Taming the TBR thread

Book no. 2, Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng tried and rejected. It's a shame, because it's the sort of thing that is almost exactly right for me (alt-Victoriana, missionaries sent to the land of the Fae), but it's looking just too gothic & creepy for my taste.

@MamaNewtNewt that’s interesting. I think someone mentioned it recently in the 50 book threads too. I’m going to go first 10 pages and page 67 and will let you know how it goes!
Thankfully I had already sorted my collections which made life a little easier.

Good work @BaruFisher I've just started using the collections feature in the kindle app to group and organise my book so going to have a bit of an initial cull today.

I read the Roanoke Girls last year, or the year before and absolutely hated it so interested in what you make of it.

So I spent this morning organising my kindle unread list!

I wrote each book down in a category (in my case Crime and Thriller/ Fantasy and SciFi/ and Other - which is mostly Literary Fiction)

I gave each page a letter and then numbered each book on the page.
And then picked codes out at random to get a list (in my ratio of 3:2:1 on the categories above) which has given me a reading list for the week!
(Control freak? list maniac? Not me…)

I knew if I just picked them out myself, I’d still go with ones I half liked the idea of and ignore the rest.
What is telling, is the amount of titles I don’t recognise although my kindle is really old.

Up first tomorrow is The Roanoke Girls. Here’s hoping I offload or love a few.
Good luck everyone!

Not on the same scale as some of you, but I've got my 5 guilt-inducing gifts laid out in the sitting room, & I'm going to try one each day.
I've started today with Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson, and based on the first ten pages it's a definite yes, & I'm not sure why I've been ignoring it so long.

(Unfortunately it's appealing much more than Trespasses which I have from the library & really should read first as I'm sure there's others in the list waiting for it.)

Ah! That explains why some of my read books are coming up as unread! I have tried to mark them as read via the website, but no luck. Hoping that we can put our heads together and work this out :)

Hello my name is MamaNewtNewt and I'm 'addicted' to buying books.

I'm in. My TBR list is in the high hundreds, and might even be over a 1000! Given I read about 100 books a year and probably buy at least that many kindle books a year that list is only getting bigger. I also don't like to DNF books, I tend to start, and if I'm not feeling it, the book just goes back onto TBR Mountain.

I'll have a think about my target but looking forward to weeding out some of the rubbish from Mount NewtNewt!

Good to know Eine. It's a long book! Which I don't mind if it's a good read. I think I've had it for almost 30 years; the pages are yellowing at the edges.

Stone's Fall looks very readable too. I'm not sure why I've never got round to it. Might be something to do with getting distracted by recommendations on the 50 Bookers thread ..

I admire the sentiment but since War and Peace sat on my TBR pile for over 20 years before I read it and it was (predictably) incredible I refuse to get rid of anything unread because at some point I might want to read it. Happily get rid of books I've read and don't like though.

Yes, & Arcadia which didn't get great reviews but I rather enjoyed

Did Iain Pears write An Instance of the Fingerpost? That was a fabulous book.

Stone's Fall is good but also like all of Iain pears' books a bit of a project!

Oh I am purposefully ignoring anything unread on kindle. I did make a list of things I'd paid for by actual authors whose names I recognise and not read (pretty much all 99p) and will tackle that sometime but most are free dross!

I'll be in on this. I have not bought a new physical books for ages (thanks to Libby and library) but still have the sane 15 unread books on a shelf.

I need a daily commute to read more (rather than work from home!)

Might go for the page 67 idea. I was using my TBR pile as the ones I was going to read for the 52 books a year challenge but they aren't enthusing me when I look at them.

I can vouch for the Quincunx @highlandcoo - it is long though and a bit of a mission I read it on holiday maybe 10 years or so ago

Well, that was an eye-opener. I began on the first shelf of my third bookcase, at authors starting with P ( my fiction books are filed alphabetically - some people find that strange but it makes sense to me ) and there are eight there I haven't read:

The Quincunx Charles Palliser (enormous)
The Other Mrs Walker Mary Paulson Ellis
Wake Up Tim Pears
Stone's Fall Iain Pears
The Invisible Ones Stef Penney
Under a Pole Star Stef Penney (I liked her wolf one so bought these two)
The Day of the Storm Rosamund Pilcher
In the Memory of the Forest Charles T Powers

I'm going to start tomorrow and evaluate one each day. Really good idea biblio especially as I am constantly buying more from Wob as well as a huge wish-list on Amazon. It's getting a bit ridiculous.

I'm hesitating. Even the thought of getting rid of any books is making me clutch my pearls anxious. I must say the page 67 thing resonates with me - that might be the way I go.

I will give this a go - great idea! There are books on my shelves that I can't recall having bought, nor why I was interested in them in the first place, and they never seem to appeal when I'm scanning the shelves for something to read.

Occasonally I do get round to one and discover something truly excellent; The Shipping News a few years ago for example, which is now one of my favourite books.

Off for a preliminary look now ..

Thanks @BaruFisher for excellent problem solving. I'm going to give it a go. Need to read book club book next week though so may try starting this weekend. I also suspect I have some books on my Kindle that say "Unread" but are actually read from when I've switched from an older Kindle to my present one. My relationship with Kindle goes back at least 11 years to when my youngest was a baby before the days of back lights.

Placemarking- this is a great idea :)

Even though I don't have too much of a TBR, I'm going to join you for my half dozen gifted-so-feel-obliged books on my shelves :)