Let's Chat Zero TBR

I have been doing a lot of research on the idea of a zero TBR. I have been working on my goodreads TBR since I started this blog. I have always said I wanted to reduce the number on my list, but I have never set a definite goal and therefore I have failed every year to truly reduce the number of books on my list.

Here's the thing I have been reading books off the list. I just have been adding more books than I can possibly read. I read roughly 50-60 books a year there is no way I'm going to finish a TBR of 400. With this idea of a Zero TBR in mind I want to take a more proactive approach to reducing my Goodreads TBR.

Let me first off start by clearly stating this does not mean I will have significantly less books on my goodreads TBR. I'm still going to add books to the list throughout the year. I'm still going to use the list the way I always have to keep track of books I want to read. The strategies I talk about in this post are going to help me to narrow down the number of books on my TBR and hopefully read some of the books that have long been forgotten.

First let's start with some stats. I have been keeping track of how my TBR has grown and changed for the past three years. I started with all the books that were on my list in 2014. Off that list I have read 69 and deleted 40 books. Off my original 2015 list I have read 38 books and deleted 33 books. Off my original 2016 list I have read 22 books and deleted 7 books. I do read books off the list and the books do change over the years. Through blogging I have discovered so many favorite authors.

Below are my goals of how I'm going to reduce my Goodreads TBR this year.

1. I'm starting the year off with 394 books on my list. That is going to be my number throughout the whole year. Any new books added to the list won't be counted towards the reduction. I may have a similar amount of books on my shelf next year. I think it is hard to truly see progress when I'm always adding books to the shelf. I'm going to focus on shrinking only the number of books that I have on my list as of 2017.

2. My TBR List: I will be using this meme in a different way this year. I will be choosing books out of my Deal Me In/ Fill in the Gaps challenge. All the books for this challenge are backlist and books that I want to read. I'm going to try to read a lot of the books for this challenge.

3. Read Books off My Own Shelves: I'm going to try to read more books that I already own and try not to buy many new books unless I plan to read them soon after I buy them

4. Delete: here is the deal I hate deleting books off my TBR, but I have to. Some of the books have been on the list since 2012 when I joined Goodreads. If I haven't read them at this point I'm probably not going to. Unless they are by a favorite author I'm going to start getting rid of books. The great thing is this is just a digital list and I have not invested money in all of these books.

5. Overall I want to continue to read the books that I want to read and not be concerned about the TBR list. I think that my TBR serves its purpose to keep track of books I want to read and I should be worried about reading every single book on the list because it isn't possible.

6. All About the Books has a wonderful spreadsheet that she creates every year. I didn't use it in 2017, but I'm planning to return in 2018 because it keeps track of my TBR for me. I also have my TBR spreadsheet I created that I keep track of how my TBR grows and changes. I'm excited to continue to use that this year.

Last year I had 82 books on the TBR. This year I have 95 books on the TBR. I think I did good reading the books I bought this year, but I didn't read books that I have had for a long time. The 2nd stack from the right is all the books I have bought in 2017. I would say I bought more books than usual, but I got most of them 2nd hand and pretty cheap. 2018 is the year I'm going to focus on my TBR this year and get the number of books unread down.