Warning: This week’s Geek Punditry might be disturbing for people who love books, because this week I’m going to be discussing the three most terrifying letters for a bibliophile: TBR.

TBR, if you aren’t a reader, stands for “To Be Read,” and it’s something that will chill the blood of anyone who actually enjoys reading, because the TBR is the most intimidating thing in the universe. Some of us have actual, physical piles of TBR books. For others, it’s just a list. Still more have a sizeable section of our e-reader’s memory taken up with books that they’re going to read, and I quote, “someday, I swear to God.” But no matter what form your TBR takes, the existence of the TBR is a constant reminder that there are more books deserving of our time than we can possibly devote that time to.

It’s so easy to make that TBR bigger. All it takes is for you to become aware of a book that sounds good. Your favorite author has a new release? It goes into the TBR. Your friend tells you about something great they read on a recent beach trip? TBR. You’re wandering through one of those bookstores that you somehow keep stumbling into when you’re supposed to be buying groceries or perhaps extinguishing a fire, and some book catches your eye? TBR. There’s a new cover on this one? T.B.R. 

Adding a book to your TBR is easy, almost effortless, especially if you just maintain a list. But getting them electronically is easy too – after all, ebooks are usually mostly text (unless you’re talking about graphic novels, but that is a different – albeit similar – conversation). Text files don’t take up nearly as much space on a storage disc as music, videos, or photographs, so you can store a LOT more books on your phone or tablet than anything else, and you can add more…and more…and more.

Then there are the physical book readers, those who have overflowing shelves of books they’ve read and three times as many shelves of books in the TBR. For some of us, we display books the way a hunter or a fisherman will have a prize kill mounted and placed on the wall.

“Here we are, Under the Dome by Stephen King. Hardcover, 1074 pages. I brought this bad boy down back in 2011.”

“Cool. Say, what are all these books on these shelves over here?”

“We’re not gonna talk about those.”

So yes, adding a book to the TBR is effortless. But removing it is a torture the likes of which should seriously have been studied by the Geneva Convention, because it requires you to actually READ the book.

“But Blake,” you’re saying, “I thought you said that the whole TBR thing is only relevant to people who LIKE to read.”

Oh, you silly person. Just because you LIKE to read doesn’t mean you actually get to DO it. We live in a world of chaos and terror and reality television, and although reading is a pastime that we book lovers dearly enjoy engaging in, the universe frequently colludes to deny us the time to do it. What’s more, even if you find the time, the little things that chip away at you day in and day out may sometimes leave you too emotionally exhausted to actually do the thing that you do to relax. If you just like, for example, watching baseball, then when you get home you can turn on a baseball game and the extent of your intellectual engagement will be formulating your Facebook post explaining why the umpire is an idiot. But reading is, ipso facto, a more mentally demanding pastime than many of these others, and after a long day at work or with the kids or just dealing with the avalanche of depression that social media has somehow convinced us to plug directly into our veins, the idea of picking up that novel about the vampire apocalypse may start to seem a little daunting, no matter how good the writing is.

The point is, stuff is added to the TBR much, much faster than it can feasibly be removed unless you physically drag your bookshelf into a sterile room with no connection to the outside world. The closest thing many of us get to that sort of distraction-free environment is reading on an airplane, which is actually where I achieved some of my greatest TBR accomplishments before I started traveling with a child, at which point even that avenue was largely closed to me. 

To make matters worse, although you CAN eventually get a book off the TBR by reading it, a lot of us also like to…this is insane, but listen to me here…we like to read books AGAIN. 

We’re crazy, I know. But there are legitimate reasons for doing so. Perhaps the next book in the series is about to come out, but it’s been 17 years since George R.R. Martin released the last one, so you need to read it again to refresh your memory. Perhaps the last time you read To Kill a Mockingbird was in high school and you have come to recognize that your perspective as an adult is vastly different than that of the 16-year-old who previously read the book and it may be worth re-evaluating it from this new point of view. Maybe it’s just a comfort book, and you feel the need to return to it every so often to sort of ground yourself and remind yourself of the things in the world that you actually like and make you happy as opposed to…well…everything else. No matter the reason, the practical result is that even a book once removed from the TBR can be returned to the TBR at any moment and without warning, and then once again, your only shot at removing it is to read it all over. 

