The Amorphous To Be Read list

My To Be Read List and I have a somewhat amorphous relationship.

In the old days, pre-kindle, I used to go to the bookstore at least once a week and spend delicious time in the stacks. I’d come home with a pile of books to add to my already existing pile of books waiting their turn. I never did get to the bottom of the pile either, because newer and shinier titles would get released, or new books from my autobuy authors would come out. Of course in those days such authors only released new titles once a year, giving me plenty of time to read other people too.

I never did spreadsheets or tracking of any kind BTW. Not my thing. Books in, books out, some onto my keeper shelves and some to the Goodwill bin for someone else to enjoy.

Part of my sentimental collection of Andre Norton

As I moved more and more into the ebook realm of reading, I stopped buying hard cover or paperback books at all. So no more visible TBR on a shelf somewhere. I hardly have any physical books in my home any more, other than stacks of tomes for my ancient Egyptian research and some sentimental favorites.

Certain authors are still autobuy for me – Nalini Singh, Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews, our Jeffe Kennedy, Anne Bishop The Others series.

I’ve added a few scifi romance authors like Anna Hackett, Cynthia Sax, Pauline B Jones, Emmy Chandler, Anna Carven, Michelle Diener, Tiffany Roberts.

(I’m undoubtedly forgetting some names, not enough caffeine today yet…apologies)

These are people for whom I stop everything else for the day, even working on my own novels, and just sit and read the new book.

I devote a chunk of time every week to creating my New Releases (NR) post for new titles in scifi romance, paranormal romance and fantasy romance. (Here’s a link to a recent one if you’d like to see. Which golly gee, happens to have my own new release included! But about 48 weeks of the year I’m not releasing anything new myself.) I do limited curating of the list and I don’t even pretend to include every single new book in all 3 genres every week. What human can do that? And especially limit the time spent on creating the NR post so I can still write my own books?

 Anyway, I have a Process and in the process of discovering new books every week to share with people on my blog, I find a lot of books to read.

Some I one click right away.  No question must have that book! The books in that category I typically read within a week or two of buying them.

Some I put onto kind of a mental TBR, but I also know I can look back at my previous NR posts to refresh my mind about books I was intrigued by but might never actually have time to read.

The underlying thing for me is that I’m literally writing and talking about SFR all the time, in several FB groups, for USA Today/HEA, Amazing Stories, Love In Panels and sometimes other sites as well. I need to stay current on authors, books, and trends in SFR to be able to create interesting, relevant posts for all those places. So I ‘have to’ read. Such a hard life, right? I read very fast, which helps. I have an empty nest except for the demanding Jake the Cat and I’m full time at this writing gig.

Jake the Cat because who doesn't love a cat photo

So the jump for a book from Amazon to my kindle to me actually reading it is probably only going to be two weeks at the most. But very few books get put on that nebulous form of TBR.

The other titles I have an interest in reading sit on my archived NR posts on my blog (because I always put a note in the post of which ones I one-clicked or put on my TBR) and occasionally make it to the kindle and get read.

So that's my tale of how I manage my TBR List. Works for me!