Let’s Talk About | TBR Piles

Last updated on 3 January 2025

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“It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.” – Lemony Snicket

Oh TBR piles.

If you’re any kind of reader of all, then you’ll have a long To-Be-Read list. If you’re anything like me, then you will already have physical copies of said books piled high around your room. If you’re lucky enough to have a house, then your piles might just be more spread out (or perhaps you actually have enough bookshelves to accommodate them all), but if you’re like me and are confined to one room, then when the bookshelves are full, the bedside table is full, the window sills are full, then the floor is the only place let to pile high your books.

But what I wanted to talk about today are those TBR piles, and the order of your reading. How do you decide what book you’re going to read next? What gets bumped down the list? What replaces the top book? Is there a book that you’ve had for so long and you really want to read it – you do, honest! – but for some reason, you just haven’t quite got there yet.

With sites such as Good Reads, it’s so easy to discover books these days and add them to a virtual TBR shelf. And this is fantastic, but when you have actual physical shelves with actual physical already-bought books on them, you have to be a little more realistic. Over half the books in my room (and I have over 400) are still waiting to be read.

Some have been waiting for years.

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” – William Styron

I have a book on the go all the time. I’m not very good at reading more than one at a time unless they’re completely different genres, but I have at least one with me all the time. When I close the book, take a deep breath, and return it to its place on the shelf/table/floor pile, it’s not often that don’t know what to read next. But the more I think about it, the more I realise I don’t really have a system.

It’s whatever takes my fancy in that moment. Whatever book looks at me and yells ‘pick me’ on the day. That’s the next book.

However! Sometimes I have books that I have to read. ‘Have to’ probably being a bit strong of a turn of phrase, but if I’m reading a book, and a book arrives on my door step from Hachette Publishing, then that automatically takes the place of the next book I’ll read. Whatever I was planning (if I were planning anything at all) will have to wait an extra week. Sometimes it’s hard, because you know, I really really want to eventually read Heir of Fire, and why can’t I just read it now? But then I remember that a publishing company is sending me books, and they’re books that I chose and they’re going to be great. So I read them. And they’re great.

“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” –  Cassandra Clare

But ARC books aside, it truly normally is a ‘go with what you feel on the day’ sort of system, if I had to label it. You may remember that at the beginning of last year I tried the idea of writing down all the unread books that I had on pieces of paper, and popping them into a jar. The plan was that when I finished a book I would simply draw one out of the jar and that would be the one. Yeah, this didn’t work.

I loved the idea in theory. Hated it in practice. I found myself always drawing out books that actually I didn’t really want to read. So that went out the window pretty fast.

The other thing I tried was one new novel, one Classic. This didn’t work either, as I just wanted to read another new one all the time.

Once I tried just reading the books in order that they were on the shelf (which isn’t alphabetical, genre-organised, or even by author – it’s purely aesthetics), but again, no luck there.

Something I’ve seen other people do is to take it to the people. Put a poll on Twitter and ask people which book out of 5 one should read next. I like this idea, but at the same time, I probably will subconsciously have a particular book in my mind and will disregard its final say. Sad, but true.

Sometimes I’ll mean to read a certain book next, but then I find a book I’ve been dying read at the shop, or in a sale bin, so that’ll be the next one instead, and the other book will be on the floor again until I decide that it’s time.

So, after all these what-book-do-I-read-next fails (and some I have been reluctant to try), it’s a miracle I get anything to read at all really. What I would like to know from you, dear reader (of books and blogs), is how you decide what you’re going to read next.

Is there a TBR list you don’t deviate from? Do you just blindly choose a book off the shelf? Perhaps you have some sort of idea, but you’re like me and that’s likely to change? Let me know in the comments!

“If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.” – Rosemarie Urquico, from one of my favourite quotes ever, ‘Date a Girl Who Reads’.