#conquer the tbr 2k17

[erinpagewrites]

Break it down, and build it back up again.

The plan wasn't to buy more books, but that's what happened. The plan for #ConquertheTBR was, of course, to hold back from buying new books until I'd made a bigger dent in the list, or best case scenario: until I'd finished the whole list.

But then the Gaithersburg Book Festival happened this weekend, and that part of the plan flew out the window.

I went for the Historical Fiction panel specifically, and yet I came away with a small armful of unrelated books: a contemporary, horse-centric novel (I can never resist), and two used books whose sale benefited the local library. Plus I picked up a Ray Bradbury-themed scented candle (Smoked Pine and Parchment, if you were wondering) and snacks from local vendors. The Festival is primarily sponsored by Politics & Prose, the renowned independent bookseller from DC (and, ahem, the publisher of the anthology where I first appeared in print, which is available for purchase here online), and I feel so fortunate to live in a region where an enormously diverse array of authors visit and present on their work. I buy my books from P&P whenever it's possible for me, to support their important work in fostering a literary community in DC. I couldn't *not* go and buy books at the Festival, in other words.

The Historical Fiction panel was excellent. Susan Higginbotham, Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie read from their latest novels (Hanging Mary and America's First Daughter, respectively) and afterwards discussed their writing and research processes, which I particularly found insightful as I'm currently working on a novel myself that requires some historical research.

Now I have added three more books to my TBR list. What does that mean for my project?

I've just got to keep reading onward.

I didn't ban myself from buying new books. Not yet, anyway. I kept reminding myself of that yesterday as I flitted through the pile of books on my couch that I'm now reading all at once, feeling a bit guilty that I'd bought them. I'm reminding myself that, at this point, the only way to ruin my own project would be to abandon it entirely. I think that being realistic-- I love to shop and I love to read, and banning myself from doing those activities until I've read 75 books would be, I think, an as yet unnecessary personal challenge-- will make my project and my resolve to clean out my TBR even stronger in the end. Knowing that I can add a new book here and there, and yet continuing to work through the list, will prove to myself that I can make it through a stack of books whenever I need to.

Additionally, I am also trying to read more new releases of books when they come out, as I like discussing books with people and, frankly, that's easier if I'm reading new books along with them! I can't know every book that is coming out this year and I can't imagine what friends and other writers might recommend to me, even while I'm working through my TBR-- I want to maintain some leeway in my project to allow for the occasional addition.

So, after a productive past two weeks, I'm back up to 75. But I'm still excited to keep working through my list, and I anticipate some good strides forward as we approach Summer, when I have a good number of hours to spend by the pool, getting weird sunburns and reading all the while.

[erinpagewrites]

Settling In

About a week after I made the decision to work my way through my To Be Read list I made some cuts. I went back through my list, over and over for nearly an hour, and made the hard decision to delete some more.

I cut out books that I had started, stopped, and that I felt like I might never be excited to read again. I also cut a few that were follow-ons (series sequels, or lesser works from authors I've liked) that I'd added out of my misguided need to be a completionist. As difficult as it was to formally give up on some of these I was surprised at how many more I could delete, plenty even that had survived my original cut back in December. When I was done with the cuts, I then added in a few more books that I know I will read later trying to capture as many as I could for 2017, and that I will be eager to finish before the end of the year. At the end of this new round of cuts, I had whittled my list down to 80.

My next step was to take a good look at my reading habits. I finished nearly 60 books last year, so I was already doing well in terms of prioritizing my reading time. But I felt like I could do better. While I have a full-time day job that I am fortunate to enjoy, a husband whom I am fortunate to love, a beagle whom I am "privileged" to serve, and a fondness for going out in DC and traveling, I also write fiction as my side hustle; there are only *so* many places where I could make further inroads given the confines of 24 hour days. 

