Owned-Unread books (Sometimes I think I must stop the madness!)

[Mary]

I have about 900 books. The ones I am keeping I intend to read. I usually get rid of them after I've read them, unless they are a special favorite or part of a set or signed.

[[deleted user]]

My name is T S Davis, and I have a book problem...

I recently had someone suggest to me that a 12 step program may be the answer to my compulsion. Seriously. But seeing as my sense of decorating revolves around where to put my books, (countless of which are as of this moment neglectfully unread) and the fact that I think that makes me saner than most, I think I'll stick with it.

What are chances of a book uprising? An unread book militia, plotting against me as I sleep? Uh - oh

[Alondra]

T S wrote, "My name is T S Davis, and I have a book problem..."

There are no 12-step programs; maybe you should create one called Bibliophiles Anonymous. Unread books must be checked at the door, Amazon membership must be discarded and Barnes & Nobles savings cards shredded...

I couldn't do it, though. I am really sick!!

[Neko]

My TBR on here and my TBR in real life are sorta the same and sorta not.

I'm trying really hard not to list books on my TBR until I actually own them. It's just so I can keep a better controll over it. Doesn't always work and I do go through the list on here culling it every so often.

I've gotten pretty good at not buying books reccently which is good for my wallet and my sainty since I'm not a super quick reader..lol

[Shellie]

Ha Ha Ha TS I know exactly how you feel. I too am creating a little library of my own, and have to buy more shelving and arrange furniture around them. It's crazy right? I have all these books I own, and yet when I want something to read I run to the library. I rationalize it this way; I know I'm going to read the library book faster, and in fact finish it because I have to turn it in. I keep an open-still-reading-it book at my bed-side, and chair-side, and car-side, and hand-bag-side and table-side, and (even yes) bathroom-side for ever and ever it feels like. So yes I have unread books literally all over my house I even have a pile under one of the corners of my newly broken bed-frame right now, course its mostly ones I've already read or know I really really won't read, probably. I doubt I'll live long enough to read them all. I don't even have cable in my house right now, I deal with that stupid converter box just to keep more open reading time and still I will leave a huge burden of book donating for my children to do when I move into that big library in the sky.
And I'm not going to change or do anything about it! I love it and you should too. Go out and buy a book today to celebrate your life-long love and commitment to them. Have they ever let you down?

[Jay]

I have over 200 unread books. And I keep buying. Can't pass up a good deal on a book that I think I'll like. But that's ok. There are worse addictions or habits. And since I keep my books, I have something to show for it.

[Joy]

I have about 300, give or take, and I keep buying and borrowing from the library, and grabbing the freebies for my Kindle. I guess it could be worse, I could be a helpless shoe buyin gaddict, which would be a much more expensive habit, at least my habit is/can be fairly cheap (used/borrowed/freebie/swap books). My goal is to be able to clear off at least one of the 6 shelves on my TBR bookcase, but that hasn't happened yet! I buy more than I read, usually!

[Shannon]

Joy wrote: "I have about 300, give or take, and I keep buying and borrowing from the library, and grabbing the freebies for my Kindle. I guess it could be worse, I could be a helpless shoe buyin gaddict, which..."

Is that 6 per year? OMG I won't even dare counting all the kindle freebies I seem to be collecting. And with the Library and Netgalley my to-read list is never ending. 8-)

[Jeanine]

Books....it's a serious addiction. I justifying it by saying hubby golfs. I buy books. I try not to pay full price. I have never counted them. I am sure there are a couple hundred laying around the house and another 200 between kindle and ibooks. The kindle and ibooks are 99% free books or sample books.

Where does the madness end?

[Shannon]

OK, my list is up to 596. I'm going to try not to buy anything in November, however this may just lead to splurging in December.... we shall see.

P.S. "Not buying" does not equal not trading so I'm still likely to rack up a few new ones but at least that is contingent on me reading something I already have sitting around.

[Faye]

Oh my goodness, I could not believe my luck today. I went to a local fete, which always has good books. I had a wow of a time for $10 I got 20 books, I just don't know which I should read first.

[Huw]

TBRs are the bane of my existence. They usually come from a set, of which I want to read one but cannot resist the cost saving. I cannot throw a book away (let alone lend one, at least without a grief reaction) so my shelves are stuffed with books that i have bought, all with the best intentions. I once went round my "library" with 100 sticky red spots to mark the ones I had yet to read. I gave up when I ran out of spots! If the mood is right I know they are there and that justifies the possession. An unread book has an unrealised potential which is almost mystical.

