Piles and piles of unread books that we keep adding onto. Most of us I think. But really, there are so many books that one wants to read, and that one will be able to get to…eventually. My TBR currently has 268 books (a lot of these are e-books that I got for free on offer or as public domain books) but still. And it can get overwhelming at times. There are plenty of tips out there to get your TBR piles in order–reading more to unhauling (this I did one round of at the end of last year getting rid of a bunch of e-books that I had downloaded for free but which I didn’t really want to read), and of course shopping bans. But this post is about the reading part of those tips and some fun ways that one can go about doing that.
Book Challenges and Readathons: There are so many of these out there, on and off, and it’s fun to try read according to the themes or challenges put up and see how many of your books fit into the categories. For instance, there’s a mangathon next week, a 24 in 48 challenge next weekend, a fairytaleathon from February 1-10, and a Monstrous March in er… March. The Little Book Owl has a full list with all the relevant links here. I also am part of a group on goodreads A Book for All Seasons which gives out certain prompts to read (five topics + an additional sixth one) for each equinox period (find the group here). Bookriot has a read harder challenge which gives 24 prompts to be fulfilled over the year. The 2019 challenge is here.
Reading themes: This is something I do (and am sure others do too), and have been doing for a few years off and on now.. Simply pick a theme or a genre (based on your TBR, since if you just randomly chose one, you’d probably end up adding books rather than removing them), and read those books for a week or a month, or whatever period you like to spread it over. One of my favourite that I picked a couple of years ago was all the books on my TBR which had an animal and bird in its title, so some of my pile for that “challenge” looked like this.
Book Bingo: I don’t care much for Bingo itself but book bingo looks like a great deal of fun. It’s basically a bingo ticket with various prompts which you read and cross out.
For me, I think, a regular bingo ticket would work as well since I have a numbered TBR list, I could simply pick the books against the numbers on the ticket (any random ticket off the net), and cross them out. I haven’t tried this out yet but should be fun!
I just found this Bingo Challenge for January 2019 (at bookish.com here)
Bookopoly: A monopoly board but with books and reading in mind. I think, it is played just like monopoly but with a board that’s designed for books. I’ve seen people make these for themselves and apparently, they’re also available on Amazon. Again something I haven’t tried yet but sounds good.
So there were some fun ways to tackle your TBR. What’s your current TBR like? How do you go about reading through it? Any specific challenges that you’ve been doing? Or games or memes that make it more fun (of course, reading any book itself is fun, that’s why we have such huge TBRs in the first place)? I’d love to hear all about it, so do leave a comment!
Literary Potpourri 
Loved the various game-based ways to tackle the pile, particularly the Monopoly and Bingo approaches. To be honest, my approach is much more random: themed reads (Wales Readathon, March Magics) which are set externally, personal themes (more female authors, fairytale-related titles, reread and review book sequences) or the Classics Spin (where the ultimate choices are out of my hands).
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Don’t they look like fun? I plan to give the bingo ticket a try at some point.
I’ve been picking reading themes or random books from my TBR based on my the books that I have before me, though I would like to give a readathon or a challenge a try this time.
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I love the Bingo card idea! I need something to help, otherwise I continue only to read ARCs and there so many other great books calling out to me, going unanswered.
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That’s something that’s been happening with me as well. Are you planning to play Bingo?
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Fun post! I used to read my physical TBR in strict order of acquisition and that’s how I generally work through it still, but I take part in a few challenges which I usually confine to books on the TBR and pick books off it for those, and I have to promote review books, of course. Then the NetGalley horror-TBR is being read in the month it’s published now, but picking off from the oldest one as I go. Other ebooks get slotted in as and when.
And thanks for the follow: I’ve added you onto my Feedly reader.
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Thanks 🙂 After a bit of a NG slump last year (I think I requested and read 4 books totally–for the most part was just turning to old favourites for comfort), this year I’ve been going a little wild so have a huge pile that I’m tacking–like you oldest first, but in case a release date is closer, I bump them up. But other than books I’m reading or rereading for challenges, I haven’t really tackled my (also huge) physical or e-book TBR this year. Book Bingo is something I keep planning to try though 🙂
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