A TBR list is the short set of books you actually intend to read next, written somewhere you will look at it. That is the entire idea. Two habits make it work. Keep it short enough to take in at a glance, about ten titles, because a list you cannot see the bottom of stops being a plan and becomes a mood. And allow yourself to remove a book without a hearing. A TBR you are afraid to cut turns into a debt, and no one has ever read their way out of a debt.
You do not need software for this. An index card, a page at the back of a notebook, the inside of a cupboard door. Add a title when you hear about one. Strike it when you finish it, or when you notice you have stopped wanting it. Read the list over on the first of the month and be honest about which books are on there out of guilt rather than appetite. Those are the ones dragging the whole stack down.
That is the useful portion, and I deliver it first because the charter requires the practical news before the weather. The bell has now rung twice. Stand clear of the fountain.
HEAR YE. What follows is the official To-Be-Read Forecast for the twenty-eighth of July, observed from the square, cried at the top of the hour, and contradicted by no one currently awake.
Stacks settled. Warm dust general across all horizontal surfaces, heaviest on the two books nearest the lamp. The tower on the nightstand gained four degrees of lean between midnight and dawn and is now, in the judgment of this office, a structure. It has a north face. Approach it from the south.
Persons continued to arrive from the east in light but steady precipitation, beginning around four and never fully clearing. They came in damp and blinking and asked the front desk for a door that is not this door. Several described a place with a bright entrance and a great many free things in it. This office has no report of such a place and has cried the hours here for twenty-nine years. We took their coats. We offered them the cocoa, which is old. Some stayed.
Origin of the arrivals: unknown. Cause: unknown. Volume: increasing. The crier's office does not speculate on weather it cannot see coming, but it does note the barometer, and the barometer has been falling since March.
Excellent reading conditions through the noon hour. Visibility good for short chapters, poor for anything requiring a family tree at the front. Light from the west window strong enough to read by until about two, at which point it moves onto the wall and reads the wall instead. Nothing to be done about that. The wall has been at it for years.
A guilt front moves in from the northwest, bringing the book a colleague lent you in April, the book you told a wedding guest you were "just about to start," and the one with the sticker on it. Expect brief periods of shelf rearrangement mistaken for progress. The front should pass by evening. It always passes by evening. It also always comes back, generally on a Sunday.
One (1) chapter promised. Four (4) chapters likely. Isolated risk of finishing the book at an hour you will have to lie about tomorrow. Bedside lamp advisory remains in effect until the plot resolves.
A large book is approaching. Nine hundred pages, translated, with a map in the front and a list of characters who all share two names. It has been visible on the horizon since spring and is expected to make landfall on your desk within the week. It cannot be outrun. It can only be started. Historically, the ones with maps are worth it.
Beyond that, unsettled. Somebody will recommend something to you at a party and you will add it to the list in a state of enthusiasm that will not survive the drive home. This is normal seasonal behavior and requires no action beyond the striking of the title.
Stack advisory. Do not alphabetize during high winds. Two years ago a crier attempted it with the window open and we are still finding the letter M.
Sample chapter warning. Reading the first ten pages of six books in one sitting produces a condition the office calls fog. The remedy is to pick the one you thought about in the shower.
General notice to arrivals. If you came here looking for wherever it is you meant to go, the office bears you no ill will and would like you to know that the chairs are good. We have a cataloged room through the back if you would like something to put on the list, and the count of what you get through is kept for you whether you asked for that or not. Nobody here will ask you to sign anything. Nobody here can. The pen is on a string and the string is measured to the desk.
That concludes the forecast. Manage the pile the plain way (short list, honest cuts, monthly look) and the weather over it stays mild. If you want titles to feed the list, the shelves are inventoried in the Booktrovert Library, and if you would rather chase a number than a stack, the terms are laid out in the Booktrovert Reading Challenge, which is being kept somewhere higher up by a man with a lamp.
The next crying is at the top of the hour. Until then the square is yours, the dust is warm, and there are more books coming toward all of us than any forecast can hold. Buy one of them. Authors are fragile organisms and they cannot hear a bell from this far away.
Loudly,
Booktrovert #2139