Confessions of a Book Junkie

I admit it. I'm a book junkie. I see books I haven't read lined up on a shelf and I get excited. They're like tiny Christmas presents wrapped up in pretty paper. Each one holds a whole world that I can slip into and discover. And like Veruca Salt I want them ALL and I want them NOW. And that's a problem. If books were food, I'd be 200 pounds overweight.

So this year I've come up with a plan - not a goal, but a plan. I do have reading goals, mainly, to read a few classics. (I started Great Expectations before Oprah chose it for the book club.) But my PLAN is to dig deep into my massive TBR pile. I got a bit overzealous with the book buying last year, and a bit overly optimistic about how much free time I would have. (This is just some of the books I got in December of 2011 - only two are ARCs.)




Last year my goal was to read 100 books. Up from the 80 or so I read in 2009. I thought it would be simple. I'm a fast reader, so two books a week would be no problem. I started off great but then writing, and critiquing became more important and I got WAY behind. I think I finished the year at something like 44. So THIS year, like my Sister in Scribe Kristi, I'm not going to count books. I'm just going to read them.

My rule this year is that I'm not allowed to buy ANY new books (save for a few must have pre-orders I placed last year) until I've read at least 20 of the books I already own. If this takes me all of 2011, so be it. Um. I hope.

What are your reading goals this year?

My Massive TBR Pile

I'm one of those people who dives head first into something once she decides she wants to do it. So last year, when I decided I wanted to write YA, I went a little crazy with the idea that I needed to read as much YA as possible (and okay, I WANTED to read as much YA as possible). Hence my massive TBR pile.

I finally got around to semi-organizing my bookshelf (read: actually putting the books on the shelves the right way) and now I'm faced with this:

Isn't it beautiful?

I've counted somewhere around 137 books on those shelves that are just waiting to be read. (And that's fiction only, not research books.) My goal was to read at least 100 books this year (at 2 per week, I'm on track, go me!) but after seeing how many books I have, and how many books coming out this year that I want to get, I'm thinking I need to up that number.

Here's a closer look at what's in my pile. I actually get sort of giddy just looking at it!
Isn't it beautiful?


Any suggestions on must reads that I should move to the top?