****QUESTIONS for the Avid Reader 2014, Volume III

This question is inspired one Suzanne/Poquette suggested the last time I asked for your questions.

QUESTION 25.
How do you handle your TBR? Is it a pile? is it a shelf or shelves? Do you try to keep a certain number of books on it? If so, do you move books off it or make a stalwart effort to read books from it?

How old is your TBR? That is, what is the greatest number of years a book has been on it? What is that book?

I have my TBR books mainly collected in 2 shelves for fiction. I have a few TBR fiction books that I keep with a collection (I like to keep all NYRB books together, virago, etc.). I have a separate TBR shelf for non-fiction. I catalog all of my TBR-owned books with that tag in my LT library. I have a separate TBR list in my LT library for books I'm interested in but don't own.

I've never collected books before due to space and money constraints, but now I've been amassing quite a few. My LT library tells me I have 145 TBR-owned books currently. Almost all of those have been bought in the past 2 years since we moved to a bigger house. If I keep going at that rate, I'm going to have a (wonderful) problem. Next year I want to make sure to read more from my shelves and am planning to pick a number to hold myself accountable (probably around 36 books - 3 a month and that's roughly half of the books I read in a typical year).

I do have one book that I've had since high school, so 19 years, that I've never gotten rid of but also never read. It is definitely my oldest TBR book - The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. I expect it will be staying there for a long time.

After returning to the US from Germany, where English language books were more expensive and the choice small, I discovered LT at pretty much the same time as charity booksales and internet book sites. So the TBR grew at an alarming pace, and has only in the past few years reached stasis. I keep the TBR shelved where I can see it, with the other books, usually, but there is also the stack on the bedside table which is all TBR and books I'm currently reading. I'd like to feel ashamed about the size of my TBR, but every time I go to find a book to read, I am grateful for the prodigious choice it affords me.

Because of the years in Germany, I have very few books on my TBR that are more than ten years old, although there are a few philosophy books that were purchased for a class where only a portion was read and I always meant to get back to it and read the rest. And there is Desert Fabuloso by Lisa Lovenheim, a book I picked up off of a pile of free books twenty-five years ago and just never got to. It looks too interesting to get rid of it unread, yet not quite interesting enough to sit down and read the thing. Incidentally, this was when I was working in a bookstore and trade paperbacks were being introduced. The consensus at the place I worked was that they would never catch on, as people either wanted a book that would last forever or a cheap read and trade paperbacks were neither.

I have just under 900 books in my TBR pile, so that means I have more than one or two "piles".

In my upstairs hallway is a small bookcase. The top shelf has 2 rows of books from the 1001 list. The bottom shelf has a basket of CanLit. In the corner of my bedroom are three stacked baskets with mostly non-fiction TBR books. I have a small second closet in my bedroom that has the bulk of my TBR piles.

Books that I've read and want to keep are either in a small bookshelf in the living room or the large bookshelf in the TV room/office downstairs. That bookshelf also has a shelf of TBR books--these are ones that I'm pretty sure I'll never get to but am keeping for now anyway.

Oldest - for the last 10 years or so I've focused each year at getting to at least some of my old books (either read them or donate them). This is the last year I will do that for a while as I found I have finally made my way through all the really old ones. I still have some unread F Scott Fitzgeralds that I bought in the 80s and I doubt I'll ever read them but am keeping them as they are part of a set. I have a copy of Catch 22 which I bought in the 80s and still hope to read one day. I probably have a handful of books from the 90s.

Hoo, boy. Well, for a long time my "TBR Pile" really was a pile, or rather a lot of piles, of vertically stacked books. I had them on some shelves built onto the wall of my utility room, but not only did I start running out of space there, but the weight of all the books was pulling the shelves away from the walls. So I relocated the unread books to some actual bookcases, and it now looks something like this:



Well, more or less, anyway. There's another, smaller bookcase (three shelves) that's not in the picture. And since this picture was taken, I've had to put books on top of those bookcases on the right, too. Right now, there's 757 books, total. Which is really entirely too many, but... But I want ALL THE BOOKS!

When I take a book off the unread shelves, I then move it to a different shelf in another part of the the house. Very, very occasionally, I'll decide I'm no longer interested in a book on the TBR shelves, if I ever really was, and I'll take it off and donate it to the library, but that doesn't happen much.

