Project TBR Zero: The beginning of the 5th year

A fresh new year starts in my quest to finish my TBR. And I have to make some changes around here. There’s nothing wrong with going with the flow and reading whatever my mood dictates. These posts are becoming monotonous to me. I’ve been cooking with the same spices for a long time, and sometimes I need to use something new to potentially make the recipe taste even better.

Since there’s a new year ahead of me, why not start by doing a haul of all the books I own? Because while saying I have over 80 books in my TBR seems like a lot, at least it does to me, how does that number compare to my entire library? Without counting digital editions, I have 243 books read on my shelves – if I’m not missing any – plus 9 repeated books (same story, different edition). That alone is already pretty impressive. I also have 29 DNFed books and, not to forget, 75 books in my physical TBR. This gives a total of 356 books, give or take if I miscounted any.

If I count only my physical TBR, then I have yet to read about 21% of all my books. But if I count all my TBR, then the number goes up to 24%. It’s still a really good number. Less than a quarter of the books I own are to be read. Not bad. At least that goes to show that I’m not that much of an impulse buyer. It’s not like I keep buying more books than I can read. That being said, I bought 4 more books in June.

June

That’s right. The TBR has grown a little more in June. I had my scheduled biannual use of store credit where I bought 3 books with it: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante, to continue with the Neapolitan series; I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, which has been on my priority list for a long time; and The Healing Season of Pottery by Yeon Somin. Then I went to the Lisbon book fair. It’s one of the biggest in the country, and it was my first time attending. I wasn’t planning on buying anything. I had already satiated that desire. However, for each day of the fair, each vendor has a book of the day with a 40 to 50% discount. And fate had it that day would be the day The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante was the book of the day. So I came home with the Lisbon book fair checked off my bucket list, and the final book in the Neapolitan series under my arm. Needless to say, I didn’t want to spend any more money on books until December. That didn’t happen, but let’s not get ahead of the story.

The month began with the conclusion of two books I started in the months before. My extremely long reread of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (since March) and Adèle by Leïla Slimani. This was my second Slimani book, and now I know to expect anything other than weird from her. It’s the best word to describe her books. I didn’t know this was her debut novel, and maybe because of that I felt there was something missing in the story, like it didn’t reach its full potential.

Then, as a palate cleanser, and to simply read something fun and light, I read Garlic and the Vampire and Garlic and the Witch by Bree Paulsen. It’s the cutest thing imaginable. I borrowed them, but now I need a copy for myself. The art style, the colours, everything is so cute. I need to find a witch that can teach me how to create vegetable people to help around the garden. It was so lovely and a great way to gather strength to plummet back into the dystopian world of Divergent.

July

Since in June I decided last minute to join HRCYED 3.0, I had to finish reading Divergent by Veronica Roth before the 7th when I would officially start the year-long readathon. With that book out of the way, I was free to focus my attention on the books for the challenge, like Theodora’s Tea Shop by Christy Anne Jones. I got an eARC for this debut novel and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I already posted a review where you can read all my thoughts there. Keeping the theme of debut novels, I also finished The Secret World of Briar Rose by Cindy Pham that I had started a while back. I also have a review of how the reading went, and while not as enjoyable as Theodora’s Tea Shop, it wasn’t bad.

Since summer was already in full swing, I didn’t want to miss the chance to read a bit outside, so I grabbed Waking Nightmare by Carly Anne West and gave it a reread while lazing in a hammock. At the beginning of the year, I bought the rest of the books in the Hello Neighbor series, and now I’m determined to finish them by the end of the year.

August

Because the star of a new HRCYED month is on the 7th, a lot of the books I start in one month, I only finish them in the next. This was the case of The Healing Season of Pottery and Waking Nightmare. While I read most of them in July, I only finished them in the first few days of August. So they count as August reads. It’s in moments like these that tracking books read by month feels ridiculous.

Rereading Waking Nightmare was really fun since I forgot about a lot of the plot. The Neighbor becomes really creepy in this one, and I’m worried about where the story is going to go. Will it all be a child’s fertile imagination at play, or is he really hiding something? In contrast, The Healing Season of Pottery only made me question why I bought the book. My disappointment with it comes a lot from the edition I read instead of the story itself. But that too could be better.

