There comes a time in every reader’s life when you just have to face the fact that you aren’t going to read all the books.
Take a moment and breathe if you need to.
I don’t keep a massive TBR list like other people I know of. I’m primarily a mood reader so I read what catches my eye. I decided to purge my Goodreads TBR list mostly because I didn’t know why most of the books were on there. I didn’t know what most of them were about.
I only had about 150 books on the list when I started. I’ve done big purges before so there was nothing on there that I had listed before 2020. I started by opening every listing and looking at it. I asked if I was honestly going to ever read that book. A lot of them sounded really good. I’d have liked to read a lot of them. And then I deleted them.
The only things I kept where books I had flagged because they were:
- Foodie books
- South of the Equator books
- Books I’m keeping for my SciFi Month TBR
- The start of a few Urban Fantasy series that I thought I’d like
- Nonfiction books that I thought I’d like on audiobook
- A group of South Asian romances that I must have found all together at one point somewhere
- Books from series that I’ve been reading but the next installment isn’t due out for a while
I still had 50 books left. Then I went through and tagged them so I would know without having to open up each listing again what category they fell in. Next time I need an audiobook I can scan the list and see which nonfiction books I wanted to find on audio, for example. I’ve been having a hard time finding audiobooks I’m interested in just browsing at the library recently. I already downloaded my first one. I’m feeling very organized and productive.
[…] Heather @ Based on a True Story discusses purging Goodreads shelves […]
An interesting post. I don’t have a TBR list on Goodreads, but you should see the list of still-unread books on my Kindle!
Ugh, I didn’t even look at my unread books on my Kindle app!
I’ve done the same, last year or the year before. I use to add just about any title to the to-read shelf in Goodreads, if I’d seen it on display at a shop or saw a celeb reading it or the subject was vaguely related to some new hobby or other. Going through that list after years of adding things willy-nilly was a chore, because like you said — I didn’t know why most of the books were on there. I try to be a bit more discerning about it now, although for me there are still way more than 50.
I’m also trying to be better about more regular cleanup. Like, if I add a book to the to-read shelf because that’s a requirement of a giveaway on Goodreads, after the giveaway is over it needs to be removed unless it is something that can be checked out from the library or put on my gift list in the near future.
I definitely need to do a purge on my goodreads list of books. Most of them I’ll probably never get to. I’d like to do a purge of my physical books, but I do want to read most of what I have. That’s why one of my bookish goals this year is to read more of what I own & then sell what I likely won’t reread.