2025 is nearing a close, and I have a few series on my shelves that I need to read to clear my physical TBR pile for the year. I have a policy where I aim to read all the physical books on my shelves within the year I buy them, and this practice has had many positive effects on my reading and my life. So, to aid in accountability and share my excitement for what series I will be reading in the next few weeks, here is the state of my physical TBR pile.

Before I get into it, let me explain a few things. Culling my physical TBR each year is a goal and practice I have implemented for my own sake, both for financial security and personal expression. I am the kind of person who gets shopping guilt before I even buy something, and I know that if I spend my money on something, I need to know I am doing it because I genuinely will enjoy/love/use the item. When it comes to books, I have several steps in place for this process to be most effective. They are not followed 100% of the time, but there is at least a 95% success rate with my record.

One, I read almost everything from the library first. I need to read the book so that I know the themes, characters, plot narrative, language use, etc., are to my liking. I need to know that not only will I enjoy this book in reading it the first time, but that I will enjoy it again and again, and that it will be a valid purchase for my bookshelf. This is especially important for series, because, as I am sure we are all aware of, series can change and take a different direction midway through, and the reason we loved the books at the beginning of the journey can become a much smaller element of the overall series. Or, as I have seen most often in recent years, the first book is written in a very different way than the second (whether it is because the first book got a lot more editing or there were style changes, a development in the perspectives and narrative structure, etc.) I just have to get the overall feel for the series before I commit to buying all the books, especially for larger series, harder-to-find series, or popular series.

Two, I need to know just how much I love the book/series. There are some books that I buy after I have read them because I really like the series, the tone, the themes and ideas developing, and so forth. But there are some books I adore with every fibre of my being, like Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Shadow of the Leviathan series, Martha Wells’s The Murderbot Diaries, and Scott Lynch’s The Gentleman Bastard Sequence. These books are things I know that I will reread for at least a decade, if not longer, and I love so much about the books that I would gladly get hardcover versions of them, which is a huge investment, especially so in New Zealand, where adult paperback books alone are around $35. A series I am currently looking to read is Ken Liu’s The Dandelion Dynasty Series, and paperbacks for those books are sitting at $50 each.

With this in mind, you can likely empathise with my plight to read my physical TBR pile promptly. I don’t like having books sitting around that I haven’t read, that I know I don’t plan to reread anytime soon, or that I perhaps even made the mistake of buying, thinking I would reread them. It just isn’t worth it in my eyes to buy books I don’t view as incredible works that inspire me as a writer or enchant me as a reader. So, I have my physical TBR cut down.

On my list of books I have bought that I need to read are The Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett, something I feel won’t be a difficulty at all given my thorough enjoyment of the Shadow fo the Leviathan series, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Books of Earthsea, and Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law Series (the trilogy and the standalone Best Served Cold). That makes eight titles – easy, right? The Books of Earthsea I bought as a complete omnibus, meaning they are all in one big tome for me to flick through. But there is a problem.

I may have had the itch to request over 30 books from the library that need to be read before the end of the year. Actually, as it currently stands, I have 14 library books on my shelf, 18 for pickup, and at least another 10 in transit. That makes 42 library books. Ergo, I have around 50 books to read before the year’s end. Have I mentioned that summer is around the corner for me, and I don’t like reading in the hotter months?

Not to stress. After all, I can always return the library books I don’t get around to and request them another time. I think I have unintentionally made things challenging for myself through sheer ambition and excitement. I like the sound of all the books I have requested, and I am eager to get to them. I am about to finish my scheduled exam invigilation for semester two in the next few days, and while there will be days throughout the next month where I have to work a few hours here and there, I feel I will have a decent amount of success in reading these books from my physical TBR and the library requests. You may be asking why I’m differentiating these piles, and the answer is simply that library books work in a very friendly, circular fashion where they are free for me to request, read, and return. I don’t put too much pressure on myself to read them by the return date.

If you have read The Founders Trilogy, The First Law Series, or The Books of Earthsea, let me know your thoughts. I am always interested in seeing what people think of books and series, especially ones that have been around for a while. What is your physical TBR pile looking like? Maybe this can be the incentive you need to pick a few up and snuggle in for a read this week.