Reading

[cornerofmadness]

So I'm already two books into the Popsugar challenge because I decided that this year close enough isn't just for horseshoes and grenades. the challenge started feeling constrictive last year but I pulled 20 out of 50 off my shelves in under an hour that matched the prompts and if that's all I get of it this year, that's fine too. One of them barely fits the prompt but close enough. As is the one I'm working o n now

BUT I have a question for you all. The theme this year for the advanced challenge (10 books there) is your TBR pile. I am shocked at how many people lost their mind about that. How dare they assume I have a TBR pile? I'm like if you're willing to do a challenge that involves reading 50 books, do you REALLY not have a TBR pile.

So my friends, do YOU have a TBR pile? Mine costs me 40$/month, well in part. (my decorations are out there too)

I said this on twitter the other day. I can easily DNF library books but when I put out money for it, I can't DNF. I guess it's because I paid for it. I'm working on one right now if it wasn't for the challenge, if it wasn't for the money I'd probably have tossed it but in this cozy the would be sleuth just questioned if the police knew how to run a test to see if it was the seafood allergies or if it was poison. Um...Also the detective was taken off the case for being a 'drama queen' but the only thing we saw him do was question people in the dining room when the death occurred. This feels like something that should have been edited.

Comments

[aaronlisa]

I have far too many thoughts about the TBR debate.

For me, a TBR has always been what it says on the tin: books to be read. Whether I own the actual books or they are just a list of books that i want to buy or borrow is another story. I hate the fact that so many people have to create drama over what a TBR is. And yes, I do have a physical TBR that is probably far too big for me to ever get through. However, I still maintain a list of books that intrigue me and that I'd like to consider purchasing or borrowing. (Although in my case it will probably be purchase because I often forget to return books to the library, which can be more costly than just buying a book.)

I would assume that someone who doesn't have a physical TBR could just as easily use that advanced challenge on their list of books that they'd like to eventually read. I personally can't fathom how a person who is reader and participates in challenges such as that one, would not have some form of TBR - whether it be an actual pile of books that they hoard like a dragon (although that may just be me) or a list of books that they want to read and will either purchase or borrow from a library. I mean doing a challenge like the Popsugar one kind of means that you have a TBR of some sort in the first place.

And to be honest, I've looked at the Popsugar challenge for the last few years and I've always not done it because I'd have to buy books to fit certain aspects of the challenge. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, I already have enough books that I need to read. I have to give them credit for doing 10 prompts that are for people to focus on books that they already own (or if they are creative enough have on a list somewhere but have constantly put off reading for whatever reason.)

I do understand that the anti-physical TBR movement came as a way to address consumerism within the book Youtube community. About 2-3 years ago, someone decided to challenge themselves to not buy a new book until they had read most of their physical TBR and others jumped on the band wagon because far too many big-name book youtubers would do haul after haul of books only to unhaul the bulk of the books, unread, six-12 months (or more) later. And while it's admirable to take a stance at the over-the-top consumerism that was happening, I think it caused far too much drama. Instead of people actually discussing the larger issue at hand: which was what role does consumerism play within our community? And how is this sending a potentially harmful and/or negative message to newcomers?

That said, I think most people are going to have a TBR of some sort. Whether it's physical or not is another story.

[cornerofmadness]

Exactly, if you're a reader you have books you want to read. As for me with the popsugar I won't buy books to fill the prompts because I have a decent library system (three of them at my disposal actually) so I can borrow what I need but on the other hand I'm tired of doing that for books I probably don't want to read. I get the idea of the challenge. It's to diversify your reading but I do plenty of that already.

I had no idea about that anti TBR thing on YouTube at all. I mean there is a point to it and I HAVE pared down my buying signficantly but I'd be dead before I read all the books I have (thank you library book sales)

[aaronlisa]

That's why I roll my eyes on the drama over TBR's. Readers are always going to want to read books - whether they own them or not. I think it wasn't until my late 20s, that I actually started amassing books that would become my physical TBR. Until then I always had a list of books that I wanted to read.

I find that so many of the challenges are so specific that I'd have to buy books to meet all of the requirements. I came across one challenge that actually named an author. And I was like that's great but it's limiting. I've been pulling some random prompts from different challenges to hobble together my own challenge to hopefully help me read books off of my physical TBR.

Yes, that's where I first came across it. And then it spread from there. The whole anti-TBR things makes me roll my eyes, kind of how people who are against the Good Reads yearly challenge because they find it stressful. Uh really? How? You can literally make your challenge one book. As well as you can change your goal throughout the year and whatnot. I think there's too many people that read for the wrong reasons.

[cornerofmadness]

Yeah I refuse to buy them for a challenge but luckily I can get most of them at a library. However, that isn't helping me winnow out my bookshelves so that's why I decided I'm doing what I can of this challenge and that's good enough. I picked up like 30 out of 50 without trying hard right off my shelves and if that's all I do, fine.

That's also why I gave up the craving for cozies challenge. After struggling to read lot of cozies for this I only read 3 last year because I burned out on them and frankly a lot of cozy mysteries are stupid AF. I prefer actual police detectives so I switched it out for the cloak and dagger challenge which is any kind of mystery/suspense. (not to mention the cozy reader fan base is predominantly clean reader people who bitch incessantly over words like welll bitch.)

