I Deleted All of The Books On My Goodreads TBR and BOY Does It Feel Good

Hi everyone! A couple of days ago I felt like cleaning out my Goodreads TBR. I’d been slumping for quite a while and I just wanted to do something book related because I missed it a lot, and cleaning out that immense want-to-read shelf seemed like the perfect idea since I’d noticed that I’d lost interest in quite a few titles on there. (Or maybe I just needed a little spring cleaning, who knows.)

Now, to preface this I should probably tell you I have two different Goodreads accounts. A main one, which is where I write my reviews and add every single book/comic I read, and then a side one (which I might’ve solely made because an irl friend added my main one and I was scared about outing myself so I blocked him on that one and added him on the side one) where I don’t rate/write reviews, but I only track the novels I read and have a bit of a different Goodreads challenge since I wanted to see whether I’d be able to reach my goal with just novels. It’s a little complicated, I know, but please bear with me here.

My want-to-read lists on both of these accounts also look very different. My side account had books on it I was mostly actually interested in, but I use my main account to track upcoming releases that I might not be too interested in but that I should probably be aware of for blogposts, besides also tracking books I am interested in. So especially the want-to-read list on my main Goodreads seemed massive to me (even if it might not have been that big to others because I had around 300-400 books on there and I’ve seen people with one’s that were way bigger.) (No judgement here, do whatever you want with your account.)

But yes, as I was deleting books off of my want-to-read shelf I noticed that I kept quite a lot of books on there because I either owned them myself and I should probably keep them on there unless I physically unhauled them, or I wasn’t super interested in them but maybe I would be someday, or… I just kept finding all of these excuses to keep them my want-to-read shelf until I was so tired of my own doubts that I just selected batch edit, selected all of the books, and clicked on “remove from all shelves”.

Because I have so many books on my main account’s TBR for cataloguing purposes I decided to only delete everything from my side account’s want-to-read shelf for now, but I’m also currently working through my main accounts TBR. I made a shelf called for-cataloging-purposes and I’m (while writing this post) moving all of my to-read books there, and will then work my way through them, either deleting them or moving some back to my TBR or just keeping them on that shelf.

I know some people love their TBRs and see endless possibilities and exciting stories and world to explore when they look at them, but if I’m being completely honest, all I felt when I looked at it was stress. It felt like this never-ending to-do-list full of things I didn’t actually want to do. A shelf full of books I was interested in once upon a time, and every time I went through it I saw books I’d long forgotten and that small interest I had in them would spark again but I wasn’t able to pick them up right that second, so then I’d forget about them again, but then I’d see the book on my shelf again and my interest would be sparked and… that cycle would continue.

And weirdly enough I also feel like having all of those books there was holding me back a little, especially now that my reading tastes are changing. I, for some reason, felt like I couldn’t explore new books or genres because then I’d just add to the pile and it’d cause more stress. Because I’d started seeing my TBR more as a to-do-list then just a fun list of suggestions I felt like I should get to all of those books on my list first before I started looking at anything new, and that just wasn’t working for me. And yes, maybe I could’ve worked on the way I viewed my TBR but honestly? This just seemed easier.

Now that I don’t have all of those books on that account anymore I feel a lot calmer. Kind of the same way I feel when I finally clean my clutter-filled room. And I’m weirdly excited about it too. Just excited to start building my TBR again, to find new books I want to read, and maybe randomly pick up books again because I just heard about them and they sounded amazing, without feeling too guilty about all of the books I feel like I should be reading instead. And I’m really hoping that this will somehow lead to me eventually reading more again. Please cross your fingers for me!

Or maybe this was all just some weird way to procrastinate on actually picking up a book and this will not work at all. Who knows.

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