I finally finished my TBR. At this current moment, both my Goodreads and Storygraph Want to Read and To-Read Shelves list 0 books. This has been a long time coming. It was a few years ago that I decided to commit to and read every book on these shelves. I even went so far as to stop adding books to my TBR, so I could fully focus on this. Now, I have finally reached 0. I feel so proud of myself for finally achieving this. Throughout this process, I learned a lot about how I liked to read and I wanted to share different ways I will approach reading differently moving forward.

Setting a Maximum Amount of Books on my TBR

I will never, ever, have hundreds of books on my TBR. This stressed me out and made reading more of a chore than I wanted it to be. On top of that, it would take me years to finish my TBR and I want a TBR that could be managed or completed in one calendar year. When I think about what this magical number could be, my thought was twelve. If I were to read one physical book every month, I’d finish my TBR, so that’s why I think this number makes sense.

Re-Reading Books

Why bother reading a book if I wouldn’t want to re-read it in the future? My rule of thumb for a re-read is if it’s been at least five years since I first read the book, or if I pick up the book and don’t remember anything about it. I have a ton of books I love on my bookshelves that I’d like to pull off and re-read at some point. I want to keep prioritizing this as I don’t want to be a reader who only reads books once. One thing I love about Storygraph is there’s a notes section where you can type notes about a book as you read. I plan on utilizing that more with books I’m re-reading. I believe Goodreads has this too, but I never used it and I like the way Storygraph has this laid out.

Adding Comics to my TBR

I will keep this one short since I already wrote about my comics reading slump. I’m going to create a comics version of my Book Series Tracker and start consolidating which comic series I want to complete. I want to do a graphic novel cleanout and donate anything I don’t see myself re-reading again. On top of that, I want to create a list of all the graphic novels I need to purchase in order to finish that series. When I go comic shopping, I’d always forget which volume I need, so I want to have this organized, so my comic book store trips are more productive. I want to create this Comic Series Tracker in the next few weeks.

Logging Audiobooks with Libby, not through Goodreads or Storygraph

I used to track audiobooks on both my Goodreads and Storygraph shelves. I will no longer be doing this. The reason for this is that most of the time, the audiobooks I want to listen to are on a several month wait before I can listen to them. I feel they take up valuable space on my TBR, especially because it’s out of my control as to when I can finally listen to them. I figured out in Libby that you can create tags, so I created a TBR tag where I have been marking which audiobooks I want to listen to. This keeps me organized without clogging my physical TBR with audiobooks I won’t be able to listen to for at least three months or more.

Finishing More Series, BUT, discontinuing a series if I no longer enjoy it

Since creating my Book Series Tracker, I have completed at least five book series I was in the middle of. I’m on track to finish two more book series by the end of the year. While my book series tracker has kept me organized, I want to normalize discontinuing series that no longer bring me joy. If I’m not on the edge of my seat, counting down the days until I can read the next book in a series, it’s time to move on to something else.

As a reward for finishing my TBR, I decided that I won’t add any books to my Goodreads Want to Read shelf or my Storygraph To-Read pile. I am going to let myself mood read instead. Mood reading is what it sounds like, picking up books I’m in the mood to read instead of sticking to a set schedule of what I will be reading every month. I’m going to mood read for the rest of the year and then come back in 2027 with a full pile of books on my TBR.