I recently made a ‘to-be-read’ jar, full of pieces of paper with the titles of the books I currently own, but haven’t read.
I didn’t count them as I was writing them down, but I can say I have a log of all of my books (probably around 500 at this point) and I’ve read about half of them.
Of course, not all of the books are mine, some belong to my husband, Kyle. And some are textbooks from college that are probably obsolete now.
Do I have a use for an old logic text book? No. But it was the one I was unable to sell at the end of that year.
Journalism and Spanish text books aside (I kept those ones on purpose), I have a lot of books to read.
The reason I made a TBR jar was because I recently told my husband I wanted 30 books for my 30th birthday. That’s still just over two years away, since I’ll turn 28 on Nov. 28 this year, but we talked about what we each wanted for our 30th birthdays ahead of time to prepare.
He wants a semi-expensive hockey jersey, so I think 30 books is a far exchange for one of those.
I figured if he was committed to that, I should probably try and read all the books I currently have.
It’s not that I don’t want to read them, I look forward to every book, but sometimes it’s hard to find the time to sit down and read. Between work, hobbies, and generally taking care of a household of cleaning and dogs and cleaning up dog hair, I run out of time in a day.
Cleaning up dog hair could be another full time job.
I’m surprised, because I used to read a book in a day. I still can, but I used to have homework and school and play practices and chores and somehow I still had time to read a book in a 24-hour span.
My biggest tip to anyone who wants to read more is just to always have a book with you. It’s amazing how much you can read in a waiting room or standing in a line somewhere.
I’m putting it out there that I’m giving myself two years to read a lot of books, and maybe it’ll help me hold myself accountable.
Or, maybe in two years I’ll have read a handful of books and have 30 more books to add to my jar. Only time will tell.