Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
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What’s on your “TBR” (to be read) list?
Back in the days when I travelled the world in merchant ships, I used to read a lot. Anything and everything.
Now, settled into retirement and living by the coast, I intend to read a lot.
I thought that when I retired, I would have loads of time to do all sorts of things. Including reading.
Funnily enough, it hasn’t worked out that way
Before I saw this topic, I hadn’t actually counted my TBR pile, is that a kind of denial? For the purposes of this post, I braved the task. At the moment, I have around 50 paperbacks and about 100 eBooks on the list, including some that have languished there for some time.
I suspect that it’s not a huge number by some people’s standards, but I look at the physical stack of books and it gets me agitated. At least the eBooks are hidden on my phones Kindle app.
Trouble is, I have a hard time resisting a new acquisition, either spotted in a Facebook ad or in a bookshop.
In a pyrrhic victory over the constant acquisition of more, there is one aspect of buying physical books that I have managed to tame, that of getting Hardcover editions as soon as they are released. I realised that, by the time I got around to reading them, the paperback had been published.
Now I keep a note of new hardbacks, all of which I’m savouring the prospect of reading. Just as soon as I can, I get them in paperback format. The thing is, I can get two or three paperbacks for the cost of one hardback, so the idea hasn’t really helped me restrict my purchasing.
The eBooks on my list are almost exclusively from Indie authors. Funnily enough, I tend to read more Indie fiction than that which is traditionally published. I don’t think it’s totally to do with the ease of reading from my phone whenever I have a spare minute, although that’s very handy. Maybe it’s because, as an Indie myself, I identify more with them.
You may not have heard of most of the Indie authors I read, which is a shame as they deserve to be a lot more popular than they are.
The truth is, most Indie fiction is of an equivalent (if not better) quality to that from the major traditional publishers. Plus the subjects tend to be a little outside the mainstream (or whatever is trending) and thus more interesting to me.
You might also think that, as a Sci-fi writer, I would limit myself to that genre. Not at all! I have all genres lined up, waiting for the moment when I can get to them. From historical fiction to modern crime, magical realism to dual-timeline and psychological thriller, there’s a little of everything on the list.
All I need is more time.
Until next week.
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Stevie Turner
Yes, we all need more time. I have a shelf groaning with paperbacks. Sam says it’s going to collapse one day!
Richard Dee
If only life didn’t keep getting in the way, I might get some reading done.
Stephen Bungay
“Not enough hours in a day” is a refrain we all use at one time or another. So many “retired” friends wonder how they ever had time for work!
“Time is an illusion, lunch time doubly so.”, Douglas Adam’s via Ford Prefect in THHGTTG.
Perhaps so, but focus on work makes time fly, and when your work is your passion it passes faster still. My TBR list is short, yet it still languishes in the background.
Richard Dee
Wasn’t it Einstein who said that the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once?
Daryl Devore
Part of the reason there is nothing on my TBR list is because if I buy a book I immediately read it. The whole family knows how to keep me busy – give me a book. I’m gone until it is read.
Hopefully someday you will make it through your list.
Richard Dee
That’s a great plan, I would have liked to have been able to keep up but I’m so hopelessly behind now.
P.J. MacLayne
I try not to read in the genre I’m writing in, so my voice remains my voice and doesn’t echo someone else’s.
Richard Dee
That’s a good idea, when you mix genres (as I do) it gets tricky.
Lela Markham
I only addressed the books I intend to read this winter. It gets scary contemplating ALL the books I mean to read.
I read a lot of stuff outside of my writing genres. Someone said variety is the spice of life, right?
Richard Dee
The more the better, there’s some brilliant Indie writing in genres you’ll never see in the mainstream.