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I'm sure you are all familiar with the term "life hack". Good news, there is now a "life hack" for picking the next book you're going to read, and to ensure you do eventually read everything you buy. All of our problems are solved with this magic formula! https://lifehacker.com/heres-a-way-to-make-sure-actually-read-the-books-you-bu-1....

Wait a minute. Wait a sec. It's basically saying the "secret" is to buy fewer books. Now I feel betrayed by this holy promise. If the solution were as easy as that, I would have been cured years ago. This person clearly doesn't understand how nefarious an unpurchased title can actually be.

It's correct about one thing. I do get spurred to hunt down this or that title thanks to whatever I'm reading right now. And it does go into a "I'll buy this someday, eventually" list. And I do tend to forget after a while why I was ever interested in that title, so it gets weeded out again. This is a good thing, yes. But my book buying habits are not merely predicated on specific titles I'm actively looking for (although that can be part of the mix.) It is more often based upon "Here is a book I did not come in here looking for, here is its bargain price, thus knocks an opportunity, this is destiny, I must succumb." You can't hack destiny.

I may have found a better solution. I have plotted what I can realistically read within the next year. And the next. And the next. Drawing titles from my TBR pile, putting them into some kind of logical order ... now 'booking' into 2028. I will see if this exercise gives me pause, the next time I'm contemplating adding something else. It had at least better have some line jumping power.

Must say that for several months I've been buying books much faster than I can read them and my TBR corner has had to expand. It would nice to live long enough to read most of them if not all. I'm also getting rid of quite a few books and I ditch immediately any book I'm not enjoying even if a reviewer thought it was wonderful.

I take my known TBR collection, break it into twenty charts of twenty books each. Then roll two d20 dice. The first roll dictates the table, the second dictates the book. Then the next book on the list that missed the tables gets slotted into the open line...

>4 gilroy:, how are you supposed to build up intolerable mental gymnastics anxiety stress (IMGAS, I'm coining this right now) if you just rely on dice all the time? Takes all the fun out of it.

Hard to read a series that way.

>5 Cecrow: The stress is what book goes in what table. Do I make new random tables each time or do I keep the same ones over the course of a month/year?

>2 Cecrow: - I have plotted what I can realistically read within the next year. And the next. And the next.

Now, that's an exercise I'm genuinely afraid to do. I just know I'll turn out to be buying them faster than I can read them.

>8 alaudacorax:, good news! It turns out there's a LOT of books with line jumping power, happens all the time. Or maybe that's bad news.

>4 gilroy: Heh, I also use a d20, although not exactly that way.