Some of my TBR list is in audio format, so those are easy to pick up during daily commutes, household tasks, and walking the dog. I’m currently reading The White Queen by Philippa Gregory on Audible, which I read and really enjoyed a couple years ago and have decided to read again now that the new Starz show is out. Probably my biggest habit change, however, is that I’ve also been reading a little while I have my morning coffee before heading to work, which I realized is something that I used to do when I was growing up: I woke up and had a cup of tea and read a book until my parents were ready to take me to school. Funny how you can forget about something you used to do every day… and then one day you can pick it back up again as easily as though you’d never quit in the first place.

So that’s where I’m at. Made things a little easier for myself, or I should say more realistic for myself. I’m focusing on sinking into a good read the way I used to do so easily. And I’ve found all the extra work not only enjoyable, but beneficial to my days in general. I feel more accomplished and more focused, at the end of the day, and if that’s all I get out of it, then #conquertheTBR will have been worth it.

Moving forward, the more that I read through the list the more I intend to discuss some of the books in general. But considering that I’m catching up on about a month of reading, here is a quick summary of my favorites of the handful of books that I’ve read through so far:

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. A true crime book detailing life in Osage County in the 1930s, when the oil business in Oklahoma was booming and the Osage Indians, who had been forced onto the Osage reservation by the U.S. Government, found themselves entitled to incomparable wealth due to the oil-rich territory. And then one-by-one, a prominent Osage family is systematically murdered, with the nefarious and intricate plot to force the inherited oil rights into the hands of a white man. I selected this book for my Book of the Month Club pick in April, knowing nothing about the subject matter from previous experience. I was immediately engrossed in this story, all true, and all shocking and appalling in its calculated evil. Grann is a terrific writer; the non-fiction story flows well, and his efforts to indicate where he makes some suppositions or simply could not find evidence of a crime committed are few but are importantly clearly noted. I’m glad to have read this and learned about this story, which while horrible is important to spread as an example of what atrocities people will stoop to for money and power, how far society has yet to go toward indigenous peoples’ freedom and equality. I’m interested to pick up Grann’s other book—The Lost City of Z—but I want to work a bit farther on my list before adding anything.

Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer. The final book in the Southern Reach trilogy. In the first book, an all-female expedition of scientists enters a forbidden territory to explore the aftermath of an “environmental event”… and that’s about all I can tell you without giving away any of the surprises of this spec fic series. I actually got the trilogy as an omnibus, and I think it truly feels more like one novel than three separate novels; I don’t think you can read the first book (Annihilation) and not want to read the final two. Vandermeer is not just an excellent speculative fiction/scifi author, but he’s also exemplary of the deep bench of quality prose writers coming out of the “genre” field these days. The development of the main characters in the trilogy, his ability to deftly render so much about their mysterious backgrounds even in the midst of a thrilling sci-fi scene, is something I could wish to encounter in many more books of any genre. Luckily I already have his new book, Borne, on my TBR, so I can jump right back in soon.

[erinpagewrites]

In Which I Set Myself a Very Big Task

Right at the end of 2016, I Marie Kondo’d my To-Be-Read List of books down to 60. I was ruthless; not only did I give away a big stack of physical books, but I even deleted a bunch of Kindle books (over 100 files). Even though Kindle files don’t take up any space-- ok, they do, but I’m not likely to reach the upper limits of my Kindle device’s storage anytime soon-- just having to sift through a bunch of books I felt burdened to read based on a (sometimes years) old reason for doing so was stifling to me. I read less than I could over the last few years because I gave myself task-after-task-after-task on my TBR instead of letting myself pursue spur of the moment interests and real passions in my reading.

And what does a TBR list matter, anyway? It was only a goal that I had set for myself. I’m not a student with a bunch of required reading; I don’t have to answer to anyone but myself when it comes to finishing any books for the rest of my life. If I’m not enjoying and/or learning from my reading, if my eyes glaze over every time I try to read a few pages, if it’s too easy to set down and pick up my phone instead, then what’s the point of reading it?

I couldn’t read a book per my friends’ recommendations anymore because I already had too many books that I was “in the middle of” (read: loathing). I felt guilty every time I bought a new book knowing that I was just adding to a pile that would be impossible to ever whittle down. Reading in my spare time was now such a chore and a weird and a source of a weird guilt complex that I wasn’t letting myself enjoy it anymore.

