Taming the TBR thread

[bibliomania]

Some of us in the 50 book thread are ruefully contemplating the piles of books we mean to read someday, but have never quite got round to. This is a proposal for a one-week experiment in pruning the pile:

• It can apply to books in any form (physical, e-books, audio)
• You choose seven books: each day during week, read the first 10 pages of one of them (and/or page 67 - a tip from the ever-wise PepeLePew on the 50 book thread) or equivalent, adjusting for format. If you're intrigued and keen to continue, keep the book. If you're not, then you let it go. Donate to charity, delete from your Kindle, sell online.
• It doesn't have to be 7 - set yourself whatever goal works for you.

Anyone fancy a go, starting from this coming Monday, 20th March?

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 :)

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.)

Identifying a definite "Yes, I'll read this" also counts as a win, Sadik!

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!

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.

@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.

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.

Good start, Baru and Sadik!. I've picked out 7 physical books which take up the best part of a foot of space, and will see how many I can set free by Sunday.

Book 1 The Roanoke Girls- read until the end of the first chapter- pg12- then read page 67. At no point does the pov character appear to have any emotions. Trying to be Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, reads more like something by Virginia Andrews. Permanent delete.

Book 2 Hermit by S R White
Aussie crime (which I normally like). Nothing that grabbed my attention in the crime and two paragraphs in a row which had ‘the’ as the first word of every sentence. Permanent delete.

I know I’m being harsh here but I need to clear the rubbish so I have more time to read good stuff. Will try to squeeze one more in today, then go to SF/F tomorrow.

Good luck biblio. I wonder is it harder or easier to get rid of physical vs ebook. Is anyone doing both?

I am only bothering with physical books as there is an upside to giving them away ;clear space for me and money for a charity)

Digital books don't have much upside to removing them for me. They don't really bother me being unread -I can grab any to read on my phone if ever bored.

I'm in! Like Sadik, I have a few books that I have been given or lent that I feel obliged to read. If I get on well, I think I also have some books that were pushed on me at a charity book stall that I didn't really want to buy. Aiming for one book a day reading pages 1-10 and page 67...thanks bibliomania for getting the ball rolling.

Book No1, The King's Painter by Franny Moyle - the life and work of Hans Holbein. Decent introduction and first 10 pages, but page 67 was an example of what I found off-putting when I tried this book a while back - so little is known about Holbein that that author has to pad it out with details about religious and cultural change in 16c Switzerland and Germany, in which I have no interest at all. Undecided. I'm finding the style a bit pedestrian, as well.

Book 3 Dark Water - Caro Ramsay- tartan noir- interesting beginning and good writing. Also I’m a sucker for a Scottish detective. I kept this one to read later.

So the first book I looked at was The Quincunx by Charles Palliser.

Wow. It's so Dickensian! The first short chapter reminded me of Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend and the second of David Copperfield. This has to be intentional; the similarities are so marked.

I like Dickens and Victorian style novels in general, so I'll be hanging on to this one and waiting for a moment when a 1200 page novel to get immersed in is just what I need.

My first is The Magus by John Fowles, It was a gift and I've had it 20 years. I must have been put off by the print and the length. Teeny tiny and 656 pages. Liked the first page and page 67. It's gone back on the shelf with the proviso it has to go at Christmas if I don't read it before then.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit when I was a teenager it was really fashionable to read The Magus. I think it was pretty innovative at the time but I suspect I might find it a bit pretentious now. So I'll be interested to hear what you think of it.

Book 1 is Empires and Barbarians, by Peter Heather, a history of Europe from 1BC to 1000BC, give or take. I'm mildly interested, but it's not going to be read any time soon and it may as well go to a better home instead of sitting reproachfully on my shelf.

I've decided to do one fiction and one non-fiction a day.

Book 1 (Non-Fiction): Greenlight by Matthew McConaughey. I picked this as I thought it would either be really interesting or a bit wandering and pretentious. So far, so interesting so it's a KEEP.

Book 1 (Fiction): Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny. I'm not keen on romances with big age gaps (the female main character is 26 and the male is early 40s in this one) plus I felt like the teacher character was a bit mocking about the children. I'm not feeling it and life is too short, it's a CHUCK.

@BaruFisher you are not missing anything with The Roanoke Girls I didn't want to say until you'd made up your own mind, but it is one of the worst things I have ever read, and is frankly just nasty and a bit disturbing.

@MamaNewtNewt

Greenlights does turn out to be pretty pretentious in the long run. I did it as audio about 2 years ago

Today's book is another chuck - Light by M John Harrison. Dicklit sci-fi, life is too short.

I wrapped 13 books from my TBR hoard in brown paper. I pick 1 a month, give it 50 pages. So far I have picked 3 and read them all. All of them have been passed over when i've previously been choosing my next read.

What a great idea Vitty’s

I agree with Eine about Greenlights - it starts out well but becomes pretentious old tosh as it goes along.

Today was fantasy/ science fiction
Book 4- Written by Ben Galley - elves, dragons, purple prose- permanent delete
Book 5- The Copper Promise by Jen Williams- first scene caught my attention- nice writing style- second chapter had a different but also enjoyable pov. Kept to read later.
Book 6- Wild Cards edited by George Rr Martin- I know I bought this years ago thinking it was by George RR Martin but it’s a collection of short stories - all sci-fi and alien related. I tried the start of two stories- one was okay, the other meh. I have so many things I want to read, I decided to delete.

I know these books don’t take up space as such, as they’re all on my kindle, but they irritate me- sitting there saying ‘you could read me instead of buying a new book’. This way I can make sure I only read things I really want to. I’m so grateful to biblio for setting this up. I think I will do one week a month of this until I’ve been through my whole kindle. (Several years away…)

Thanks Baru - I'm now wondering if I could do a Marie Kondo and sell people books about how to get rid of their books.