Shrinking My TBR

So…

I’m supposed to be shrinking my TBR. In multiple posts last year, I said I wanted to get my TBR down to under 100 books by the beginning of 2023. And I was successful! I managed to get my physical TBR down to 89 books starting January 1st. I expanded that in my Bookish Goals post and decided I wanted to get my TBR down to 60 books by the beginning of 2024.

Currently, that isn’t looking like it’s going to happen.

I know it’s still early in the year. We’re not even halfway through, so if I get my butt in gear, I might be able to manage it. But if I have any hope of that, I will have to hold myself accountable.

My TBR has gone back up to over 100. Actually, as I write this, it’s at 98, but I expect more books I’ve ordered are going to come in soon. So it’ll be back at 100 soon enough, which isn’t great. I need to get it back to 89 then and shrink it even further.

And that means I need to actually be reading what I own and buying fewer books.

The only reason I managed to get my TBR so low last year was by getting audiobooks of the vast majority of books I was reading. Now, I can’t really do that, as listening to most of the books I own is actually making me feel crappy too. I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting money on a physical book when I can borrow the audiobook from the library or Scribd instead. So I need to start physically reading my books too.

Unfortunately, this process of shrinking my TBR might be a little slower. But I need to give it a try.

So this April, I’m trying to read 30 books in 30 days. This will include manga for once, as it’s the only way I’ll achieve this. But ideally, I want to get as many smaller or faster books off of my TBR as possible. This includes the majority of middlegrade I have, a few romance and thrillers, and some light novels I’d love to read.

I obviously don’t want to read all my short books, as I want to leave some to pick up between thicker reads as the year goes on. But it’ll help me shrink my TBR just a little more.

Ideally, I want to end April with 89 books or less on my physical TBR. That should be possible and will put me back where I was at the beginning of the year. It should keep shrinking if I keep reading my physical TBR and don’t buy too many books.

I’ll let you guys know in my April Reading Recap if I manage this, but fingers crossed, I can actually start making some progress.