Earl Grey Books

Now that we’re past the halfway point of the year, I’ve been thinking a lot about my reading goals. Every year I try and bring my TBR down as much as I can—I’m not usually the best at doing that so this year I decided to set my goal as having less or equal books as I started the year with. So with that in mind, I thought today I’d have a look over my book buying so far this year and a couple of other stats around that too.

How Many?!?

Let’s just rip off the bandaid. I’ve gotten 155 books so far this year. 11 of those were gifts, but I still bought 144. Look, I knew it would be a huge number this year—I had two huge romance events this year in April and June and I bought a lot there, and most of the other things have been secondhand.

I decided to break down the months by how many books I bought. So as you can say, I wasn’t joking about getting a lot in April and May with 45 and 52 books acquires respectively. Since the last event in early June, I haven’t actually bought anything for myself—two friends sent me books, and another gave me his copies of The Poppy War series.

How Much Am I Actually Reading?

Out of those 155 books, I’ve only read 13 of them so far, as well as deciding to unhaul or DNF another 3. That leaves me with 139, most of which I haven’t even picked up since purchasing. I want to mention here that this doesn’t really bother me. I like having a big TBR—I tend to have 4-5 (maybe more) books on the go at any one time and I like having the choice. I don’t want a small TBR, I just want to make sure that I’m interested in the things I do have on my shelves.

This year I have spent a lot of time reading things from KU or the library, so out of 98 books I’ve finished (as of a few days ago), 53 of them have been borrowed from somewhere, which leaves 45 as books I own. When it comes to this, I only consider the books I have physically as ‘owned’ so if I read an ebook or audiobook I’ve bought, I count it as borrowed.

Where’s My TBR sitting?

So with all this borrowing and buying, where is my TBR actually sitting? Well after my 52 new books last month where I went up to 377, I’m now back down to 356. I’m hoping to bring it down another two before the end of the month.

However, I started the year with 313 so I’m quite a way off my goal there. I’m working on breaking it down into steps. Right now, my next goal is to get to 340 which is where I was at the end of May. After I reach that, I’ll aim for lower again until I hopefully make it down to 313.

In Comparison To Last Year

I thought it would be interesting to see the comparison between this year and Jan-July last year. As you can see, I was still buying quite a lot last year but not as many. In the first six months of last year, I’d acquired 116 books—39 less than I have this year. But I didn’t have any romance events this time last year, and I was buying more books brand new rather than secondhand.

Book Buying For The Rest of the Year

As I said, I’ve not been buying things lately but I know I won’t be able to keep that up for the rest of the year. There are things I’ve been holding off on picking up that I’ll want before the end of the year. So instead of telling myself I’m not allowed to buy anything, I’m going to try and be mindful of what I am buying and what I’m actually making time to read.

And so that’s the end of today’s post. I plan on doing some kind of post like this at the end of the year too, so please let me know if you enjoyed this one or if there’s anything else you’d be interested in seeing me talk about!