And some of those books have been there a depressingly long time. The oldest book that I'm certain of is The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake, which I believe has been sitting there since 1989. I seem to have developed some kind of weird mental block about ever finally reading that one. There are probably a few more that are nearly that old, too. But I will get to all of them eventually. I will!

According to my LT catalogue, I have 4600+ books on my TBR pile. That does not include Chinese literature (in Chinese) and professional literature. However, it does include about 200 doubles. It does not include vast numbers of unread e-Books.

Cataloguing books on LT has made a lot of "myths" transparent. For example, I have the idea that I bought hundreds of books in certain bookstores, but LT shows in most cases this is less than one hundred.

For years, by read-to-purchase ration was something like 1-4, but in China this has spiralled out of control. Particularly between 2005 and 2009, I bought some 500 to 800 books per year. Three years BookMooch added 1200+ books to my collection.

Participation in theme / group reads on LT contributes to the increase rather than decrease of my TBR. I am very careful with wish listing, but discussions on LT often lead to impulsive purchase, when I see books in a bookstore.

Fortunately, LT spurns me to reading more, so I do read significantly more books than previously.

A complicating factor, is that my books are spread out across three geographical locations: my mum's attic in the Netherlands, my home in Beijing, and my home in the south of China.

I used to collect books and keep copies of all books I finished reading, but now only collect books I really liked a lot, or feel shaped my mind in some sense, aiming to keep 10 -15% of all book I read. The rest is sold off or donated to libraries.

Regular discussions on LT about restraint in buying books and reducing the TBR have helped me manage a bit better, but this year I have once more bought very many books, particularly Penguin Classics & Modern Classics and Vintage Classics, as they were offered at very good prices.

Some of the oldest books on my TBR go back to the early 1980s, 1983 - 1986.

My aim remains to read all or most of the books I ever bought.

I have 576 books listed in LT as TBR. Most are interfiled with my other books, since I have LT to keep them identified for me, but I have a table next to my reading spot that normally has about 100 books on it for sooner-rather-than-later reading. Last week I cleared off all but about twenty as I anticipated going to Third Place Books' sale. I didn't go to the sale, but I do feel better about clearing up the table: I was able to dust for the first time in months.

Some of the books on my TBR are books that I don't really ever intend to read: pictorial books bought mostly for the art or photographs, books that belonged to various family members, sentimental titles. Others I mean to read, but wonder if I ever will, Bruce Canton's books on the Civil War, for instance.

I keep my wishlist separate, and it has about 200 books that sound interesting or were recommended, or that I might borrow from the library.

I make periodic attempts to make sensible piles of TBRs, but in the interests of getting on with life they tend to get reshuffled and mixed in with other books round the house. I don't list my TBRs. It would be too daunting. I also don't run a wish list. LT reviews are too tempting and there are limits!

The TBR is only the portion of the books i want to read that i actually own. It numbers around 580 now. But surely there are thousands of other books i want to read too.

The oldest books on it are unread college books - three book on The Roman Empire from my sophomore year (1991?)

I have several mixed feelings about the TBR. Often i wish it were smaller so that reading them all would be a realistic goal. So i try to select some for a single TBR shelf. But somehow it seems that putting a book on that shelf is a great way to make sure i don't read it.

I keep very few books around, so the physical TBR is small as well. Recently I had a couple of splurges at thrift stores (one for my 9th Thingaversary), so that has increased the number significantly. In fact, it might have tripled it - from around 10 to 30ish.

I have some books that are theoretically to-be-read that are in storage in Denver (I'm currently in California), so they are going to stay on the list for a while longer. Probably the oldest out of those is a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda. I forget why I bought it - probably because someone told me I might like it in spite of my lack of interest in poetry.

I don't even want to guess at my oldest TBR book- I keep them in plastic bins and drawers in my basement.
I decide to choose a book from the TBR bin based on my mood- do I want something light , do I want to read non-fiction ( I really like historical accounts) or something by a favourite author?
I used to keep all my books that I read in bookshelves. I now give away art technique and art history books that I will never consult again to two art teachers that I know. One is teaching in a high needs high school and makes good use of the books and magazines that I give her. My fiction that I will never read again , I give to a dedicated reader friend who then passes the books on to 7 other people.

