Another year, another wall of unread books.  When I started blogging in 2008 I took this picture of my unread books…

Oh, how worried I was. “That’s Max looking a little nervous that all those books might topple over on him!  So, instead of being funny, it made me a little sad that I had gotten this far behind 😦  I will go to the book sale this weekend, but I’m taking Jason to limit my craziness.  But, then I need to spend a few months reading through my backlog before buying anything new.”

Haha!  So, silly I was to think this wasn’t going to get worse.

So, every year I recreate the wall (the same way, because I can get a little OCD about things) and then add the new books I’ve acquired.

For those of you who saw my Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-Thon mini-challenge you will be prepared for my big reveal.

I managed to read 25 from my stacks last year and give some more, BUT somehow I acquired (through giveaway, book sales, gifts) a net addition of 98 to my overflowing stacks.   That’s a total of 837  unread books.

Some of you may wonder how long it takes me to recreate these stacks every year.  Because I want them in the same place they were the year before I do a few hours of prep by putting the books of each stack together, then another few hours (3 maybe) to move the books to the space. I consider this my workout for the week 🙂 I count, update my lists, take a few pictures for another 45 minutes or so.   It’s always the cleanup that takes the longest, because I’m tired and do it all in a night’s time.  There is no way I’d do this when Gage was awake, I’ve had stacks fall over before, although not this year.

I took this picture a month ago and, thanks to the 24 hour read-a-thon, I’ve already read 6 and gave away 7.  Okay, okay, I’ve also acquired 7 more so the dent isn’t as large as I’d like but I’m working on it 🙂

Time to fess up.  How many books are you hoarding holding in your TBR piles?