[Tee27]

Huw wrote: "TBRs are the bane of my existence. They usually come from a set, of which I want to read one but cannot resist the cost saving. I cannot throw a book away (let alone lend one, at least without a ..."
"An unread book has an unrealised potential which is almost mystical." Wow, well put!

[Huw]

Tee27 wrote: "Huw wrote: "TBRs are the bane of my existence. They usually come from a set, of which I want to read one but cannot resist the cost saving. I cannot throw a book away (let alone lend one, at leas..."
Why, thank you,

[sonya]

I have 300+ unread books and I asked my wife to remind me not to buy anymore until my library of tbr is 10.

[sonya]

if I'd kept all my books, I'd have 1000+

[sonya]

Book Freak of Nature

by Sonya Van Etten



Book obsessed? Not me! To date I only own 359 books. Compared to some, with 2, 000 books in their personal libraries...I'm at the tip of the iceberg. One fellow has a book issue, with 35,000 books in his collection! I'm not writing this to compare how many books I have to another person.
My passion for books and reading began when I was a child. I had a lot of the Little Golden books on a bookcase in my room. I knew that books took me into another world even then, though I did not think about it often. Lots of times I just read to read. I did not analyze my life or take a “book inventory”. I was six years old! My favorite stories were “The Pokey Little Puppy”, “Animals” (an encyclepedia for children about the wild), and “Cinderella”.
As I grew up, my book tastes changed. At a book fair in fifth grade, I picked up my first scary book. I can see the cover in my mind but have since forgotten the title. Haha! Pity they did not sell Stephen King, whose writing entered my life two years later!
I always had my nose in a book and my parents complained.
“Did you vacuum?”
“No, I forgot.”
Truth was, I read a book for hours on end daily. I got in trouble for forgetting my chores. Often, an hour beefore my father got home, I rushed to get dishes put away, dog fed, and vacuuming done!
Later in life, I could not part with any of my books. I did not have a book case. The novels were stacked on the floor in my tiny bedroom. If a fire had started, I would not be here. My parents were at a loss because I kept bringing the books home. My bedroom was a firehazard and a tripping zone due to my mobility issues. It was a prison.
My father said, one day, “Sonya, we know you love books, but you have to stop. Get a storage unit for the books.” I was seventeen and earning a paycheck. Wise advice but no way was I doing it!
If I did not have my books around me, I would go into a full-blown panic attack. I needed help from a counselor to deal with the anxiety, but I was in deep denial. My dysfunctional childhood lead to the anxiety and later depression; I had been raped as a child. Books consoled me, cradled me in ways my parents could not.
When I was eighteen I found a new way to spend money, the all-mighty credit card. My first one had a limit of $500.00. At first I would buy one book then pay it all, then three more and pay that off. Months later, I got approved for a second card with a $600.00 limit and a third for a limit of $300.00. I mxed out all the cards on novels, not clothes or shoes, as some teens do. Could I pay them all off? No! I decided to forget paying them when my minimum balance wass more than I made at work. I got one card with a new limit from $300.00 to $600.00. It did not help! Matters got way worse, with additional interest and late fees!
That pattern of hiding in a book continued into my adulthood. In my twenties, I quit working for a life on disability. A new symptom of anxiety appeared, writing inventory lists of all my books. No matter how broke I got, I had my books. I did not care if I ate.
Manchester Public Library, a town in which I was homeless many times, lets patrons borrow as many paperbacks as you want, a help to us book addicts.

[[deleted user]]

I will not list a book as to be read unless I have won it on GR, only when I have won it. I usually have about ten books in a different room that I haven't read yet but I won't list them until I read them. I do reread also.

[Aoibhínn]

I have 186 in my TBR list and that number is going to go up because I just got a giftcard for Amazon so I probably buy more books with that.

[Casseroll]

So many can be stored on computers and ebook devices...have no idea how many i have.

[Lára]

I know! Half of the books I own are unread and I have so much that I had to empty the closet (and throw some clothes) to store some. I have books on the floor, radiator, every available table and even on the bed but I can´t stop buying more. I´ve tried

I just love buying and owning books (not ebooks), reading is never a first thing on my mind here. I need a therapy

[Mohd]

I used to read what i bought. Every single one of them. But now ever since big bad wolf came to malaysia, i could say like half of my collections i havent turn a page yet.lol.

Plus being an adult with fulltime job and plus many other hobbies, i found it hard to find time to sitdown and enjoy a book unless its a very very good one like DaVinci Code or Steve Jobs bio.

[Sarah]

Oh god! Don't know how you guys keep your sanity with hundreds of TBR books.

I'm trying to keep my TBR below 20. I'm at 19 now. I'm not allowing myself to buy anymore till I read some of these books.

