MY TBR PILE

My TBR pile is threatening to take over my house. I have four large bookshelves of books waiting, begging, for me to read them. That’s just in my office. I have two other shelves in the breakfast room. I want to read them. Really. But there’s not enough time. I suppose I could get to them if I quit writing, quit housework and ordered takeout every night. I’d also have to give up my subscriptions to three newspapers, Newsweek, Vogue, Bazaar and Woman’s Day. Then I might, just might, get to all those books crying out to me. Back in the day, before my son was born (almost 29 years ago) and before I started writing, I read two or three books a week. Those were the days!

Four years ago, I was forced to clean out my bookcases because we were having our 70-year-old hardwood floors refinished and we had to clear the rooms of furniture. I had to empty the bookcases to move them. I gave away seven bags of books to Goodwill. Many were paperbacks and hardbacks I’d had since the Seventies. Many were books I’d never read—books I’d gotten free at conferences; books passed to me from friends. It broke my heart to give away books, but I had to be merciless. I’d run out of bookshelves. My bookcases were groaning, books were piled on the floor. The floor refinishing nudged me into doing something about my overabundance of books. I had to make room only for those books that meant a lot to me, and those books that I truly wanted to read.

There are some books that are so dear to me I’ll never part with them. Like my Judy Bolton mysteries which I started buying when I was a teen in the Fifties. My favorite book, “Green Darkness,” by Anya Seton, is a hardback that I’ve read so often, some of the pages are loose. There are my WW2 history books and my old Gothic romances. Of course, there are also many romances I’ve read through the years that occupy a special place in my heart, and on the shelf.

Now, here I am four years later, and the bookcases are full again. When I sit in my office at the computer, I swear I can feel books watching me, hoping I’ll pick them up. And that’s not even counting the flash drive filled with ebooks. And I’m planning to buy a Kindle soon. That means more books to go unread.

Seeing these unread books, and wanting badly to read them, causes me stress. A while ago, I came up with a method to get through my TBR pile. My method was similar to a Chinese menu, one from column A, one from column B, etc. In this case, I decided I’d read the first book on shelf number one, then go to shelf number 2, and so on. Then I’d take a book from my friends’ shelf. This is a separate shelf where I store books by my Wild Rose Press friends, like our own Marie-Nicole Ryan, whose latest, “Love Me If You Can,” I just received from Amazon. On my friends’ shelf are books by my Elements RWA and my Valley Forge RWA chapter mates, plus other writer friends I’ve made through the years. After reading a book from the friends’ shelf, I’d read one of my ebooks. Then I’d start the cycle all over again. This method worked swimmingly until the RITAs. I’m a first round RITA judge. In February, 2010, I got my package of eight RITA books to read in six weeks. I read them and got the scores in on time, but it totally threw me off my “method,” and I’ve never gotten back.

I spend a good deal of each day writing. In the evening I like to relax in front of the TV. I guess I could give up TV, but then I tend to fall asleep if I read anything after nine pm anyway.

As the saying goes, “So many books, so little time.”

What a quandary. How do you handle your TBR pile?