Winter TBR #TopTenTuesday
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl is “Books on My Winter 2024-2025 TBR.”
For the new year, I’m reworking how I keep my To Be Read list. I’ve never had one that worked well for me. In the past, I threw books into Goodreads. My TBR, there, has 805 books on it — which renders it completely useless as a place to find my next book. In 2024, I tried keeping a spreadsheet, but it quickly grew overwhelming as well.
Clearly, I suck at this. Part of me wants to preserve the illusion that I can read ALL THE BOOKS. But another part of me would like the pleasure of reading to feel a little more orderly and a little less chaotic. Fortunately, I found some help at The Bookish Elf: How to Create a TBR List that You’ll Actually Stick To.
By artistsncoffeeshops. Shared with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives Works 3.0 License.
I’ve also had a goal for more than a year to move from Goodreads (owned by Amazon) to The StoryGraph (owned by a black woman).
So, I’m setting up my TBR on StoryGraph and following some of the advice from The Bookish Elf article. I will limit my TBR list to 50 books, use an Up Next list of 5 or fewer books, and periodically reset the whole list and start from scratch.
I started yesterday and didn’t finish, but I learned enough to make a decent guess at what I’ll read in the next three months.
Book Club Books
The Community for Understanding and Hope Book Group will meet three times this winter. Here are the books we’ll discuss:
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
- Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
- The Guncle by Steven Rowley
Wintery Books
As I went through the books in my spreadsheet, yesterday, I discovered three that I completely forgot but seem perfect for this time of year.
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. Martha Ballard was (in real-life) an 18th-century midwife. She kept diaries that are valuable resources to historians of colonial America. In this novel, she turns her attention to detail to a mystery. How and why was a man frozen into the river?
The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear. The author of the Maisie Dobbs series introduces a new sleuth in this book. Elinor White was a shadowy figure in both wars. Her seclusion in rural Kent is interrupted by a delightful neighbor child. Her quiet retirement is disturbed when that child’s family is targeted by a powerful crime family. I’m inferring the winter theme from the snowy cover.
Practice by Rosalind Brown. This novel covers one day (late in January) in the life of a student working to write an essay on Shakespeare’s sonnets.
What Libby Provides
My other four books will be delivered at the whims of Libby, the library app. In my process of reworking my TBR, I have whittled my Holds list from an overwhelming 23 books to 11. I gave up on some of those books entirely and put others on my new TBR in StoryGraph to make a later appearance in Libby.
I finished a book yesterday, so I would love for one of these books to be available right now. In the last three weeks, while I was reading A Lot Like Christmas by Connie Willis and couldn’t take on another book, I can’t count how many times I punched the “Deliver Later” button. Now, when I want a book to be delivered, my notifications are bare.
Here are the four books that I’m most rooting to show up today:
- Make My Wish Come True by Alyson Derrick and Rachael Lippincott. That would mean I could read another Christmas book before Christmas.
- The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. I think I’m remembering how Station Eleven began with wintery scenes, which has somehow put me in the mood for another book by the same author.
- Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude by Stephanie Rosenbloom seems like a cozy memoir for the season.
- The London House by Katherine Reay. This is a dual timeline novel centered on a World War II mystery that might hit the spot.
How about you? What are you looking forward to reading this winter?
I agree with you about the limitations of Goodreads in terms of a TBR site. I pop a book on it when I read a good review or hear about a book from some source, then I forget who/what was the source months later when I see it on my list. I am constantly going through my TBR list and culling it down and then adding to it in one breath. I started a storygraph account at my daughter’s urging and quickly abandoned it because it didn’t seem to have the same abilities as Goodreads that I like — namely keeping track of books with a short review so I can look back and see what I read when. But, I should say, I didn’t fiddle with it for long,so maybe I missed that aspect of it. // Years ago my book club read a nonfiction book of Martha Ballard and her diary. Fascinating. I’ve thought of it often ever though we read it YEARS ago. It is called A Midwife’s Tale. // My Winter Reading list is largely based on the challenges I’ve set for myself, book club selections, and books I have on hold with Libby. My Winter Reading list
I end up using Libby as an active TBR. I put books on hold and if I don’t have time for them when I come up in line I send them to the next person. It works better than remembering to check a list somewhere else for a mood reader like me. If I pass on a chance to borrow a book a few times, then I usually drop it from my holds. I still have a Goodreads tbr but it is mostly for books that fit a particular challenge category that aren’t readily available on Libby.
I don’t really keep an official TBR. I might talk about books I want to read and put them in a post but I promptly forget about it. I just don’t like the pressure that an official TBR brings.I just read what I want and any promised reads such as book tours.
I’m also at the whim of Libby. But Libby often surprises me. Something will arrive that I hadn’t expected for weeks!
Good luck!
I didn’t know about Book Elf, will go there next and read about TBR lists. Personally I keep a notebook and that works for me. Something more hands on that I don’t need to get my tablet.
I’ve been seeing people mention StoryGraph and didn’t know what it was. Our bloggin friend Jinjer once mentioned her method was to read oen book from the oldest entry on her Goodreads list and then one of the newest.
I experimented with StoryGraph this year, but it just never really clicked with me, so I’m sticking with GR for my TBR lists. I keep one main TBR list, plus another one that is my priority list. It contains about 200 books right now, which is about what I read in a year. It works fairly well to keep me on track. I hope your new system works well for you.
Happy TTT (on a Wednesday)!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
Evicted is a book that has stuck with me for years. I have a Pinterest board for my TBR list, but it does get overwhelming. There are A LOT of books on there.
Great list! I’m not great at following my TBR lists though I like making them. I hope you’ll love all these books when you get to them
If you’d like to visit, here’s my TTT: https://thebooklorefairy.blogspot.com/2024/12/top-ten-tuesday-books-on-my-winter-2024-2025-to-read-list.html
I have all kinds of lists on Goodreads, including the books I own. I started using Story Graph, but it doesn’t *seem* to be as user friendly as Goodreads. I own The London House but haven’t read it yet. MY TBR is also huge, but I do read mostly from it (I read a book, add two), you know how it goes. Occasionally I will take off books that I no longer want to read, or if I can’t remember why I added it in the first place.