there are tons out there to choose from:
Or...here are some alternative options:
My personal preference is Goodreads, because I like their filtering and tagging functionality. Not only do I have a TBR list on their app, but I also made myself a "bookshelf" called My Home Library, which lists out every single book I actually own. Using that, I can filter by the ones I haven't read yet and use that as a starting point when I'm ready to start a new book. (It also keeps me from accidentally buying the same book twice, when I already own a copy!! OOPS)
But when I have 50 unread books on the My Home Library list, that still doesn't help me solve the problem of which book I actually pick up next.
Cue my next personal problem--getting sucked into a genre black hole. I swear, and maybe it's doubly for Romance, but if I read a good book in one genre, I want the next 50 books I read to also be in that genre until I am just soo sick of it and they all blur together...at which point I force myself to stop. Healthy habit? Absolutely not. Does it happen anyway? YUP!
So this is where I've landed.
Here it is: the ultimate secret to choosing what to pick up next from your TBR.
My methodology is...
I look at the last word on the last page of the last book I read. The first letter of that word dictates the book I'll read next.
EXAMPLE: If the last word in a book is "challenge", the next book I pick up must either have a title beginning with the letter C or an author whose last name begins with C.
There it is. That's the secret.
I know, I know... it's crazy.
So the question is--Do YOU have any weird methods for how you choose your next book?
