Blogger Babble: The Terrifying Choice that is Your Next Book

We've all been there - you are close to finishing a book and you just don't know how to decide what to pick up next. There's a huge commitment that you are making here - hundreds of pages of commitment and especially if the book is a standalone or the beginning of a new series: That's a whole new cast of characters with their own backgrounds and personalities. It's anxiety inducing, really!

I mean, there's a combination of millions of factors and you need to be able to pick up the book that most closely matches your needs. What if you pick up the wrong book? Could it mean that you won't enjoy it because it's just the wrong book for that week?

Non-bookish people really have no clue just how difficult it can be to be a bookworm sometimes.

Here's a few of the methods that I use to help me through the taming of the terrifying beast that is my TBR pile.

First and most boringly are my scheduled reads. By this, I mean books that I just have to have read because I've made a commitment to read them. ARCs come first on this pile and more often than not this dictates what I am picking up next since these days I seem to have a small but never-ending pile of ARCs.

Make a new TBR - and by this I don't mean getting rid of those precious titles you have already painstakingly collected/sought out/been advised to read by all the other bloggers or Goodreads or your friends and family - I mean create a short-list of your TBR. This may lull you into a false sense of security that you have some form of control over that beast... But it's good to have hope.

This one is a fun one! My favourite way to do this is to join a relevant Book Club or Group - Normally there will be a monthly read or even a number of monthly reads for you to choose from. I'm in a YA Goodreads group and there's always 4 monthly reads to vote on and choose from. If you've chosen the right group these will probably conveniently be off your TBR pile OR could be books that should have been on your TBR pile in the first place. You're Welcome!

One of the things I adore about reading multiple books at once (and quite possibly the reason that I started doing this in the first place) is that you are able to pick and choose depending on your mood. You can pick up a Fantasy, a Historical Fiction, a Sci Fi and a Romance and when you've read a few pages of each you can then choose who you're taking to bed for the night. 

Finally - if none of this is working for you, throw everything else out the window, ignore your TBR and pick up that new shiny book over there - the one you just have to buy because of coverly love, or the one that called to you on Amazon/Kobo/B&N or the one you just stumbled across - because sometimes you can avoid dealing with that scary TBR!

How do you choose your next book? Do you have any tips on how to tame your TBR? Do you read multiple books at once? Are you part of a book club? Talk to me in the comments below.