Set a reading goal: Thoughts about the anti-library idea, TBR lists and book influencers
This blog post is a little about setting a reading goal for next year, and a lot about my thoughts on the anti-library idea, book influencers and keeping a TBR list.
I could be a book blogger, and if creativity hadn’t found me in such a big way all those years ago I would’ve probably had a totally different blog. When I found blogging I had already been writing online for years about books and publishing reviews as the Editor of the first book site in Sweden (long gone now). But instead of a book blog I started this blog, and here we are. But of course my love of books has not lessened in any way although I don’t always write about what books I’m reading. I love libraries, book shops, author interviews, writing, book shelves, novels, book lists, and reading (and listening to audio) books. I have enjoyed many great books and love good recommendations… although I try to limit my intake. And I’m not into book influencers.
Not into book influencers
Yes, I have read book blogs occasionally and I follow a selected few booktubers (people sharing about books on YouTube) although I don’t watch most of their videos either (because of them being very prolific and me having limited time). That said, I’m not into quick videos about books like #bookTok (people sharing tiktok videos about books) and I don’t follow anyone specific for reading recs on instagram either. That’s because I find that stresses me out. I’m sure it can be done differently, but I, as a slow reader that finds myself easily influenced, can’t take in all those titles and new authors. I often feel like I want to read all the books, and if I start compiling book to be read-lists (TBR:s) I get overwhelmed quickly. I feel like I really want to read this book right now, and this one, and… realistically that’s just impossible. Most of them are by proxy new and shiny books in English (with amazing cover art and titles that I long to explore), so they’re not at my public library (yet or ever) and I can’t buy more books right now, so that leaves me frustrated and annoyed. It’s just not good for my mental health I guess.
Adding to my TBR
All that said, I have been adding books to my TBR lately/this past year or so. Not all of the books that I see and want to read, but a few here and there. In the past this was something that I avoided because the list just kept growing and growing, and as I never ticked anything of it I felt stressed about keeping it. But now I’m (trying to be) more chilled about having that list. It’s not a must-read or even will-read, it is a memory bank of book titles that I have come across and for one reason or other have added. Probably I thought I’d like to check them out, someday, if possible. A someday-maybe-list, featuring books that made me go: “Huh, that sounds interesting” I guess.
So I add books either to a digital running list of titles or as cover images to Pinterest or links to my bookmark service or a screen grabs on the phone. I seldom look at these lists again, but I like having them. They are my memory backup if I need suggestions on what to read next. Which, realistically, I don’t need very often. If I bring home a few books from the library I am all set for two months, and don’t need any further suggestions, if you know what I mean. In any case, it’s been accumulating and I felt like sharing a book list again which I’ve done many times in the past. So this blog posts is the prelude, or maybe it’s my thought process written out for doing a deep dive into another book list post.
Tsundoku – the power of un-read books
Tsundoku (積ん読) is a beautiful Japanese word, and you know I love new-to-me Asian words that describe phenomenon I’m interested in (if you didn’t know that, see wabi-sabi and shoshin). Anyway, tsundoku is the habit of acquiring books but letting them pile up without reading them. It’s like the habit of buying art materials or fabric I guess, a totally other hobby than creating and crafting. It is so quick and easy to acquire stuff, that we forget that it might take hours or days to use those materials. For example it only takes a couple of seconds to buy a whole bag of yarn, and then for some of us, a year to knit something using up all that yarn (if we get started straight away). This is not a problem if you enjoy owning the yarn, but it feels like a problem if you have a small space or a mind that keeps thinking about the un-knit yarn… Or even if you keep doing this process 10 times and you end up with a huge stash that you no longer want to knit up. Same thing could be said for accumulating novels. Easy to bring home, harder to “finish” if that’s the end goal. These are all things that we have to maintain and store, move around and relate to, and then decide how long we will keep.
I learned about the term tsundoku in author Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s video about antilibrary, where she explains the power of unread books and why it’s okay to have them (if you have room for them). In the video she quotes the book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (which sounds really interesting):
The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others – a very small minority – who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I loved this idea of the anti-library when I found it (although maybe not the name of it), which makes tsundoku into something positive instead of something to worry about. I don’t think the Japanese meant for it to be negative either, it’s just a word describing a common phenomenon. Collecting books can be a lovely hobby if you ask me. But it’s not if you don’t own a house, you move a lot or travel often, you buy more than you want to own. This idea though somewhat calmed my mind about owning unread books, but mostly, I felt okay with making TBR-lists again I think. I wouldn’t, and could never (I think – if it wasn’t a birthday gift or something) buy more than a few new titles at the same time, and then not again until at least most of those titles were moved to the finished/read pile. In that way, I know myself and what I need. I try to read what I buy, and these days I give most of the books I finish away or donate them to the thrift shop or the Little free library if I don’t think I’ll read them again.