To keep right on track to reread the entire Divergent series, I continued with Insurgent. The first time I’m rereading it, and I forgot about so many things. It was like being surprised again. But also a bittersweet moment, to be honest. On one hand, it was like reading it for the first time again, but on the other, a bit of sadness for forgetting something so dear to my heart.

September

Right at the end of August, I picked up Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern and had a great time. I want to read everything the author has published. Her writing is so much fun. It’s humorous without being comical. The story is light even when approaching really hard topics. One of the biggest ones in this book is miscarriage. The author isn’t trying to resolve anything or provide an accurate representation. It’s a starting point, something that happened, but not at all the focus of the story. And I can see how it can be a hard story to read for anyone who went through the same experience. The first book I tried to read by Cecelia Ahern was The Gift, and I had to give up. The story arc was something I wasn’t ready to read, even though the writing and premise were very interesting.

However, regardless of how I might feel towards a story, I have to recognise that I really like her writing. The tiny sprinkle of magic to make the plot interesting, the lightness, easiness, and the humour. It’s happy writing. Even when the conversation is hard, there’s a calmness, almost pragmatic style to her writing. But when she wants to, she can also pack a punch right in the gut that makes you bend over in pain.

What doesn’t cause any pain is reading I Who Have Never Known Men. And that’s because there’s nothing left to hurt. You can’t feel pain if you are nothing but a carcass of the person you once were. When I closed the book, part of me stayed trapped between the pages. I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about this book, and that’s why it was on my priority list. However, nothing could have prepared me for how I would feel about it. This emptiness is something no words can fully grasp. I try and try to explain to myself, to my reading journal, or to you why it’s so great, how much it impacted me, how I feel after reading it, why everyone should read it, but no words seem to do a good job. There is such a connection between reader and book that only experiencing it can explain. I never thought I would have another book to rival Wuthering Heights as my favourite book of the year.

Speaking of favourite books, The Sixth Faction by Veronica Roth comes out in October, and this girl pre-ordered her copy. One more book to add to the TBR, and I can’t even read it right now. I’m in the middle of Allegiant, ready to wrap that book before the new one comes in the mail. I just hope it’s here on release day and doesn’t hit any traffic along the way. And this is the last book I buy in 2026! It won’t be…

For the upcoming year

Picking back up from my introduction, it’s time to add some spice to this project again. I have been pretty chill about it. That I would reach a low TBR when the time was right. But I’m getting a bit tired of this up-and-down and staying the same. Hopefully HRCYED is going to continue helping me pick up books from my TBR. However, I need to control the influx of new books as well.

A strict no-buy doesn’t work for me because I need to buy twice a year. As I’ve mentioned above, the bookstore I usually shop at accumulates store credit with every purchase. That value only lasts for 6 months. So every 6 months I make a purchase to discount that money while leaving more for the future. Like a perpetual circle of spending money. And buying books twice a year, it really isn’t that much of a problem. However, I can limit my spending to just those two times a year – which I already failed in the first 4 months – or I can use my reading to control how much I’m allowed to buy.

I’m going to ignore the 4 books I bought in June, otherwise, I will always be trying to catch up. This is something I thought about doing now and not back then. So instead of being a challenge for a full year, it’s more like 9 months. Hopefully I’ll birth a lovely small TBR – I’m sorry for the imagery. Doing a ratio of 1 to 1 isn’t going to change much. So I could do a buy 1 for every 2 books read or even buy 1 for every 3 books read. And I’m more inclined to the latter. I bought 1 book in September ( The Sixth Faction) and have read 4 books from my TBR. So far, I have a surplus and expect to grow it even more in preparation for buying more books in December. I also rarely buy more than 3 books at a time, so by December I need to have read 9 books. I think that’s doable.

So, if I buy the minimum and keep my ratio of 1 to 3, then my TBR should drop to the 60s. Assuming I’ll buy 10 new books and read 30 from my TBR. That number is reasonable compared to what I read in a year, and this way there is also a benchmark to reach at the end of this. I have no idea if this is even going to work, but I want to believe that it will.