My TBR pile is getting slightly (a lot) out of hand. I’m a slow reader and i enjoy buying books, so this is an awful combination. I’m also the type of person that likes to read the most popular thing at the moment, meaning a lot of books get left on my shelf for a few years at a time untouched. They pile up and i end up with a lot of books i forget about, or never think to read next. However i spend a lot of my time wondering what to read while staring at my ridiculously full shelves. It’s an endless cycle i’m telling you. That’s why i created myself a TBR jar.
Now i know a lot of people already have TBR jars, but this was a new thing to me. For years i’ve just pulled off my shelf what i fancied reading at the time, leaving behind a lot of books. Charlotte over at Wonderfully Bookish made herself a TBR jar quite some time ago now, with all the books left on her shelf that were unread. Whenever she had some spare time to read a book, she’d pick one from her TBR jar and read that. I’ve somewhat stolen her idea.
I cut up a lot of coloured pieces of paper and wrote the names of my books on them to put in the jar. However i only wrote the names of the books that have been on my shelf for a long time and i’ve forgotten about. Ones that i know i’ll never pick up off my own back, ones that i have very little interest in reading anymore but cannot seem to throw away. These are the names i put in to the jar.
Once the jar is nearly empty (in quite some time i imagine, there’s about 100 books in there already!) i will fill it back up with another lot of books that i have added to the shelves or missed off this time. My goal by the end of 2017 is to have a shelf i am proud of, something that reflects me as a reader (but more on this to come at another point).
So far, i’ve picked out about five or six from my TBR jar, which ended up being books i absolutely loved but definitely wouldn’t have picked up for quite some time had i not taken them from the jar. These included The Art Of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson and The Drowning of Arthur Braxton by Caroline Smailes.
I’m pretty excited about the prospect of more books coming from my TBR jar, and it looks quite nice against my books on the shelf! If you’re struggling getting through your TBR piles or want some inspiration to read, then i really do advice getting yourself a TBR jar and working towards the goals you’ve set for yourself! It’s already working for me.
The Little Contemporary Corner 