People who don’t read books are listening to this and assuming that I’ve lost my mind, whereas book readers are nodding at me and trying to remember if To Kill a Mockingbird is already on their TBR and, if not, adding it. 

The sheer volume of books that exist doesn’t help. No matter how old you currently are, people were writing books thousands of years before you were born, and at least seven of them are worth reading. What’s worse, there are a bunch of assholes out there right now casually writing even more great books that deserve to be read, as if you didn’t already have enough on your plate, the inconsiderate jerks. There is a point where most book readers have to face the fact that yes, they own more books than they can ever hope to finish reading in their lifetime, but they’re still reluctant to get rid of any of them, because any of these books MIGHT be called up to the major league at any given moment. 

“Well, Blake,” you continue, having this dialogue despite the fact that I wrote this several days before it was posted online and your ability to speak back through the time-space continuum is uncanny, “At least if you’ve got a massive TBR, you never have to worry about what you’re going to read next, right?” Ha ha ha! What an idiot! No, having a TBR makes it even HARDER to choose your next read. Think of it this way, if you have lunch at Raising Cane’s, you really only have one choice to make: will you substitute your cole slaw with extra fries or extra toast? But if you go to, say, the Cheesecake Factory, they hand you a menu so thick that, at first glance, you may think it should be added to your TBR. So let me ask you, my friends, at which restaurant will you have an easier time making a decision? 

Exactly.

The last book I took off my TBR was The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix. It was a great book, about a group of survivors of slasher-type murderers (the characters are very thinly veiled homages to the final girls of movies like Friday the 13th, Scream, Silent Night Deadly Night, and many others) who have an therapy group they attend together until someone starts trying to kill them. This is the third of Hendrix’s books I have read and I’ve really become a fan of the way he blends plots right out of a scary movie with a dark and sharp sense of humor. Unfortunately for me, after three hits in a row from him, I’ve pretty much decided that every book he’s ever written deserves to be on my TBR. I’m looking at Horrorstör next, billed as “a haunted house story set in a furniture store.” It sounds ridiculous and amazing, and there’s no telling how long it will be on the TBR before I get to it.

But the point is, I FINISHED Support Group, so I got to take it off the TBR. Great! Go me! So…what next? More horror? Do I want another horror story so quickly, or do I want to mix it up a little bit? A little comedy? There was definitely humor in Support Group, but it wasn’t a laugh riot, so something a little lighter might be welcome. I’ve got a ton of Star Trek novels I haven’t gotten around to yet…but it hasn’t been THAT long since I read one. Maybe I should go back and pick up one of the Ruth Plumly Thompson Oz books I haven’t gotten around to, except that I didn’t really care for the last one I read, Grampa in Oz, and while I intend to eventually read all of the Famous Forty, I’ve put her on probation for a while. I read the first book of that trilogy by Gwenda Bond a couple of months ago and I really liked that, so perhaps I should pick up book two. Or maybe…

And my mind goes around like this for hours at a time until a friend of mine on Facebook posts that she just started reading Hail Mary by Andy Weir which, of course, makes me think that it’s time to finally go back and read The Martian for a second time.

Again, non-readers are ready to send me to an asylum. Book lovers know EXACTLY what I’m going through. 

So my friends, be kind to those of us who love to read. We have chosen a recreational activity that frequently includes as much planning and careful mental preparation as getting another job, except that instead of getting paid for it, we just get more books to put on the TBR. It’s a curse.

A lovely, wonderful-smelling curse that none of us would give up even if we could. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He added six books to his TBR while writing this. Shut up.