I am a lifelong reader and lover of books! Like many, if not most readers, I have a "to be read" pile (aka my TBR). These books are ones I am planning to read soon, but lately haven't been able to touch. My TBR continues to grow despite the fact that I've cut way back on book purchases, as well as other expenses. In fact, the last significant book shopping experience occurred last July in honor of my birthday. At that time, I purchased several cozy mysteries by authors such as Cleo Coyle and Maggie Sefton plus romances by Kresley Cole and Mary Balogh. As of this date, I've only read the Cleo Coyle books.

Sometimes the size of one's TBR comes up in conversation. Do you know how many books you have in your TBR? I don't. I can simply guess, in the roughest of estimates (more than 100 less than 1000), because my TBR is made up of a series of boxes in my closet plus a couple of bins under my bed. Now I *know* that my TBR is not as large as some and I don't believe that "she who dies with the most books wins". What I do know is that my TBR is intimidating to me. I have years, if not decades, of reading ahead of me and I try very hard to not dwell on my TBR possibly outliving me.

Perhaps it is just how you look at it... I am fortunate to have a book collection as well as a relatively convenient place to store my books. I have lots of highly recommended books as well as some by beloved authors and subjects I find endlessly fascinating. So far, my husband has been quite tolerant of my collection and it is nice to have my oldest daughter read some of the cherished books I have saved from childhood. I would say that my TBR makes up about 70% of my book collection. The other 30% represents keepers (kept with the intention that I will re-read them someday).

>From time to time, I have donated books to charity or Freecycle, traded them in at used books stores, and even sold them at garage sales. My last purge occurred a couple of years ago and it was also the last time I looked through my entire book collection. What I ended up eliminating was approximately 6 moving boxes full of fiction, mostly older categories (contemporaries) from Harlequin and Silhouette, a few historical romances where the back cover blurbs just failed to grab me, plus a couple of random college text books. Most of the books given away I had never even read.

It was my pregnancy with my first child and my subsequent discovery of Harlequin Historicals which caused my TBR to grow so far out of my comfort zone. I had the crazy idea to collect the entire Harlequin Historical line, which at that time was approximately 500 titles! Though I started buying whole box lots from eBay, I didn't get very far into this plan when I realized it probably wasn't possible to either collect the entire line or read them all since Harlequin still puts out four titles a month! I just don't read that fast...

Yes, reviewing books does take up a significant portion of my reading time, but it is time well spent. A world of possibilities have opened due to new-to-me authors and recommendations from my colleagues. ...and so my TBR continues to grow! In fact, I have recently ordered THE IMPOSTOR by Celeste Bradley after I enjoyed reviewing her latest THE HEIRESS BRIDES trilogy. This book, from THE LIARS CLUB series, will be going to the top of my TBR :)

The largest reason for the current growth of my collection is due to PaperBackSwap, which I turned to after my local used bookstore closed. Now when I hear about an author or book I want to try, I simply add the information to my reminder or wish list. It's really easy! I also use the site to track books I've read, since my New Year's resolution of tracking everything by excel spreadsheet has not panned out.

Though I plan to soon take everything out and move things around, I may never know exactly how many books are in my TBR. I'm ok with that. I think. I do anticipate lots of little surprises as titles I had forgotten come back to the surface. The future will see a continued slow down of the TBR growth rate but I can't ever foresee a time where I will stop acquiring books altogether. I'm just not wired that way!