Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books and Dani @ Literary Lion. Today’s topic is Are big TBRs a result of abibliophilia?
Abibliophobia is the fear of running out of reading material, and TBRs are lists of books you plan to read.
Do you have abibliophobia? Do you add books to your TBR to keep it big, or is it a place where you keep books that seem interesting?
I didn’t know abibliophobia was a thing at all, so I had to do some research for this one. My TBR is huge and ever-growing. It currently stands at 341 books. However, I don’t believe it’s a result of abibliophobia. The major reason my TBRs are so huge is because I essentially stopped reading for about 5-6 years during my final years of high school and through university, but I never stopped browsing the new releases, so things just piled up. For me, my TBR is a place to log books that I think I would enjoy – there’s no guarantee I’ll read everything on it at all, and I actually go through and remove books regularly that I’m no longer interested in, and move up other titles in batches to choose from in between reading new titles. My goal is to someday bring the number down to zero, but honestly, I don’t think abibliophobia would ever be a problem for me, because I find reading material very easily, and if not, I can always reread some old favourites!
Do you have multiple TBRs? If you don’t have a TBR, how do you find your next read?
Yes, I have one main TBR and those titles are categorized into several smaller ones by genre or theme. Classics, retellings, mythology, time travel and historical fiction (further classified by era) are all separate TBRs that I use. When it comes to finding my next read, the current year’s new releases always take priority, and when in between these titles, I choose books from my backlist.
What are your thoughts on abibliophobia? Let’s chat in the comments below!
Worlds Unlike Our Own 
I have a follow-up question: what do you use to categorise your TBR? do you rely on Goodreads??
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I use Goodreads as a kind of master list and my more focused TBRs are on there too, but I also track new releases separately in spreadsheets along with the immediate backlist titles I want to read each year. I prefer the spreadsheet to be honest, but Goodreads is an easy way to track future releases, even 2-3 years down the line which don’t a concrete release date.
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That sounds so cool and so advanced!! I am very old school and I prefer the joy of a notebook and a pen. I know it’s time confusing but it gives me more clarity… 👵
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I agree, writing down things is actually fun. I do maintain a basic bullet journal which is mostly just a reading log, but it’s particularly useful for when I travel.
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PS: It was also the first time I heard about abibliophobia!!
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I have different ones based on how good a book sounds. But Moore because I like having options than anything
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That’s an interesting way of classifying TBRs!
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We’ve never heard of abibliophobia. I don’t think we have it. We just constantly find so many books we want to read lol.
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Same here! I don’t even think it’s possible to run out of reading material 😄
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It’s smart to have multiple TBRs for ease of organization. I don’t really keep one myself at the moment, but I’m thinking that if I do, I’ll definitely have to follow your example and categorize them. I have also personally not met anyone with abibliophobia – but I agree, even if I ran out, I’d just re-read some of my favourites!
Here’s my own response to the prompt:https://downtherabbitholeblog.com/2021/02/19/lets-talk-bookish-are-big-tbrs-the-result-of-abibliophobia/
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That’s so interesting that you don’t keep a TBR! The main reason I started keeping a TBR was for organization purposes and it just grew from there – now I would find it completely impossible to read without one. Thanks for visiting, I enjoyed reading your response to the prompt!
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Great discussion! I look at having a TBR as narrowing down the thousands of books out there to a few hundred that I’m actually interested in when I stumble across them on the Internet. It makes deciding on my next book when it comes down to it a bit easier. 😅
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This is so true! I’m prone to randomly browsing book lists when I’m bored, and having a TBR at hand to add to makes sure I don’t forget about it later.
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I sometimes feel I have the opposite problem. I’m not afraid of running out of reading material, but definitely daunted by the sheer number of books I haven’t read! Sometimes I feel decision paralysis and have no idea what to read first!
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I completely agree with this – my backlist TBR gives me anxiety sometimes! I usually just pick around 10-15 books to read each year from that list which makes the whole process much easier. Thanks for reading!
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I add way too many books to my TBR but it’s cause I find them interesting. I didn’t even know this existed!
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I do the exact same thing. It’s hard to imagine ever not having something to read, because about ten minutes of browsing Goodreads would fix that 😄
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I didn’t even know that this existed! I feel like I’m the opposite: I never have any time to read all the countless books I add to my TBR haha! Great post💜
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Thanks! Lol yes, there are just so many to read, and by the time I’ve finished those, another lot will have taken its place. 😄
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