I have been spending some time lately cleaning out my To Be Read lists. I have them everywhere, or at least in more places than I probably should. I have shelves in my house that are just for unread books, I have books in my office, and I have a library wishlist. And then there’s Goodreads plus all of the kindle books that I somehow own.
There are books that overlap on some of those lists. There are books that I don’t even remember adding to the lists. There are just so many books. Something I have noticed while purging is the change in my reading desires and interests over the years. I can see what interests and hobbies have been cut from my life. And I am able to zero in on the things that I love, the genres or subjects that I just can’t get enough of.
But in going through them I am finding it easier to clean out some places and not others. when it comes to my shelves at home or on my kindle I struggle with purging the books that I haven’t read. But with my Goodreads or library wishlist, I can prune with no mercy. I can’t even claim that it is because I have already spent money on the books, but cause most of my kindle books were either free downloads or gifted to me.
So why then is it hard to clean them out? I think it is because every true book lover fears running out of books to read so we hoard them. I also think we desperately try to convince ourselves that we will read them all eventually, even though we know we won’t. Or maybe there is some other reason that I will never figure out. But I will still continue pruning and purging my lists, and while I’ll never fully clean them out, maybe I’ll be able to better remember the books on them that I really do want to read.
Experiences in Reading 