The Unread Pile of Books

Confession time!!

I am Ciska and I am a book hoarder.

This is probably no surprise to you as you are visiting my book blog and I do think it comes with the territory. Thing is that I do not just buy a book, read it and put it on a shelf. I buy a book, realize I still have 20 more books on my shelves I did not read, find a book I feel like reading more and put the new book on the pile, unread. That is if I buy a book, but I have been given a lot of books too and have been switching out a few books in little libraries and the book switch shelves at the train station.

Last year we had someone visiting our house and as my other half was showing this person around they walked into my piles of books. On the one side there is an Ikea Billy, double stacked and clearly full. On the other side there is a cabinet with big piles of books in no particular order. I was following the conversation about my reading habits and heard my other half explain that I read a lot with this waving around hand gesture. Naturally the visitor asked if I read ALL the books there so my other half answered I think most.

I had to explain to him that all those piles of books on the cabinet were not read at all and just there because I got my hands on them. You can imagine the incredulous look I got. Which made me realize (again) it was time to take care of that pile. A game plan was needed. This sounds very spectacular but a good bookworm knows what is needed first. We need to add the books to Goodreads (or a likewise site) so we have a big shelf there with books we will never rea..... NO with books we own and can read when we wa.... NO with books we have to read because they have been laying around the house for years now!!

So I started, taking the books from the shelves, removing spiderwebs, adding them to Goodreads. And this is what I found.
There were 147 books total. I realized I read 5 of them in a different edition and for 2 of them I could not remember why they were there as they were totally not my thing. Those 7 are on a pile to put in little libraries.
This means I have 140 books on my Goodreads Mount TBR 2019 shelf. Last year I read 62 paper books. If I take into consideration I will read some new books I get or borrow something in the upcoming year I think it should be reasonable to say I can read

40 books

from this big pile of books.
I will prioritize this pile though as my main reading source this year. So there may be more gone when I have to make my Mount TBR 2020 pile but 40 is the minimum. I am curious what my cabinet will look like at the end of the year.

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