How Many Books Are Currently On Your Want-To-Read GR Shelf? (7/25/21)

[Marc]

How many books do you have on your GR "Want to Read" shelf? What does this number represent or how do you use this shelf (Is it comprehensive, focussed, aspirational, delusional... )?

[Bill]

32. I try to keep it down to about 30. (Yes, I know many of my friends have way larger to-read shelves.)

But I have trouble keeping track of so many to-read books. So I keep a smaller asap-to-read shelf (9 books today!) This is reserved for books I've bought, on order, checked out/on hold at the library, or otherwise easily available.

[Robert]

My 'want to read' shelf serves as my TBR stack. In other words, I already have the books.

As it stands there are 409 but the way I work with reading is that I have three physical shelving units with unread books - when I finish a unit, I transport the want to read books into the currently reading shelf. My currently reading shelf stands at 29 books so I'll be finishing it off by January (hopefully) and that 409 will become 200

The reason why I do this is so books do not stay a long time on my shelves. I started this system two years ago and I can say that there is only one unread book which dates back to the years 2010 - 2017.

[Nadine in California]

I use my 'Want to Read' shelf as a virtual bookstore, not a literal TBR shelf. I add any book that sounds interesting, so I've got 2352 on that shelf, as of today. Since I'm an impulse reader, I add lots of shelf tags to each book so I can go to whichever shelf matches my mood and browse for a book. (That process is often up-ended by some shiny new book though.) I also periodically go through my shelves and delete books that no longer sound so interesting. I have a shelf called "top of the pile" for books that sound SO good I want them to rise to the surface. Strangely, I often forget to look at that shelf, and when I do many of them no longer seem so interesting ;)

[Hugh]

0. I don't use it - all of my to-read books are on custom exclusive shelves, because I distinguish between owned, ordered, borrowed and not owned. Only the last of those is out of control, and I have almost stopped adding to it.

[Luke]

I don't use the standard WtR shelf anymore because of how deeply GRAmazon ad mechanics are sunk into it, but my substitute currently has 1731 books. All that's broken down into a number of shelf categories that allow me to have a critically evaluative sense of both my physical library and my as of yet to be acquired library at all times. I'll sometimes prune books if I come across an indication that reading them would be a waste of time, but that doesn't happen very often.

[Lark]

66. Mostly I "shelve" books there that I'm intrigued about for some reason and that I won't obviously hear about again from friends or in the press, so I make a note of them.

[Marc]

I pretty much add any book that sounds interesting that I haven't read to the Want-To-Read shelf on GR. It's grown delusionally big over the years (2,222 books) but I'm holding out for either reincarnation or medical science to allow me the reading lifespan I need. My owned-but-unread shelf is more my TBR shelf. I have a "high priority" shelf for the books I'd like to get to within the next few months and a "to order" shelf for books I'd like to acquire or borrow soon. (I could have just posted Nadine's response as my own as I was shaking my head identifying with just about the whole thing!) One day I might pair it down to something more reasonable... Maybe.

[Whitney]

A "me too" for being largely like Nadine's method, The description of the TBR shelf as a virtual bookstore is perfect. If I see a book mentioned and think it sounds interesting, then I find it's already in my TBR, I usually give it a bit of a bump. And since I only get to a fraction of group reads, a book being selected that's already there may get priority.

My version of Nadine's "top of the pile" and Marc's "high priority" shelves is called "Top Shelf", and I've vowed to keep it under 100 books. If I was less lazy, I would go through and add more shelf tags as well.

[Tracy]

None on GR. I have a wishlist on Amazon. I add the kindle book, watch the prices, and have quicker access on my phone when I’m in a book store. I like to keep GR for what I’ve read and am currently reading.

My Amazon list has about 50 books right now, but that’s because the Booker is coming up. I’ll remove some once the long list is announced.

Now, the number of books I own waiting to be read (aka Mt. TBR?)… i don’t want to talk about it.

[Luke]

Marc wrote: "I pretty much add any book that sounds interesting that I haven't read to the Want-To-Read shelf on GR. It's grown delusionally big over the years (2,222 books) but I'm holding out for either reinc..."

If I kept at my current reading rate for the rest of my days and lived the average lifespan of someone like me, I'd need another five to six thousand books to keep me occupied. In a way, then, my TBR is almost respectably minimalistic.

[Bill]

You guys must have much bigger houses than I do. There's no way I can squeeze in a shelf unit of a couple hundred unread books in my little apartment.

[Nadine in California]

Tracy wrote: "None on GR. I have a wishlist on Amazon. I add the kindle book, watch the prices, and have quicker access on my phone when I’m in a book store."

I always want to check my GR shelves when I'm in a bookstore, but the GR app on my phone fails me every time - loading and loading and loading.....and timing out.