Most of the 2,000+ books I own are TBR. I have limited shelf space and have no one to pass my books down to, so I sell or donate books after I read them (unless there's a chance I will re-read them, in which case they are still TBR). I have a few books from my late teens or early 20s I still haven't read, but most of my collection dates back less than 20 years. My books are physically arranged strictly by size and author's name regardless of subject or genre. To help plan my reading, however, I recently created a series of LT collections which organize them by theme and include my growing ebook collection. My TBR-S collection, for example, is science fiction.

As of today, I have 621 books in my LT "Hope to Read Soon" collection. Most of these are recent (past 5-6 years) acquisitions and most are on my TBR shelves in my office/TV room. However, I have hundreds, if not thousands, more unread books that are on my regular shelves, including ones that I've had for up to forty years; they found their ways onto these shelves before I started keeping new and unread books on separate shelves.

As to my TBR shelves, I keep one shelf that is top priority books (which I edit sporadically), but I often read books from other shelves too. Those shelves are organized more or less the way I organize my other books: fiction by country or region, nonfiction by topic (e.g., history, books about books, etc.). Most of the books on these shelves are stacked to make more room and most are double booked too.

LT has made me read more books, buy more books, and venture into the books I've had for some time, particularly but not exclusively for theme reads in Reading Globally. In the past year or two, I've read several books I've had for 25 years or so that were on my regular shelves, but it would be very difficult for me to identify the books I've owned the longest that I haven't read. Some must go back to college or just after (I even have some books from high school, but mostly those are ones I read and wanted to keep).

The size of everyone's TBR is very reassuring to me.

As a new member to LT in 2011, I dove into the 12 in 12 challenge (twelve books in twelve categories in the twelve months of 2012). When I started, that would not have been difficult, but then for unexplained reasons, my reading took a complete dive in terms of number of books read. However, I did list those books under the tag "12 in 12". I see I only have 120 books left out of the original 144, so at least I have read some.

In addition to those 120 TBR books, I have many others. I don't try to restrict the number of TBR books, although in the last few years, I have tried to limit my overall book buying habit to organized forays rather than constant grazing. Like rebecca, I organize my TBR books the same way all my other books are classified: by category, country and chronology. These TBRs are organized on their own shelves in the same area as their already read cousins.

Like >8 Oandthegang:, I don't list my current TBRs or wishlists, although books on the TBR that have survived on or more moves are listed. I am of two minds about not listing. Part of me thinks it would be a tool for better organization (and family giving me books), but part of me feels a wishlist would artificially inflate my number of books. I have sort of compromised on this by putting lists of books that interest me in some of my threads. Then, as a total contradiction, I do list my TBRs in my China collection, as that seems to be the subject area where people are most likely to give me a book.

I must say that the Reading Globally group and other theme reads have drastically inflated my TBR shelves, as I get very enthusiastic in advance, start amassing reading and then, as above, it doesn't happen. Paradoxically, LT itself may be part of the reason for that.

I can keep track of how long I have had many of my books, as I write the date and place where I bought them in the front of my books (in pencil). If it was a gift, I have the gift card in the book in many cases. Some of my childhood books from elderly relatives have inscriptions in them with the date and event.

Probably the oldest book on the TBR, one that is in my LT catalogue, is And Quiet Flows the Don. I was waiting to acquire the second volume, The Don Flows Home to the Sea, before I read it. I never did find that book in the pre internet days. I have just pulled my battered copy of the first book from the shelves, one that has barely survived two floods and multiple moves in four different provinces. I should probably just dispose of it and start again, this time buying both at once, in a decent edition, with footnotes and introductions. Surprisingly my Penguin Modern Classic has neither.

My TBR only consists of books I physically own and they sit on their own shelf. Once a book is read from the TBR shelf it goes to sit with its read buddies. My books within the pile are generally organized by language then by size. Conveniently my French books are primarily French literature books, and my books in English are primarily Japanese literature books so technically they're also separated by genre.

I started cataloging my books in 2007 so my oldest TBR books are around that age. Ideally, as things stand right now, I'd like my TBR pile to be less than 50 but it sits at 133 as of right now.

Or rather, that's my total TBR. I actually have a few TBR piles which are due to making various moves. The "unread" tag combines all my piles; the "Colorado" tag involves only those TBR that I had brought with me to Colorado. And now in my newest apartment my TBR shelf is a much smaller selection of those two piles plus new additions.

I've realized that the smaller the selection I have, the more I read so it's been best for me to create a smaller TBR shelf even though my overall total is quite large.

