Finishing your TBR books

[LadyKate]

I like to read by author and find those short novellas and freebies are often enough to let me know if I want to read more of that author (or maybe if a new author wait until they mature a bit)

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by Catlady

For most of you, does the TBR pile = all owned and unread books? Or is it a subsection of such books?

I have thousands of unread books that I am happy to leave unread (e.g., many classics). Other unread books--a much smaller number--I fully intend to read ... someday.

Mostly it's unowned and unread but I'm starting to review that. In calibre I list my tbr as unread but without the tag 'exclude_tbr'. Up until now I've used this tag mainly to stop duplication i.e. I have some anthologies as single files which I've also split into individual ones for each book.

But I'm thinking I might start using it for other types of book too. There are the classics I will probably never read fully but keep for reference. Also things like the Barsoom books which I got as a single book, split, read the first and feel like I'll probably never read the other ten. The complete works of HG Wells anthology contains stuff I'll almost certainly never read - his political essays and so on - but I'll be surprised if I don't end up reading The Time Machine or War of the Worlds again every couple of years.

However that part of the TBR tends not to grow. So whether I finally end up reading them or not the main thing is whether the overall count is going down or not. Which of course it isn't.