I’ll Never Read Them All

I’m feeling kind of sad this morning. A little down. You see, yesterday I went through my goodreads tbr and deleted the books I’m not particularly interested in anymore, as well as a hand full of duplicates. Now, my tbr is smaller than the average book blogger’s, only about 75, and yesterday I eliminated 10-15 books from it.

And as of today I have ADDED about 10 books.

Because new books are being written and published all the time. Books that sound fascinating and amazing! There are so many books that I want to read!

But I average about two books a month.

There’s no way I can keep up. No matter how many books I read, my list of books I want to read will always be getting longer and longer and longer because there are always more and more books. Which is wonderful! We are so lucky to live in an age where books are so readily and easily available and there is such a variety that we never have to worry about getting bored.

But I’m feeling sad. Because I realized.

I will never be able to read them all.

I will die having not read something that I really wanted to. There are worlds out there that I will never experience, people I will never meet, places I will never go. Probably some of the books I don’t read will be 5-star books, all-time favorite books. Books I would have loved and cherished and proudly displayed on my bookshelf. And I’ll never read them.

Sometimes I look at other book bloggers and wonder how they stay so up-to-date on upcoming releases. How is it that they know a book is coming before the cover is even released? Why don’t I know to? The truth is, I avoid finding out. I’m scared to know about all the wonderful books out there because I know I’ll probably never read them.

So I’m feeling sad this morning.

But there is good news!

My mom and my reddit Secret Santa have both sent me a few books that I’m not very interested in reading. Recently I’ve been debating what to do about them. Do I take the time to read them anyway out of respect for the gift? Do I just leave them on my tbr shelf for the rest of time? Do I take them to Half Price and hope the gifters never find out?

But this morning’s existential crisis has made up my mind for me. There’s not enough time in this life to waste on books you’re not really interested in. With so many books out there that I’m excited to read and might not get to, why would I waste a precious two weeks on a book I don’t care about?

So today on my way to pick my son up from daycare I will be taking those four books to the Little Free Library. I’m not interested, but some teenage girl will be. And that’s a better life for those books than sitting, unread on a shelf until the end of time.

Do you guys ever feel sad when you think about all the books you’ll never read? How do you cope?