But here's the interesting part. I'm moving to another country in February where I get the chance to start a brand new TBR pile! Yes, I'll be essentially starting from zero as I will not be moving any possessions other than clothing and maybe only 10 books at most.

So this is my chance to really be good and to really work on my reading to acquiring ratio. I'm actually quite good at limiting purchasing but I've always had my previous piles acting as a bit of a ball and chain making me feel guilty for not reading the older books. But now I get to start anew and really make sure I read books as I acquire them to make sure I'm reading books at my peak interest. In any case, I'm really curious to see if I'll be able to keep my TBR pile below 10 at that point. That'd be fantastic.

Books are too complicated for me. The myth of someone giving you a book you end of loving - well, can't say it doesn't happen, but it goes wrong in a thousand ways. Too many times I'm unable to open that book, or read it with an involuntary feeling. So, I don't give books either - afraid of causing that reaction.

Gift-giving has all but died out in my family, and my wife does the shopping for those that we do give. In the past I would only give a book if it was something that the person had expressed an interest in, usually by putting it on a wishlist.

The only gifts I have received in recent years have been books from my Amazon wish list. At my age there's really nothing I "need" (except for some new shrubs for the front yard, and those would be pretty hard to wrap), and the only things I want are books. I'm sure my family would love to see me put something else on my wishlist, but what else is there? At least they learned long ago not to try to pick out books on their own. On the few occasions where they managed to pick something that interested me, it was a book I already had.

I love giving books as gifts, but it can be a bit tricky. These days, I'll usually only give a book if it's on someone's Amazon wishlist. I think the only person I feel really confident recommending books to is my mother, and if I've read something I think she'll like, I'll usually just lend it to her. Although I guess there are a few exceptions... A while back, I discovered that a friend of mine had never read any P.G. Wodehouse, so I bought him some Jeeves for his birthday. I knew the humor would be right up his alley, and I was right. Then there's my dad and stepmother, who don't do wishlists and are nearly impossible to buy for. They aren't big readers, either, but I got a couple of years' worth of Christmas presents out of the fact that they loved the Lord of the Rings movies, because there are some lovely coffee-table books about the art and making of those. Which, mercifully, they seemed to enjoy.

I almost always like getting books. These days, again, people are likely to pick them off of my wishlist. Which is fine, because my wishlist is very, very long and contains things I've long since forgotten putting on there, so any book chosen from it is still very much a surprise. Hey, a book I'd completely forgotten I wanted! Whee! I've also been lucky in that there are a couple of people who are very good at choosing books I'm likely to enjoy, with or without a wishlist. (My sister was always particularly good at somehow finding books that I'd never even heard of but that were absolutely my sort of thing.) I think the only bad experiences I've had with receiving books as gifts were the years when my dad was attempting to use them as a recruitment tool to try to persuade me into his particular, repressive brand of Christianity. Those volumes went to used bookstores, unopened, because nothing in this world is ever going to induce me to read James Dobson.

We buy gifts for children only. And all the kids in my extended family know that my standard holiday gifts for many years have been gift cards to Barnes & Noble (and before their demise, Border's), even for the little ones. Makes the families GO to a bookstore, actually LOOK at real books, and maybe even buy one or two (unless they spend it all on Legos, which aren't that bad either).

I come from a book giving family. My grandparents lived in another country and always sent books at Christmas. It was great fun because sometimes in order to get the cheap book rate postage they would have to leave the end open to prove that the contents really were print matter, so I would be able to see how many books were in the package, and whether they were thick or thin, but have to wait til Christmas Day to see what they were. Some of my favourite books were paperbacks the grandparents sent me which I would never have encountered otherwise. In my immediate family we have always given books.

I usually give friends books that I've read and enjoyed and think they might like but would never buy themselves. I've enjoyed lots of books which have been pressed upon me by other people, even when I have initially only read them to be polite, so I act in the hope that it works both ways. Family, curiously, can be a bit harder, because where their interests differ from mine I may end up giving books I haven't read myself, so I always feel a bit insecure about them. I'm not one for wish lists as I like to be surprised.

Q26 -- No one is brave enough / silly enough to buy me books. Also, I think everyone is aware of my ginormous TBR pile. I sometimes give books. This year my 14 year old daughter has asked only for books, so she'll be getting a stack for sure. She's made a Pinterest board of what she wants, so I just shop off of that. I often buy books for my brother-in-law because he's fairly easy to please and has some deep interests (WWII, bike racing, soccer, hockey).

