Thursday, January 7, 2016

Shaking Up The TBR + January TBR Outline


Today I would usually be talking about all the books I drew from my TBR jar and what I'm looking forward to reading. However, the last couple months I have been really finding my TBR jar kind of useless. That and my genre burnout (which I talk about tomorrow!) have left me in kind of a 'what do I read' daze.

Since October, I've been unable to really get fully involved with my selections. And it's not because I don't want to read the books, because last month I drew several books that I was super excited about reading but, once I actually had the paper in my hand, I kind of lost interest.

So, this month around, I'm doing something a bit different.

I won't randomly draw books from my TBR Jar. Instead, I have five categories that I'll divide my books between and each book will come from one of those categories. (Several of these categories fulfill my challenges I've set for myself this year. And you'll get to find out more about them next week!)

Categories are:
Next Book in a Series
Book I've Had on my TBR for Over a Year
A Retelling
A Big Book (over 500 if YA, 400 if adult)
A 2015 Release

What I've done is made several lists for each category, listing any of my books that fit it (there will be some overlap) and will choose one book off each list throughout the month to read.

Hopefully this will both give me some structure - so I'm not staring at my shelves/kindle, wondering what to read - and allow me enough freedom that I don't scrap it immediately - like I've been doing with my TBR Jar books lately.

I'd also like to get a couple books read from my Winter TBR (which, perhaps uncoincidentally, also fit several of my lists) read this month. Plus, I have a reread that I want to get to this month in preparation of the sequel's release next month.


This reread, and, honestly, I am super excited to reread it.

So, there's my plans for reading this month and a much more fluid TBR list.

Do you use a structured TBR list? I'd love to hear how you decide what book to read next if you have a lot that you want to read.

Comments (2)

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This sounds like an interesting new way of approaching your TBR. I sometimes wish for more structure when it comes to my TBR pile, staring at it mindlessly is difficult so you never know what to choose. This is a great way to tackle a variety of books by sticking them in a bunch of categories. I am too much of a mood reader to be able to do this I think, but I hope it works and I'll be interested to hear how it works for you.
1 reply · active 478 weeks ago
I have a terrible time looking at all my unread books and trying to decide what to read, too. It's like the more choices I have, the less I know what I want to read. I'm a mood reader too, but so far this has been really helpful. If I have the basic idea of the type of book I want to read - be it a long one, or continuing a series - I have about 60% fewer books to choose from. I'm also trying to mix it up, and not take two books from the same list one after the other.

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