GoodReads Spring Cleaning | BOOKENDING SPRING

It’s the final post of Bookending Spring from me! Boo 😦 For this one, I’d like to give a quick shout out to Lia @ LiaIsLostInAStory, creator of the Down the TBR tag, which I used for inspiration today.

I’ve seen a lot of people doing ‘Down the TBR’ clearing out books from their GoodReads TBR, and I thought this would be a good topic for Bookending Spring. I’m going to do it a little differently to the Down the TBR posts though, and go through my entire list in one go. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be talking specific books. Instead, I’m going to draw up a list of criteria, and then go through the list. On GoodReads, I have two separate TBR type shelves: one for books I own but haven’t read yet, and another for books to buy. Today, we’re going to just go through my list of books to buy.

OK, we’re starting out with 315 books on the shelf. I’m going to be ruthless here because – hey, if there’s a book I’m meant to read that gets removed, I’m sure it’ll come back into my life at another point. Right now, I want to reduce the list right down so I don’t end up buying books I probably won’t read for the sake of having them because they were on my list.

So, what are my criteria going to be? I think it’ll be fun to see the numbers tick down, so I’m going to do a pass down my list for each new criteria, so you can watch it drop.
COUNTER: 315.

First, pretty basic. I’m going to double check that there aren’t any books on there that I’ve since bought.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this didn’t unearth very much.
COUNTER: 309.

Next, I’m going to remove books in genres I don’t read any longer, specifically fantasy, and romance, unless it’s a series I’ve already started buying. This one should be more ruthless!

OK, wow, knocked off about half of them! Most of these had been on the ‘to-buy’ shelf for ages.
COUNTER: 163.

Final round! This one’s a bit more… free choice. If I don’t think I’d read it, even if I had it, its going.

Not that many kicked off, but a fair few. Most of them were books I feel are just a bit too young for me now, but I probably would’ve enjoyed a couple of years ago, which was probably when I first shelved them.
COUNTER: 128.

Almost 200 got booted, altogether. I’m pretty impressed! This will certainly be a massive help when it comes to my family asking what I want for my birthday, now the list is more streamlined. I don’t really look at average ratings, so that’s not a method I used to knock them off, but you totally could if you wanted!