Cora’s 2019 TBR Challenge

So it took me slightly longer than I anticipated to get my TBR Challenge stuff organized for this year. I lost Max to cancer a couple of weeks ago, much sooner than his medical team or I expected, and I’ve been trying to cope with that without letting everything else fall by the wayside. I’ve been more successful with some tasks (feeding myself, going to the day job) than with others (doing fun stuff, putting away Max’s things).

But now I think I’m ready for books again, and better late than never (though I hope these past few weeks aren’t an indicator of how the rest of the year is going to go).

1. How many books from your TBR pile will you read? I tried setting two numbers last year: one for books I’ve had for a while, and one for new books. A major reason my TBR pile is out of control is because I procure books faster than I can read them, and so many of my new books end up collecting dust on a shelf or languishing on my e-reader. But the 2-month rule ended up making the whole thing stressful, and reading should be fun. So I’m going back to one number: 24 books from my TBR pile this year.

2. How long have your books been waiting? For the purposes of this challenge, the books I read must have been acquired by me or placed on my library TBR list before January 1, 2019. This means I can’t buy new books in January and count them toward my TBR Challenge come September–which I found myself doing at least once during the first year, and kind of defeats the purpose of the challenge. But using this date lets me include everything I’ve acquired up until the new year began, meaning everything but my newest books will count toward my total.

3. How will you hold yourself accountable? Like years past, I’ll post here once a month to share my progress and see how you all are doing. I found that creating a Goodreads shelf and the dedicated page on this website to be enormously helpful, too, so I’ll do both again. I’m a very visual person and being able to see the collection of books that I’ve read gives me a nice sense of accomplishment, which makes me want to read more TBR books.

4. What about adding more books to the pile? Like previous years, I’m going to keep track of how many books I purchase with another Goodreads shelf. Numbers are powerful (especially to me, with my background in math), and it will be good to have a new total to compare with 2017 and 2018.

So not a lot of changes from previous years, but that’s because this setup has been working nicely for me so far. We’ll see if that continues for 2019.

Who else is committing to whittle down their TBR piles with me this year? What’s your goal for getting those old books off your shelves and apps and e-readers?