Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
- Napoleon

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The TBR Blob

As I've said before, I'm a book addict. I love them. I love the smell, and the way the pages feel, and the crackle of a new book... I'd throw them on the floor and roll around on them if I didn't think I'd crease the covers.

Unfortunately, this results in what I'm now going to call The TBR Blob. You remember The Blob. It just grows and grows and grows, absorbing everything in its path. That's what my TBR pile has become. (Of course, it doesn't help that I sell old books online - to make money to buy more new books - and the local thrift store sells their paperbacks 3 for a quarter.) The store has grown to over 1400 books, and my own personal not-for-sale library easily has a few hundred. That means close to two thousand books to choose from when I need something to read. (Is it any wonder I don't check books out from the library?)

But that's not really my TBR pile, per se. If it was, it'd be like saying the library is my TBR pile. That'd just be silly. No, my TBR pile is much smaller, and yet it's so much bigger than anything one could consider manageable.

First, there are the older books I've been meaning to read. Things like Ivanhoe and The Three Musketeers and Gone With the Wind. I have a whole pile of Andre Nortons calling me. I still want to read some of those Edgar Rice Burroughs, too. There are so many books I've missed over the years. *sigh*

Plus the books I've read before that I want to read again. I found a copy of Phyllis Whitney's The Golden Unicorn, for instance, and last week I read The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip. I need to re-read The Fountainhead to recharge my batteries. I want to re-read The World According to Garp and maybe The Stand. Good stuff that deserves to be read many many times.

Then there are all the new books calling to me. Those are the main place my TBR Blob is growing from. I have the new Gena Showalter calling me, and the new Jeaniene Frost. Additionally, my daughter has about a half dozen new books I want to read (which I can't remember the titles of, and since she's still sleeping, I can't go look.*)

Yesterday, Allison Brennan's latest book hit the shelves, and I had to have it. (NEEDED it. I'm a Brennan junkie.) It pushed all the other TBR books out of the way, including the aforementioned Phyllis Whitney I was halfway through.

All of these books demanding my attention... Ack. I still have to work and eat and teach and clean (you don't want to see the state my home is in currently) and blog. The TBR Blob is not only growing, it's getting angry.

If I ever disappear, you'll know it got me. One day my husband will come home to find the books have absorbed me.

So has your TBR pile become a TBR Blob? What books are in your Blob?

* She's awake and I raided her room. These are a few of her books I want to read:
- Dark Desires After Dusk by Kresley Cole
- Marked by P.C. & Kristin Cast
- Confessions of a Werewolf Supermodel by Ronda Thompson
- One Bite Stand by Nina Bangs
- Undead and Unwed by Mary Janice Davidson
- Dead Girls Are Easy by Terri Garey
(See a pattern here? She's into paranormals.)

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2 comments:

JenWriter said...

Your daughter and I would get along. I want to raid her bookshelf.

Blob! I love it. That's what mine has become. I have to look at it in small piles or it will engulf me. And get this. Where I'm moving? I'll be right above a bookstore that sells lots of those YA and adult paranormal and fantasy books. I'm a goner.

B.E. Sanderson said...

LOL, around here, I'm not only a book addict, I'm an enabler. Her library has taken over the upstairs. I'd send you some of her books, but she'd kill me. OMG, Jen, I would go broke living above a bookstore. I have no willpower.