My Goodreads TBR Has 12 Books On It – Here’s Why

My Goodreads TBR is something that has changed in size over and over again since I joined the website back in August of 2012.

When I first discovered the online book community and found my way to Goodreads I would add every book I heard about to my TBR. I must’ve had more than 300 books on there at some point and while I used to be okay with it at first it would soon start stressing me out. I knew I had to change things.

No Sequels

One of the very first things I did once I decided to clean out my digital TBR was to delete every sequel off my shelves.

I kept adding full series to my shelves which would add up quicker than you’d think (even though back in the early 2010s it felt like trilogies were ruling the market) and ultimately made no sense to me.

If I hadn’t read the first book yet, why would I need every other book in the series on there too? I didn’t even know if I would actually enjoy the series.

Doing this took a good 200 books off my shelves and was quite the relief in itself.

Up Coming Releases Shelf

This is a shelf I introduced to my fixed/permanent shelves on Goodreads sometime in 2017.

I knew I wanted to keep track of any upcoming releases I was excited about (in part because I used to do monthly releases posts too) without having them clutter up my TBR of books that are already released.

Now, I’ll keep a book on my ‘Not Released Yet’ shelf until their release and then move them to my TBR – if I’m still interested in them. Sometimes I find myself looking at the releases for a certain month and I no longer want to read some of the books so they’ll get removed from my shelves entirely.

Regular Clear Outs

Again, a more recent addition to my Goodreads habits but something that has helped me out a lot.

I used to barely ever look at my TBR unless I was looking for something to read (as one does) but because there were just so many books on there I’d quickly feel overwhelmed.

Now, I’ll go into my digital TBRs after a few weeks and see if I’m still interested in whatever’s on there at that point. Dong this has actually lead to my current number of 12 books too.

I just looked at what was still on my shelf and some of the books aren’t on my immediate TBR and I’d rather have a ton of room on that shelf to add stuff to rather than it overwhelming me.

Immediate TBR Only (Mostly)

This one is very, very recent (aka I decided on it while writing this post).

We’ve talked about me not doing TBRs, right? But I’ve recently heard about the Series Crackdown readathon happening soon and I thought ‘Hmm. Maybe you could mainly keep books you see yourself reading soon on your digital TBR.’.

This way, I’m keeping somewhat of a TBR that isn’t immediately visible to everyone else unless they go looking for it and I have an idea of what I want to read.

But would I even be myself if there weren’t certain limitations and exceptions to my own rules? xD

So yes, the majority of my digital TBR is immediate TBR only plus a couple of books I want to keep on there to remind myself to read them soon-ish. The same way that I talk about books on here to give myself that extra push.

That’s all the books currently on my Goodreads TBR – which might also give you an idea on what I’d read for the readathon if I end up participating. 😉

How about you guys? How do you organize your Goodreads TBRs and how often do you update/reorganize them? Do you keep separate shelves for upcoming releases or any other exclusive shelves to help you organize things? Let’s discuss in the comments down below! I can’t wait to hear from you. 🙂