Controlling/Reducing My TBR

On January 1st I went through all the physical books I own to ensure they were on my "Owned to Read" shelf on Goodreads. I wanted to know exactly what that number was. I knew it was going to be high, but I didn't anticipate how high it was. 237 books! I was shocked and appalled. It feels out of control and ridiculous to have that many books in my collection I haven't read.

I outlined my plans for controlling my book buying and such this year in my video at the beginning of this week. As this was an idea that I just implemented in the past couple of weeks, my guidelines are fluid. Some of these have already been tweaked and I'm developing a system as I go.

In my video I tried to explain my preorder plan, but things were a little jumbled and I realized my plans weren't going to accomplish my goal. I want to read more of the books I already own rather than buying new ones all the time. My original plan made it seem like I could keep buying books as long as I was reading those books. So I've adjusted this a little. Originally I said I could preorder a book if I had finished the last stand alone I bought or started the last series I purchased a book from.  Instead I've come up with these guidelines:

1) New Series - For each new series I purchase or preorder, I need to have finished a series from my collection during the month I order that book or when a preorder is set to come out. If I have an exceptional number of unread books from an author who is publishing a new series, I'll cancel the preorder or swear off purchasing their books until I'm caught up.So far I've done this once. I've canceled The Return by Jennifer L. Armentrout even though I'm dying to read it. I already have four physical and several ebooks by her that I haven't read. I need to catch up.

2) Installments in Series I've Started - This is staying the same as what I mentioned in the video. If I'm not caught up on the series, I will cancel the preoder a week before the book comes out. I've already done this a few times. I canceled Polaris by Mindee Arnett a couple of weeks ago since I still haven't read Avalon!

3) Book Sales  - I'm still swearing off used book sales and library sales for the year, but I might partake in the Book Outlet sale that is happening this weekend. I'm weak!

Those are my tweaks and little more explanation for my TBR plans for this year. As of today, my count sits as 236 books. (Whoot one less!) I have been reading a lot of ebooks though which aren't counted in my TBR pile so while I am reading the number hasn't been falling. Hopefully this will change soon and I may do a purge at some point in the near future. It is going to be a process for sure.

Happy Reading!