My TBR shelf by pages - January 2013

One year ago today, I figured out how many books I had of various lengths on my TBR pile, to get an idea of the "bigness" of the books I need to read. I also challenged myself to read my three longest TBR books over the next year. 6 months later, I did an update.

Continuing this tradition, it's time for another update! Here are my current book length stats, in a table with the previous stats for comparison. Because HTML is fun!

	January 17, 2012	July 17, 2012	January 17, 2013
>1000	4	4	2
>900	6	6	4
>800	12	11	11
>700	19	20	24
>600	30	33	34
>500	57	58	62
>400	105	109	128
>300	178	188	223
<300	470	513	527
Total	648	701	750

Basically, other than the progress I made on the very longest books, all the numbers have gone up, because I just bought so many books last year! This year, I plan to be a lot more disciplined in terms of reading more books than I bring in each month. So hopefully at the next update the numbers will have gone down across the chart.

My three longest TBR books one year ago were The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, Shōgun, and The Witching Hour. I ended up reading two of those. I didn't get to Shōgun. My mistake was waiting too long to get started; I didn't read any of these books in the first 6 months, so it ended up feeling like way too many pages. This year I'll make sure to start earlier rather than cramming near the end.

Here are my three longest books now, which I plan to read in the next year:

1. Shōgun by James Clavell (1211 pages)
2. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (1006 pages)
3. The Golden Book of Faerie by O.R. Melling (946 pages)

My TBR shelf by pages - 6 months later

You may recall that 6 months ago, I sorted my to read shelf on Goodreads by number of pages, and counted how many books I had of various lengths. The results were encouraging. I discovered that the majority of my books are under 300 pages long, which makes me feel better about eventually getting through my mountain of books. Then I resolved to read my three longest books in 2012, and at least that many each year after. (Spoiler: I have not yet reached that goal.)

So let's see how the numbers have changed in the last half a year!

The numbers as of January 17, 2012:
>1000 pages: 4 books
>900 pages: 6
>800 pages: 12
>700 pages: 19
>600 pages: 30
>500 pages: 57
>400 pages: 105
>300 pages: 178

<300 pages: 470
Total: 648

The numbers as of July 17, 2012:
>1000 pages: 4 books
>900 pages: 6
>800 pages: 11
>700 pages: 20
>600 pages: 33
>500 pages: 58
>400 pages: 109
>300 pages: 188

<300 pages: 513
Total:  701

Erm, not very impressive. My number of "long" books (over 300 pages) has gone up by 10, but at least it went up only with books under 800 pages long. My number of short books has also gone up, by 43. That would probably be the fault of the R.L. Stine books... My TBR shelf has gone up by a total of 53 books in the last 6 months.

As for my three longest books, I haven't read any of them yet. However, one of them is the next book on my Anne Rice list, so I should be reading it soon. And I'm currently reading my 7th longest book, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. So in another 6 months, I'm confident that these numbers will be looking a little more impressive! Good thing I just started a read-a-thon!

My TBR shelf by pages

I had some spare time on my hands a few days ago, and decided to count my "long" books on Goodreads, where long is not well-defined but has something to do with number of pages. It all started with me sorting my to read shelf by number of pages, and saying "oh look, I only have 4 books on my to read list that are over 1000 pages!", and then Mr. Towering Pile told me that books are long if they're over 300 pages, so I should count that. And that's how I ended up counting how many books I had over various lengths, from 300 to 1000. To make a long story short, I decided to keep this list of numbers, and see what the difference is at various times throughout the year. Because I'm cool like that! Ha..ha...

So these are the numbers as of January 17, 2012:
>1000 pages: 4 books
>900 pages: 6
>800 pages: 12
>700 pages: 19
>600 pages: 30
>500 pages: 57
>400 pages: 105
>300 pages: 178

Since I have 648 books on my to read shelf at the moment, that means that 470 of them are less than 300 pages long! I find that statistic comforting, somehow. Like, maybe that means I won't be in my 70s when I have finally read all the books I own.

On a related note, I've decided to read at least the three longest books on my to read shelf in 2012! This is just for fun and to make my to read shelf less intimidating. Between that and my normal reading, those numbers up above should go down a lot this year. I realise there's a Chunkster Challenge that would be appropriate for these goals, but I find that challenge too elitist for my liking (it's nothing personal, I just don't do challenges that are based on the idea that audiobooks and e-books are less "impressive" than paper books).

So, here are my 3 longest books:

1. The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (1293 pages)
2. Shōgun by James Clavell (1211 pages)
3. The Witching Hour by Anne Rice (1043 pages)