I want to keep the TBR pile below 20, so if I want a new book, I have to read one that I have already.

This is to stop myself getting overwhelmed at the thought of reading them and getting myself even more confused on what to read next.

I'm also not allowing myself to download free ebooks either for the next few months.

[Karen M]

I don't even count books on my Kindle because I know darn well I'll never read them all (over a thousand I think) so I only count books sitting on the shelf. So, holding at 204, I can't seem to get below 200. I was close but then I was offered some books and well, you know how that goes. :)

[Ashley]

I don't even know how many books I have. I have boxes under my bed, in my closet, all over my house. I have a room dedicated just to books and it's so full I have no more room to put books. My TBR is definitely smaller than the books I own, sometimes I just forget to put them on my shelves.

[Louise]

I was so happy when the year began, that my "read" shelf here on Goodreads was larger than my "to-read" shelf (which for me is unread books that I presently own).
But now I've bought 98 new books and only read around 36 of owned books - so it's even!

[Karen M]

No longer holding at 204. Up to 212 and climbing!

[Jacob]

Currently at 118 TBR - but that includes both books put aside for much later and my wish list. Not that bad at all as my library grows at a pace of 2 m per year.

[Ashley Marie]

I mainly buy from the used shop where I volunteer on weekends; $2 hardbacks and $1 paperbacks (and every once in awhile a half-price sale), can't beat that. And thankfully I only have a handful of ebooks, since I mostly prefer physical copies. At the moment I own roughly 715 books and of those 365 are TBR.

[sonya]

I've pared down quite a bit. One hundred books now

[Alan]

Its not bad - as explained here:

"...a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary."

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03...

I switched from buying physical books to ebooks as my real-estate started to run out (I live in London, UK, where shelf real estate is expensive). It has a major advantage as many classic literature is out of copyright and available for free. It also makes it much easier to organise your books, and track the ones you've read and not etc.

Having big library (some 5,000 ebooks, not as many as Eco's 30,000 yet alas, but one day!) It also means I can follow my curiosity as I come to the end of one book and look for another that I already have, I can be lead by where my interests and intellectual investigations are taking me (whether fictional or non-functional). I read a hell of a lot anyway, and I feel ZERO guilt about this habit of acquiring more books (I don't spend more than I can afford, and I shop around so that Amazon don't get everything).

[ASP]

Yeeesss I feel as if I was entering a room full of good friends waiting for me... people having the same kind of madness, such a sweet madness.
I think I have nearly 500 unread books waiting for me, ahh... "when I think of all the books that I still have to read, I have the certainty of being happy".
And most of you understand me! La vie est belle!

[Faye]

You are not alone, after promising I would not buy anymore books, as I have so many too read (100's) I went to a secondhand shop and they had a sale! Oops I purchased some books.

[Dilek]

I like to buy new editions with beautiful covers from the bookshops (as long as they have interesting subjects, fiction or non-fiction). Not a big fan of used books, that may be because of my allergies. But if I come across the name of an out of print book that sounds interesting, I certainly hunt it everywhere I go. Of course my unread books are much more than the read ones, and with my current reading speed it is not possible to read them all in any time soon. I never thought of counting my books though, they are stacked everywhere in my house and when I need to move to a new appartment first thing I think about where to put my bookshelves there. Sometimes I stop buying books, sometimes for weeks. But then the urge overcomes me again! I don't think I will ever stop :)

[Tammy]

Surprisingly I only have 6 books stacked to be read but the friends of library sale is this month and that number will rise to the double digits.

[ASP]

As I wrote in this thread I must have something like 500 TBR books (don't tell anyone, they would understand how crazy I am).
And these days I am far too busy to read more than a few pages at night. And what do I do? I nearly clicked on the "buy" button near my "shopping basket" of a well-known company's website, which would have meant more (5) books on my bookshelf (well with me they hang on for a few days on a table in the living room, I have to "see" them properly before I put them on the shelf)... and the simple reason being that I had lunch with a few friends/colleagues and 2 of them just hinted at the books they are reading. And this is enough for me to trigger this kind of "Pavlov's reaction"!!
But this time I have tried to come here and tell you this, may be it is the first step of the cure?

[Shannon]

I'm pretty sure there is no cure and most of us like being "ill". ;-)

I've tried to make a deal with myself about buying books I'm only buying things on sale with the exception of my Must Read!!! authors. I've also been trying to supplement with library books. My library lets you check out 30 items at a time. Guess how many I currently have checked out? Yep, 30. I am reading 3 of them but there just aren't enough hours in a day.