Ellie’s TBR Game

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Hello Hello! How are you all?

I hope you have all had time to rest after the festive days. I have been back doing university work since yesterday, I still have a lot to get finished, but I am very much looking forward to having it all done, finally being able to relax properly and read!

Today’s is a very unique post because I’m finally going to be able to tell you all about my new TBR game that I have set up for the new year. I have been waiting for ages to tell you all about it and I’m very glad I finally found the time to write this post up!

I decided in the middle of 2020 that I needed to work out a way to read more of my physical unread books because there are so many that I can’t even count them, but I think between physical books on my shelves and books on my Kindle, I must be nearing 700 books. YIKES!

I’ve really liked reading about TBR Games this year whether it be Fiona’s TBR Game or many of the TBR games you can find on BookTube and I knew I wanted to do something that would be fun for me, but not take ages to set up or make me dread getting it ready every month, so this is my easy TBR Game!

The first thing I did when I decided to make a TBR game was look at my shelves and go through every single book I own, whether it’s a physical book or a book on my Kindle and sort them all into spreadsheets by genre. And yes it did take a very long time!

I now have 16 “genre” categories and I have made pretty banners for each!! I have also included a Kindle “genre category” in which all the books are mixed, be it author requests, ARCs, NetGalleys or my personal TBR, I thought it would be too complicated to put these all in spreadsheets, so decided to track them as just Kindle books.

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Here are how many books I have in each spreadsheet, as of the 29th of December (I have added the books I got for Christmas and will add any new books I get each month and try not to forget to update the tally in each TBR and Wrap-Up post):

• 15 books in the Children’s and Middle Grade list
• 42 books in the Classics list
• 9 books in the Contemporary list
• 25 in the Fantasy list
• 7 books in the Fiction list
• 1 book in the Graphic Novel category (yes, this needs fixing aha, please give me recommendations)!
• 48 books in the Historical Fiction category
• 3 books in the Horror list
• 356 books in my Kindle spreadsheet
• 11 books in my Mystery list
• 27 books in the Nonfiction category
• 3 Poetry books
• 21 Romance books
• 5 books in the Science Fiction list
• 6 books in the Thriller list
• 48 books in the YA Fantasy spreadsheet
• And I have a final spreadsheet where I have put books that I own that are not the 1st book in the series, or the next one I’m up to, so those 55 books will stay in there until I can get more of the series read!

That takes my total physical TBR to 682 books, so I was not far off with my prior guess of 700. This sounds like A LOT, but I am hoping to get through them all thanks to this new game!

I have taken some pieces of coloured paper and written each genre on them, folded them and put them in a little jar on my bookcase!

How does Ellie’s TBR Game work?

Each month, I will (or my fiancé) will pick 5 pieces of paper out of the TBR jar, read what the genre is, go into the spreadsheets and do a random number generator to pick what book I will read for each genre chosen. And then once I have read these books, I will tick them off in my spreadsheets!

It sounds a little bit of a faff, but my brain is a very organised mad brain and I need this kind of structure to actually make things work, so don’t laugh!

The books that are chosen from the genre TBR jar and the spreadsheets don’t include any books I will be reading for blog tours, ARCs, author requests, book clubs or readathons. I know this sounds like a lot, but I’m used to reading an average of 10 to 15 books a month, even when I’m very busy with university work, so it should all be fine.

Because I have SO MANY Kindle and NetGalley books to get through, I will be reading one book at random from that spreadsheet every month, regardless if it another Kindle paper is picked from the jar!

Since I went to the trouble of making pretty banners for each genre, I’ll use these in my TBR posts and in my bullet journal!

Well, that’s it, it’s not very exciting, unfortunately, and a bit all over the place, but I really like the set-up I now have for my TBR and hopefully, this will help me tackle the unread books I own, even if I only read 5 of them a month, on top of all my other reads!

My fiancé picked the first 5 books for my TBR game and I will be talking about them tomorrow in my January TBR – let’s just say that he is good at picking books at random from spreadsheets!

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed this post, see you soon, stay safe,

Ellie xx