I just counted the books on my TBR (To Be Read) shelves and discovered I have well over 200 novels in waiting.

This may be why Maven Jacq refers to her TBR pile as her NTBR pile. (Never To Be Read.)

Two hundred plus books. Not counting the dozen or so e-books I’ve bought in the past couple months and haven’t had a chance to read, or the two dozen books I requested in the past couple weeks through inter-library loan, or the shelves full of craft books I keep promising myself I’ll read, or the new Harry Potter book given to me by the awesome Maven Darcy, or the twenty or so other books coming out this year by chaptermates and auto-buy authors.

If I underestimate by not counting books I haven’t yet received/bought (in order to err on the side of caution), that’s easily 250 books.

Wow.

Even for a confessed bibliophile like myself, that number seems a bit daunting. Okay, mega daunting.

If I make a point to read one complete novel every single weeknight, it’ll be 50 weeks before I’m caught up.

(And 50 weeks from today will be… right in time for next year’s RWA National, which means I’ll come home with another hundred or so new books. At a minimum.)

Holy crap.

If I stop sleeping/eating/breathing, would I even have time to read a complete novel every single weeknight? Does anyone (other than invalids, convicts, and hobos) have that kind of time??

I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to give some of the books away. And I do. At least once a week on my blog, I send a prize to one random commenter just to spread some good karma around. Even at that rate (which means giving away over 50 books a year) I’d still be looking at 200+ books collecting dust in every room of my house.

But the fact of the matter is, I don’t WANT to give them away unread. What if I like them? After all, the cover/title/blurb is what caught my eye in the first place. What if I want it for my keeper shelf? What if that writer turns out to be my New Favorite Author?

What’s a girl to do?