As the year wound to a close and I thought about what I would like to accomplish in 2017, I realized that I could change a few things and make reading good for myself again. So, like I did with my clothes after I moved into my current apartment with my (then) fiance, now husband, I de-cluttered my TBR list. I looked at every book in my home and every book in my Kindle and thought “am I excited to read this? will reading this book mean something to me?” If it didn’t pass muster, it went in the giveaway pile or it got the delete key. It was hard, and there are some that I may yet come back to down the road when my interests have changed, and there were some that I had purchased and now felt bad that I had essentially wasted money. But I got all the way through all of the books I owned, and by the end I felt incredibly refreshed, eager to open my kindle or pick something off of my shelves without guilt anymore.

I thought that 60 TBR was a good number: it only takes up three pages of books on Goodreads, and I was excited to read all of the ones remaining.

But as early as mid-January, it was too easy to skim the Daily Deals on Amazon, adding a book here or there that cost a dollar or two to buy. I made a few trips to pick up books that I’d set in my community library and take them back (I’m not stealing from a library, though, haha! The community where I live has a free library where you can take and give books at will, and the shelves overflow every summer as people move in and out, so when I say I took books back from my library, well, I just picked them back off the same stack I’d left them in two months ago). I also added a decent number of books that are research for my novel-in-progress.

Personally, I’ve also been going through some challenges and severe stress this Winter, and that’s not good for my shopping habits. I self-soothe by picking up a little book gift for myself, or reward overcoming a challenge with a new book purchase.

Within just three months I built my TBR list back up. Yesterday, marking off a few more books that I earmarked to read this summer, I hit the magic 100 number. Suddenly, I felt the crushing weight of not being able to ever clear out my list of things to read. If you’re a list-maker like I am, you know how it feels when you’ve got a task list that never ends; it feels like shit. At times, when I skim through a long TBR list, I am hit by the realization that I might have books on there that I will never read, I will actually die of old age before I ever read them. Someday my great grandkids might have to ask Goodreads for my password so that they can delete this list on my dead behalf.

And I don’t need my TBR list to be yet another reminder of my own mortality, thank you. I’ve got enough of those in other aspects of life.

I’m revamping this blog. It doesn’t look like it yet, ha... ha... but I am revamping it, behind the scenes. As my writing is developing I really want to focus this blog, which will eventually become a part of my personal website, for my writing life. I thought about what I could do to generate more unique content, and I was really struggling as the professionally published author of two (count ‘em TWO) short stories what I could write about on here that might be of interest to someone else, and also of interest to me. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now, and then yesterday I hit that magic number, and I realized what I could write about.

I am going to conquer my TBR list in 2017.

So what does that mean for my blog?

I’m going to write more about what I’m reading. That doesn’t mean I’ll write about all 100 books-- since I’m supposed to be completing my novel, after all, I won’t have the time or the interest to review everything, and I don’t like to harp on a book that just didn’t sit well with me, anyway. And I’m definitely not going to write about all 100, not by a long shot. But I used to keep something of a reading diary in middle school and it was always nice to look back on what I was interested in and when. I abandoned that, and a lot of non-required reading, in college, and post-college I went through some real struggles finding a job that I liked and balancing work and life, and reading and writing fell by the way side.

2016 is symbolic to me of real sea changes in my life. I got married to the best person I’ve ever known. I got serious about writing again. I started posting some (ahem, fan) fiction online for the pure joy of it. I made myself confront some hard times I’d had in my life over the last few years and show myself that I had overcome some things, that I’d made it through. By the end of the year, I committed to pursuing only knowledge and important voices and joy in my reading, all of which were what made me love reading in the first place, back to my childhood, and all of which contribute to a well-rounded life, I think.

Here I go. Writing about reading. Committing publicly to something I haven’t been able to do for years. Scary, but good.

Feel free to join me! My TBR list is here on Goodreads if you’d like to follow along. I would love to hear about anyone else working through a reading project, or conquering their own TBR list, or who just likes chatting about some of the same books. I come bearing an eclectic reading taste and an out-of-practice way of writing about it: you’ve been warned.