How Do You Deal with Your TBR Pile?

Happy belated World Book and Copyright Day, everyone! I’m using this as an opportunity to talk about books. Again. Because books.

This time, it’s about the impossible TBR piles.

Seriously, how do you deal with yours?

I’m trying not to buy too many books, and to read the majority of the books I’ve already bought before getting new ones. It works to a point. Sort of.

At the last Belgrade Book Fair (October 2016), I bought 49 books. Yes, it’s unreasonable. Between the Book Fair and April 24th (that would be today), I got 15 new books. Out of the 49 bought at the Book Fair, I’ve got 7 left to read. Not bad. As for the 15 new ones, 12 read, 3 to go. Again, not bad. Not bad at all.

But.

One of the books I have bought at the Book Fair was Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Awesome YA read! And it has a sequel, Crooked Kingdom, so I’ll have to get and read that one, too. Fortunately, there are only two books in the series.

Then, there’s one of the books I recently got, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. A beautiful novel about the friendship of two women (and a lot more). The book ends with a cliffhanger, there are 4 in the series, the second one was recently published in Serbia, so…

And there are some books by new Serbian authors that I want to read.

And some books by non-Serbian authors, too.

And…

You get the picture.

No matter how fast I go through my TBR pile (and sometimes it’s really fast, 12 books read in April, and counting), there are always more books to read, and buy, and add to the pile. And that’s just paperbacks and hardcovers; I’m trying to get through them first, because they’re taking up physical space (hey, it’s as good excuse as any).

It’s not that I’m getting nowhere, but sometimes it feels that way. So many books, never enough time…

How do you deal with it? Do you have a system for your TBR pile that actually works for you?