Q26: I give books that I think the recipient will enjoy. My feeling is that what I love does not necessarily play well with someone else and if I want to encourage reading with my gift I aim to have the book connect with the reader. For example, my cousin is a fan of Jane Austen, costume drama...etc. She's tends to read light, so I decided upon a well-blurbed "downstairs" tale of the servants in the Bennett's household (Bennetts of Pride & Prejudice). OTOH, I may get some of my adult children little books from Oxford's "Very Short Introduction" series, which has 400+ subjects to choose from (already I've picked out "game theory," "the history of film music," and "consciousness"). http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/category/academic/series/general/vsi.do

I buy books as gifts for people I know well; my immediate family and a few friends with whom I discuss books. I see my niece and nephews during that week between Christmas and the New Year and I always take them and my own children to B&N and let everyone choose their own books. It works well and they seem to like the tradition. A few people get me books; a good friend who finds interesting books I hadn't heard of, my mother gets me books about cats, reasoning that I like books and there is a cat living in my house, so I'll like a book about a cat, and my MIL gets me something in the light literary fiction vein, usually set somewhere interesting. About half the time I haven't read the book in question, but I don't tell her even when I have as that would be rude and I like that she makes the effort.

On the whole, I'm not big into gift exchanges. That said, in general, I sometimes give books as gifts. I used to do it more, but getting books I didn't like (nor did I understand how someone thought I might like them in the 1st place) made me gun shy; were the recipients wondering the same? At this point, I'll email recommendations to friends and family, or ask for ideas from the ones I trust. The one person I get books from as gifts anymore is my husband - most of the time he's on target, and even the ones that don't work were good efforts.

Books are my favourite present, both to give and to receive. I've been receiving them ever since I was born, as for some in my family, books are the only kind of present there is. Wonderful!
I don't use wish lists, but anyone who knows me well enough to give me a present usually comes up with something I didn't know about and would have wanted had I known about it, or something on my "someday" mental list, or something I would never have thought of for myself but windup really enjoying. All in all, I'm very lucky that way. I only hope the people to whom I give books feel the same way!

I also have the same experience with giving and receiving films. The Criterion Collection is a great source.

>24 avaland: I just checked out that Oxford series. What fun... sort of like Dorling Kindersley for adults.

I'm with SassyLassy! I love to give and receive books as gifts.

I love to give books to people because I love to think about what kind of books they would like (anything to think about books, right?). On the whole, I've been disappointed in the books people give me, because most of my friends/relatives who give books seem to think that because they loved a book, I will too. On the other hand, some books I've reluctantly read, I ended up loving too -- Empire Falls and Bel Canto spring to mind.

I finished all of the goals I set for 2014 already and now I'm really looking forward to my 2015 planned books. I don't necessarily make firm plans, but I always have ideas (call them goals if you like!). I do feel each year as a break, I think because of the year end wrap up I like to do as so many of you do as well.

Now I'll contradict myself, though, and say that I would kind of like to finish Doctor Zhivago, which I started a few weeks ago and put aside because it was taking too much concentration for my December state of mind. If I don't finish it in 2014, it will probably be one of my first books in 2015.

I like to finish everything ongoing before or on Dec 31, although I won't or i'll start something else that I can't finish. But i like the idea of the new year as a time refresh my reading and re-evaluate my reading plans.

Specific goals:
Read 75 books. I have never done it before and i just finished book 74 yesterday
Finish Proverbs

My only 2 year-related goals were to read 75 (officially, 85 was the "real" goal in my head) books, and to read In Search of Lost Time. I think I've read 105 books so far this year, and I'm 40 pages from the end of the last volume of the latter. But generally, the end of the year is just another end-of-month for me.

I think I'm going to try to continue with doing a long-term reading goal starting at the beginning of each year, though. Most probably won't take an entire year, but maybe somewhere down the road after knocking out the major ones, I can just start using goals like reading from a particular country or reading a specific era or author. I've never really done that before because I tend to like to keep my reading varied. This year with Proust though, I came to appreciate the continuity of it, so who knows?

I had a goal of reading 120 books in 2014, half of them from the "1001 books" list. I am nowhere near reaching either of those goals. I think the chief reason for my failure is that I've been too damn healthy in 2014--my first year in a long time with no surgeries or heart attacks and thus no long, leisurely convalescence. I'll see if I can do better next year. A few days ago I pulled out some really short books just in the hopes of meeting a scaled back goal of 100 books for the year, but I'll soon put a stop to that silliness and go back to my previous reading categories.