The literary destination challenge made me nuts the first year because I really tried to do it (read a book from all 50 states) and at the end of the day I'm like WHY? I still do it just because it's fun to see all the states I do read but I don't care if I get all 50 states (let's face it, some states are seen as boring and rarely make fiction)

I think for you and me a genre based challenge like cloak and dagger would be better. I had thought of starting one for UF/F/SF which a lot of my friends could play with since we like those genres


Oh I see that a lot. It's too stressful. Okay I did find the popsugar challenge vaguely stressful but not that much. I mean why do it otherwise? Some people find anything stressful. I ran across that in the word sprint group i'm in. Oh it's too stressful. Um why? there's NO punishment and no prize. It's not like we're going to ask you to erase your words if you don't get a certain number. It's merely a focusing device

[aaronlisa]

I don't mind buying the occassional book for a challenge. Like the annual Agatha Christie challenge that her website runs. But that's because I've been getting into her books after years of not being that interested in her work. But that's the exception to the rule.

I also don't mind the idea of a reading challenge being challenging. And as much as the Popsugar one intrigues me, I've never really liked all of the prompts. So I've not participated. I don't get how people manage to put all this stress on themselves for taking part in challenges. I'd get it if there was money on the line or some sort of prize. But when I first started looking for reading challenges, I found this blog post about how the Good Reads challenge made this one reader super stressed out because it was "forcing" them to read for quantity than quality. And I had to read the post through twice and was still like "What?" Am I missing part of the challenge where we get rewarded for reading a high number of books? And it was basically this person challenged themselves to read some insane number of books and then was complaining because they didn't have time to read longer books or some other such nonsense. It took everything in me to not leave a snarky comment on that post. Something like "You set the challenge yourself, so if you're not happy, don't blame Good Reads, blame yourself for setting an unreasonable challenge. And do you know that you can adjust that number anytime up until 12:00 AM PST January 1st?"

I think some where down the line too many people have started behaving as if reading is a contact sport of some sort.

If you were to host a reading challenge, I'd definitely participate. I think it'd be cool to have a UF/F/SF (and throw in horror) and I'd be there with bells on. Even if it was a month long challenge. I really like the open-ended month long challenges like Victober (reading Victorian Classics in October) and non-fiction November. The goals of both challenges is just to get people reading more classics (specifically VIctorian) and non-fiction. Both have a group read that you can read if you want and they have basic challenges that you can use, if you want to. I didn't really follow the 2020 challenges because 2020 was a dumpster fire but in the past, hosts for both challenges were all "If you read one book in the genre, you've completed the challenge." And then there's challenges to get people to think outside of the box. I wish more challenges were like that.

[cornerofmadness]

I don't know why people make themselves nuts over challenges. I have in the past and I was like why am I doing this? It's supposed to be fun.

I think that's why I picked the cloak and dagger challenge this year. I can set how many mysteries I think I can read. I put it low (since why make it high when there is no reward other than self satisfication) and any mysteries count. that's a lot more fun than running everywhere for prompts

[aaronlisa]

I will be honest, I was like that in the past with challenges. But I realized that i have enough stress in my life and something fun should not stress me out.

[cornerofmadness]

Same, that's why this year 'close enough works'

[mtassarin]

I definitely have a big, ever-growing TBR-pile. It's nearly all digital at this point: I read mostly in English, and buying dead tree books means paying the price of 3+ books for the delivery and an unholy amount of waiting. It's much more convenient to just buy an ebook and have it delivered to my Kindle instantly—saves me money to buy more books, too! The problem with this approach is that my TBR grows all the damn time. In theory, I know my Kindle is full of books already. Several years worth of reading there, probably! In practice, well, when I look at an actual bookshelf, I can see the number of bright covers there, and the lack of space, and that makes me think, "Hey, I should stop buying books until I read at least half of these!" With a digital bookshelf, it's... very different. 😅

[cornerofmadness]

I hear you! I do both paper and ebooks (the latter gives me migraines so I am very slow)

I filled my ereader, bought additional storage, filled it, never even look at it but once or twice a week

[ysilme]

A TBR pile? No. I have a f*** TBR BOOKCASE. And that's physical books only I can no longer really read comfortably, and not mentioning the textbooks I want to read. I don't even want to start to count the amount of TBR on my kindle, be it books or fanfic, with a sizeable part of the fanfic at least novelsize - long novel size.
I'm not familiar with the challenge you mention, or where it's taking part and what kind of people go there. When I was still active in reading-only circles (as in, if there were any writers/authors they didn't talk about it), the size of your TBR was a kind of a running joke, and it kind of was something to be proud of as well. Owning the books in question didn't come into it _at all_.
(My piles/folders/amount steadily increases due to the fact that my reading of published books dwindled dramatically when I discovered fandic, and my reading in general dwindled down dramatically when I startet to write seriously msyself. In the last years, I found to my dismay also that sensory overload now also affects me from books/stories I read, which forced me to read new stuff much slower and less, and doesn't help at all with everything I still want to read. And no, I don't watch TV and only moderately movies/streaming etc., as I simply can't deal with it.)
Edit to add: a sizeable part of my TBR aren't books that I own, but I got through bookcrossing which I participated very actively in for a few years. I can keept them as long as I want and will pass them on to a publish shelf, bookcrossing station, or leave them at a meetup afterwards. Most books I buy these days are digital versions of beloved printed books I then put out for bookcrossing, as shelf space is an issue in this ouse and the spouse is still mostly reading printed books, so he needs up most of that. *lol* But even if I didn't buy any more books I'm sure I wouldn't run out of reading material for years. I also have a library card for physical as well as digital books, but nearly never get anything as I don't find time to read it. ;op

[cornerofmadness]

You can find the popsugar challenge here. But yeah it's mostly avid readers so finding some that are so anti-TBR pile is confusing.

I have bookcases and a full ereader so I know what you mean. I am sorry that the sensory overload is bothering you this much