My reading goal: to read one book next year
I already quoted Casey Brown’s brilliant blog post On setting low reading goals in my link love post about Encouragement last month, but as it explains my own idea of a non-numeral reading goal, here it is again:
…the only book goal anyone should ever have is: one book. Because if you read one book per year that is a great year. But I also set my watch fitness goal for 5 calories so it congratulates me when I stand up and put my socks on in the morning. It’s not that I don’t want to be challenged, it’s that all I ever do is SO MUCH and I don’t need anyone or anything telling me that anything I did wasn’t enough. I want to keep reading because I love it and refuse to ruin it by self-imposed pressure to read more.
That also sums a lot of my reading online lately on toxic productivity culture and everyone wanting to “do more” all the time, some of it from Burkeman (whose book “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” I got for Christmas among several others that were on my book wish list). We can not keep optimizing and accelerating everything all the time. At some point we will all burn out, as will mother Earth. We are at a time when it’s time to calm the fuck down, in all aspects of it. Less buying, less throwing away, less hours at work, less stress. But maybe that’s a pondering idea for another day. Back to reading goals.
With that said, you do what you want with your goal setting. For me personally, it will not help me in any way to aim to read 50 or 100 titles in one year, that will not make me happy or a joyful reader, it will stress me out. Instead, I aim to always listen to one really good audio book and to keep at least one really good novel by my bed for reading before I got to sleep. When I finish those I will replace them with my next choice. That is what’s working for me, so I’ll just keep doing that I guess.
Read Your Shelves Challenge 2025
With no numeric goal, I still want to talk about setting a reading goal before I finish this post. For myself, and maybe you’ll join too? I already knew I want to read through a pile of unread books that I own, so when the algorithm on YouTube recommended me Jen’s reading life‘s video about how she will attempt to read her owned books (which she should’ve started years ago if you ask me, she said that she owns something around 700 unread books – which sounds like over-consuming 101 to me), I decided to make that part of my goal too. Her video is called Read Your Shelves Challenge 2025, and she invites you to join her in doing that. I don’t know if some of those are review copies that she got for free, like many of mine are, but the number just doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know how many unread books I own, but I doubt it will be over 100.
My idea is to count the books I own but still have not read, and then write a document with all the titles, so I can check them off one by one. I will choose a few titles each month until I finish them all, DNF or read though them. The reason I want to finish them is because they are not my anti-library dream team, they’re novels and nonfiction that I want to probably only read once and then give away. They indeed feel like a to do-list to me. That’s why I want to read through them, to clear my to do list and feel free to browse for new books later in my life. But it will be a slow process, and I’m okay with that.
I will always be a reader, and I will always love books. My reading goal to go through unread owned books will be loose and just kept as a reminder to myself through next year and beyond.
Thanks for reading me. I hope you had a lovely Christmas, and that you’re making plans for the new year to be creative – in some way or other.
I also hope some of these ideas and concepts resonated with you, in your reading life. Do you read books? Do you set reading goals for yourself? How many unread books are in your bookshelf?
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The anti-library is an interesting idea! I used to have a lot of unread books so I did a ‘read my shelves’ book project years ago. There were so many books I never felt drawn to read, though, so I ended up donating them at the end of the year. Now I pretty much exclusively use the library. I buy lots of books for my kids so our house is still full of books which is important to me.
I am a passionate reader but do not set a reading goal. I put a number in Goodreads for the annual reading challenge but it’s a low goal. I don’t need to push myself to get more out of hobby that is meant to be for nothing but pleasure. I put pressure on myself in other areas of life (too much).
I like this post a lot, I like the idea of the anti-library, and of having books that you don’t read. My mom (the biggest reader I know) used to say that she loved a big pile of unread books. It felt like a security blanket to her. We used to have a lot of books, but have worked on paring them down, so will donate most books when we are done with them. In theory at least. I tend to cling to them, thinking..what if I decide I want to read it again and I’ve given it away? That has happened too a couple of times. I guess it’s a risk, right?
This was an interesting post to read. The only books I keep are art and sewing books – and I have way too many of those! But I can’t get rid of them because they offer me so much inspiration. I love to grab a stack and flip through them. I donate most of my other books, and now I mainly listen to audiobooks. Reading goals aren’t for me either. I love the idea of setting a goal of one book!