I don't actually think of a new year as a fresh starting point for my reading except where LT groups are concerned and we start new threads, new themes, new anniversaries, etc.

Q27 - I do like to think of the new year as a fresh start at reading, so I try to get my books wrapped up by the end of the year if possible, but I'm not militant about it. Every year I have a separate reading journal, and I enjoy getting it all set up with lists and categories and all ready to go for January 1st.

This year I set a goal of reading 50 books from my TBR pile and although I haven't made it yet, I'm almost there and have no doubts that I will. I also joined the 2014 category challenge and have two more books to read for that and I'm not sure I'll make it . . . every book I pick up for the two remaining categories has been a dud, and I'm not sure I care enough. Goals and challenges to me should be fun, and nothing to get stressed over.

I didn't really have a formal goal this year, except that I wanted to read books related to WWI. I managed to read 13 books with that theme, and might have done more but a couple were quite brutal, and I found myself wanting more escapist fiction. I am going to fall short of my mental goal of 70 books, but I am definitely not stressing over that.

For 2015, I would like to finish Anthony Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, and perhaps his Palliser novels. I will probably also continue the WWI theme.

#36 - Nana - Wow, 13 WWI books this year! You're made of stronger stuff than me. A few years ago I did a "WWI November" where I read Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy and The Wars by Timothy Findlay. It sort of burnt me out on WWI. Don't think I could do 13 in a year. No doubt you need some escapist fiction!

I have a whole new reading agenda already mapped out for 2015, and I have one book to finish before the end of the year: The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, which I am reading in the Landmark edition. It is just a bit shorter than The Landmark Herodotus, and including many interruptions that one took me about two months to plow through. I have my doubts that I can get this done given the holidays and all, but I am sure going to try.

While I don't expect to have all books read by December 31st, ready to open a fresh book on the new year, I do like opening a new, shiny thread with the new year.

We all like a new start and sometimes we need a new start.

Until I joined LibraryThing I never thought about having targets or goals for reading, and just bobbed along reading whatever took my fancy, and therefore never thought about the end of the year in terms of books. I suppose being on LT has made me more aware of what and how I read. It is somewhat discouraging to go back to my first post and see how I have failed to get through all of those books. I read for pleasure. If I had lists and targets it would only be something else to fail at and reading would just become a source of stress.

I will try to be more organized in future, but otherwise will probably continue to bob along.

I lost track of this thread for quite some time! I buy books for most people, but no one buys me books anymore. It's a bit sad. Thank goodness for Santa Thing.

On the TBR front I just have a long list, since I mostly use the library. I decided to make a calendar online with the book covers of my to-read list, which will make each book stand out more than just the title does.

I met my reading goal in November and have decided not to have specific goals next year (barring "read more about XYZ"). I've been somewhat neurotic about my reading, using it as a work-replacement service, and for me that's not healthy. I don't have any specific books I want to read before 2015, but I am hoping I'll get my turn with The Secret History of Wonder Woman, which is on hold at the library, before the end of the year.

Next year I won't keep a number count of what I read, I'll post about my re-reads and add them to the year's list as well (which I've never done on LT). I'm looking forward to it, though I'm sure my neurotic side will latch on to some other activity. I'll also try to read at least a poem at night, before I go to bed, maybe alternating different collections (I have large volumes of Brecht and Millay to go through).

I like separating my years just to see how many books I can or do read in the span of a year. Otherwise, I don't have actual goals or a number of books I feel I have to read, although obviously I'd prefer reading more rather than less.

However, now that I'm moving to another country in about a month's time (so soon!) and can't bring my books with me, I suddenly feel like I have to read 100 of my unread books in about 30 days time. It's possible.... right? Right? .... help.

Well, I said that no one was brave enough to buy me a book for Christmas, but I was wrong. My daughter bought me The World of Downton Abbey, which is a beautiful and rich book full of colour pictures and in-depth information.

I love Downton Abbey. Last year, my daughter had given me Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey. Lovely pictures and behind the scenes info.

Enjoy The World of Downton Abbey.

No one is brave enough to buy me books either. As >42 mabith: says, thank goodness for SantaThing. The Downton Abbey books would be a great gift though.