Hit 500 books on my shelf and had a mini panic attack

I counted last weekend while reorganizing and I'm sitting at exactly 500 volumes on two Billy shelves. That number surprised me because I always thought I was a casual reader, but apparently not. The weird part is that 300 of them are still unread, so I finally made a rule about borrowing before buying. How do you folks keep your TBR pile from eating the whole room?

2 comments

2 Comments

drew_west20d ago

I hit 450 last year and same thing, 280 unread, so I started doing a "one in, one out" rule with a box under my bed for the overflow, and it actually kept things sane. Borrowing is the move, plus the library guilt keeps me reading faster than owning ever did.

drew79120d ago

My rule is if I haven't cracked a book open within six months of buying it, it goes to the used bookstore down the street. I got 40 bucks in store credit last time and used it to buy a couple of things I actually wanted to read right then. The other thing that saved me is keeping a spreadsheet on my phone, just title and date bought, so I can see at a glance what's actually been sitting there. Borrowing from the library is great but I also swap with buddies at work, we do a little book trading bag every couple months. It's not perfect but my shelf finally stopped growing faster than I can read.