Sunday Confessional: Why my TBR Pile Never Gets Smaller

Hello my name is Heidi and I’m a bookoholic ...

After ruthlessly culling my TBR pile the other day, there are still 356 books remaining on it. A friend once asked me: "But you read all the time! Why does your TBR get bigger rather than smaller?"

I need books for survival:

Apparently you need water, food and oxygen for survival. Hang on a minute! What about books? Has anyone said anything about books?

Big mistake! I should have kept quiet, because now I’ve done it – I woke the demon! The pesky little devil sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear in his evil wheedling voice: “Go on, what’s the harm? Just one more new book. You won’t even notice it on your TBR pile.” After bravely ignoring it for about 5 minutes (ok, ok, maybe it was only about 30 seconds) the doubts started creeping in. 

What if there was a tidal wave, and our part of the world was cut off from any civilisation or – horror – internet? What if there was a war, a famine, an epidemic of flesh eating bacteria that saw us confined to our houses for years on end (even though being a nurse they would probably call me in to work for that). What if the pile of books I managed to stockpile up until now would be it – finite, zappo. No way would my TBR pile last me until the end of my life, no matter how Alpine it looks to me right now. I could imagine happily eating a stockpile of baked beans and spaghetti-oh’s for the rest of my life, if need be, but live off a restricted number of books? Never! Instantly regretting lending my copy of Tana French's The Likeness to an ex-friend, who never returned it, and therefore reduced my meagre fare of books for survival by one more (thus the "ex").

I instantly panicked, fired up my ipad at 2 a.m. and requested 3 more new books from Netgalley, not only because they looked particularly enticing (they did), but if this was IT, I needed a few more companions for the apocalypse. Anxiously watching my (sketchy) internet connection before the end-of-the-world scenario could interrupt the download, I watched in fascination as my Netgalley ratio dropped even further away from my goal. And my TBR pile grew even bigger. And my list of reads for the next month will demand undivided attention to get the reviews out in time. If I don’t eat, and only sleep three hours per night, I might even make it!

And this, folks, is the reason my TBR pile never gets any smaller.

Bookoholism – it’s a real thing.

Is there a cure?

Do you suffer from it?