Reading in Reykjavík

The TBR bookcase The feeling has been building in me for some time of wanting to get rid of some books I previously assigned to the keeper shelves. I also want to reorganise the keeper books in order to get all the books of each genre shelved together, instead of stuffed wherever I can find room for them. I also think this could be an incentive to read or cull some of the older books on my TBR shelves, e.g. leftovers from the unfinished mystery reading challenge and other hilludraugar . What are hilludraugar ? I hear you ask. Well, it's an Icelandic word, here shown in the plural (the singular form is hilludraug u r ) that conveys the same meaning of uselessness as the English term "white elephant", but refers to smaller items and not necessarily expensive ones. It literally means "ghost on a self" and originally refereed to a thing that was haunting one's shelves and being useless and gathering dust but now has a wider meaning of "thing that...

I‘ve had a little clean-up of my „TBR-owned“ list and removed about 30 books. Some I had forgotten to remove when I finished reading them, some were books I culled and forgot to purge off the list and the rest were books of a kind I don‘t read from cover to cover and I had added accidentally. The last are reference books and certain types of cookbooks, i.e. ones that are pure recipe collections.  This means that the TBR tally is once more under 800 books – 786 to be precise – and that‘s where I hope to keep it. If all goes well and I continue on the reading streak I‘m on now, it might even dip below 700 by the end of new year.  One can always hope.

I mentioned in the In memoriam post that I inherited some of my grandmother's books. They weren't a bequest, as she didn't leave a will, but I think she pretty much knew what would go where once she was gone. I, for example, am the only one of her adult descendants who is interested in folklore and fairy tales, so I got her collection of those, along with some historical novels, cookbooks and miscellaneous other books. I have entered 43 of those volumes (some of which contain several books) into my book database so far, but there are more waiting for me because we still haven't explored a number of book boxes my uncle was storing for her, and in addition to that there is a stack waiting to be gone through in her apartment. In addition to this unexpected addition to my library, I also acquired 27 books from my grandfather not  long ago. He had a sizeable collection of books and decided that he wanted to pass them on to his children and their children and grandchildren...

I find it incredibly difficult to cull my books. I convince myself that I have a good reason for keeping every one of my keepers. Most of the time I have, but not always. Generally, I keep a book I know or strongly believe I will read again. I have also kept some of my old university text books, knowing that they can be good for reference, and so it has proved, for some of them. Others I keep just because I once enjoyed them, and might again, which leads me me to the next category: the many books that I keep planning to re-read, but I never get round to. My travelogue collection is big on those. And then there are the travel guides I keep that are years out of date, because they have memories attached to them. Can't let go of those, now can I? I cull about 95% of my owned books after I read them, which is a lot. Many go on my BookMooch list, some I give back to the charity shop, and the hardcovers and the paperbacks that are in a 'like new' condition I donate to the library...

I recently compiled an Excel spreadsheet containing information about my TBR books so I could keep better track of how I am doing in the informal “reduce the TBR stack” challenge. I excluded reference books, craft books, cookbooks, travel guides and books one rarely if ever reads from cover to cover, and according to this reckoning I have, as of today, 789 TBR books in my book collection. I had not realised I owned so many books I had not read. Of the genres, about half are mysteries, thrillers or crime novels of one kind or another. The second biggest genre is novels of all sorts, including 81 historical non-mystery novels. This is followed by 55 romances and 49 travelogues and a smattering of other genres. Since I get rid of 9 out of every 10 books I own either through BookMooch or by donating them a local charity after I have read them, there is a lot of shelf space I can free just by reading more of my own books and fewer library books. When I have finished reading the current cro...