[Carol]

Bill wrote: "You guys must have much bigger houses than I do. There's no way I can squeeze in a shelf unit of a couple hundred unread books in my little apartment."

It doesn’t have anything to do with owning copies. I have over 4000 books identified as “want to read.” I want to read them; that’s all there is to it, some I own; most I do not. Shelving then by country, themes, gender of author, award noms or prizes won, nonfiction or fiction, classics vs modern, books I own, kindle or physical, makes nominating for group reads, shopping (avoiding purchasing duplicates) , and selecting my next read far more efficient. Just one perspective.

[Whitney]

My TBR is mostly just virtual as well. I think it's actually helped prevent me from buying a lot of books. In the pre-digital age, I would keep track of books I'd heard about so I could pick them up used if I every found them; predictably, many went unread for years. Now, I just keep them in the database.

[Bretnie]

My "Want to Read" section of goodreads is smaller than I thought it would be - 152 and I use it in the same way a few others do, add things that sound interesting or that others recommend so that when I'm browsing the used book store or library I can remind myself what I wanted to read.

I love hearing how others use it! I like the idea of categories. Sometimes I can't remember why I added a book, so maybe if I make tags I can flag why I'm adding it.

Bill, I just counted and have 32 unread books on my "real" bookshelf, which I aspire to make smaller and larger. I'd love to let go of more books I've already read to make room for unread books, but it's hard...

[Bill]

Bretnie wrote: "Bill, I just counted and have 32 unread books on my "real" bookshelf, which I aspire to make smaller and larger."

Ok, I'll admit I actually have quite a few unread/unfinished books lying around the house, that are not on my GR to-read shelf. But I feel terrible when I happen to look at those piles.

Most of them are intimidating technical books, like Fletcher and Rossing's 700+ page classic The Physics of Musical Instruments. I hope I can be excused for not having found the energy so far to plough through that (and some other similar monsters).

[Whitney]

I have hundreds of physical copied of unread books as well as the ridiculous GR TBR, mostly dating from pre-ebook days. I never understood the question "have you read all of these?" that so many people ask when they see a large library. Why would someone not want a selection of books to choose from that they haven't read yet?

[Marc]

Whitney wrote: "Why would someone not want a selection of books to choose from that they haven't read yet?"
I think if most of us thought of our unread piles/shelves of books as a library of sorts, we would probably feel less guilty about it. At the time of purchase/acquisition, I tend to think (or, want to believe) I'm going to read whatever book it is relatively soon. I don't want to have read ALL of my unread books, but I'd like that number to be much lower (like, under 50, maybe).

I try to view the GR shelves as a sort of living thing... like a little mini-reading ecosystem where books are arriving, departing, settling in different places until relocating or being forced out into new territories.

Timing/reader's mood has come up in other threads and I think this has a big impact on what gets added to the TBR and what you're ready to take on. Like many of you have experienced, you sometimes come across a book that seemed absolutely must-have at the time you picked it up and now you don't even remember why. GR has definitely made my shelves (real and virtual) swell unmanageably, but it's also introduced me to a lot of wonderful books and readers.

[Hugh]

My five to read custom shelves add up to 161, of which 138 are in to-read-not-owned - at least half of those have been there for 4 years or more and most of the books I read bypass it. Owned is down to 20 but some of those are long ones.

[Luke]

My personal, on hand physical library has been a veritable Ship of Theseus for so long due to cheap buying/simple selling habits that I'd probably have a hard time dealing with anything that involved books actually sticking around in any sort of permanent fashion. Sure, I hope to one day own gorgeous editions of all my absolute favorites and a good portion of my five starred works, which would dramatically reduce the size of my physical collection. For now, though, I'm still in the process of sifting through masses of reading material and discovering what those lauded works are for me, and I don't mind selling off those gems, whose physical forms are often in not too great a shape anyway, so long as I have a record of such that I can use when the time (and living situation) is right.

[Bretnie]

Whitney wrote: "I never understood the question "have you read all of these?"

Ha, I think most people ask that question as a form of judgment - that we have a big shelf of unread books that we're just using to make ourselves look well-read. I mean, some people definitely have those kinds of shelves, but not most of us!

I love having a wide variety of things to select from when I'm ready to pick up a new book. And I use my physical bookshelf as my "curated list" of things I REALLY want to read, and my GR bookshelf of the things I'd like to read but admit I might not get to.

[Ellen]

I have thousands. I've broken my TBR shelves into just interested, wanting to read, to be read soon, and to be read next. I also have it broken down by category (to be read poetry, mystery, socio-political, spiritual, etc.).

And then I often end u reading things that are not on any of my lists at all!

[Jennifer]

I am in full delusional mode. No idea how many, but I know that I will never read them all and I am ok with it. But its handy when I am in a book store, you know, so I don't make impulse purchases. Like
Nightwing. I only purchased this because my parents took us to see the movie way back in the day, at the drive in no less.