I have a list of to-read-books, but similar to yours: books I have heard of, or have interested me for some reason. When I need ideas, I pick one of those. Sometimes I erase titles because I have lost interest in them.
But I have never more than two unread books at home, or in my e-reader. That would stress me a lot!
And no need to fix a goal for something I do every day!
I had a book blog for six years, and it was fun, but it definitely made me feel pressured to read more books and set crazy high goals, and I always felt like I had to read the popular books that everyone was reading. Since I quit book blogging I’ve found I don’t even consume much book content anymore, and I enjoy reading a lot more, because it’s just for me.
I have slowed down a lot as a result though, so my pile of unread books is getting pretty big! Hopefully I can make some progress on that in 2025!
I am so lucky to have access to a good public library and university library system. I honestly do not have a ton of books that I own that are unread. If I sat down to read all my unread books, I bet it would be less than ten! It stresses me out to be surrounded by books that I own that I haven’t read. I try not to buy them unless I already know I love them.
Hi Hanna! I got mixed up and wrote this on Ann-Laurie’s video comments, but I meant it for you, lol:
I’ve just been calling mine a book collection lol. And probably 60% of mine are unread. This reminds me of the late Texas writer Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove). He had a huge bookstore in his hometown and people would come in and choose a book to buy. Sometimes he would look at the book and say, not for sale, I haven’t read this one yet. Hahaha, yes, eccentric but I think I might be that way too!
Happy New Year and Happy Reading,
Aimeslee xoxo
“They indeed feel like a to do-list to me. That’s why I want to read through them, to clear my to do list and feel free to browse for new books later in my life.” this is me!!! Did you peek into my head?
I also find the anti-library thing very intriguing. I grew up with vast book shelves in my childhood, many books being there for reference, quoting, because they were valuable. Not all read. But always something to choose. A private library. So I get it.
I am publishing my reading goals tomorrow and reading my shelves is a big one. Spoiler… I also have 700+ unread books. Sorry.
I totally get the concept of tsundoku! I love books and I love to read, and I’m reading War and Peace in 2025 thanks to you! I try to share my finished reads on Instagram as I finish them but sometimes post them later. I keep my TBR list on Goodreads and have it divided into two categories: books I already own and books I do not own. I then use that list when I visit my favorite used bookstore to make sure I’m not picking up something I already have on the shelf at home. If I read a book and love it, I keep it; if it wasn’t a favorite, it goes to that used bookstore. I plan to start sharing my reads on my blog more this year as well, along with my personal creative work. It’s all creativity!
I have that as a rule for myself too, to only keep the good ones and donate the rest. I read way too much to keep it all. So happy you joined Simon’s read-along. I got myself Wolf Hall and will attempt another slow read along this year as well, hopefully I will succed this one better than W&P. :)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I roughly average one book a week, but keep out of booktok/booktube/bookstagram; I find it all very homogenous with a narrow focus, and I love to dabble and read widely. I’m also not a book blogger by any stretch, but like to add a monthly round up of what I’ve been reading, as much for myself as anything! I’d love to see updates on what you read this year as you work through your shelves!
It’s too bad your old site is gone! I would have liked to look through it.
So much of the older Internet is disappearing.
Hanna, You have some very interesting ideas here and I enjoyed reading about them. I have a lot of unread books either one my bookshelves on in boxes in the garage, some accessible, some not so much. I would like to get rid of some books in the inaccessible boxes but for the time being, I am content with the books I own.
Thanks for reminding me about Tsundoku, it seems that whether it is negative or positive is subjective, and for me it is positive.
TracyK @ Bitter Tea and Mystery
I think a lot of book lovers will agree that there’s power in the possibility of stories and unread books and it makes me feel happy about my unread book at home, but that being said I’m still hoping to read some of them this year. I keep getting distracted by the library which I’m forever in love with and like to use as much as possible. I love the non-numeral reading goal (I put 5 instead of 1 but with a similar thought in mind), to focus on the experience more than the number. Here’s to calming down and buying less.
I hope you love any books you pick up in 2025 :)
I like the idea of making reasonable goals, but I can’t fathom making a goal to read only one book a year. That would not motivate me in the slightest! LOL. I try to make goals that are doable but also ask me to stretch a little so I feel motivated, but not overly pressured. Good luck on your goals!
Happy TTT (on a Wednesday)!
Susan