Nothing beats a big book for escapism. Yesterday I was able to escape a conversation with a really annoying person by throwing my book at them and running away.
I saw a quote recently that said we should think of a TBR list not as an unread library but like a wine cellar, a collection of books waiting for the proper time and mood to be read. I like this very much! Have a great week, Emma! 🙂
Umberto Eco had 30,000 books in his library. When astonished visitors asked if he'd read them all, he'd tell them that of course he hadn't read all of them - he was constantly adding to the library and to stop would be to say that he had stopped searching for knowledge. His maxim was that one should have as many unread books as one's finances allowed.
Buying so many books isn’t “searching for knowledge”, it’s hoarding, it’s consummerism, and it’s lack of self control. Hundreds or thousands of unread books in your bookshelf won’t make you or your life any better.
@@priiifrg I think that you missed the point, Karen. He had read most of them over his lifetime - he thought that the question ''have you read all of them?'' was a bit silly because if you read a lot of books then you are always looking for something new to read. People aren't just buying more books for the sake of it - they're going to read them. I wonder why you're here.
Somehow it's a very comforting thought for me to know that no matter what happens in life, I'll always have a bunch of unread books ready waiting for me that I am excited for🖤
@@lina.laura.isabelle oh i won't just never studied a language, english i learned over many years with tv, movies etc and now can read books in it so its weird
I counted my books at the start of the year and I have 390 unread books out of a total of 1260. I go back and forth between being excited to have so many options and overwhelmed by the number of unread books. This video was such a delight! 💕
Emma, now that you are a college graduate, please consider doing a career goals video. Grad school? UA-cam? As an English major, I find it interesting to discover what other literature graduates plan on doing with their degrees.
Highly recommend putting all your books in a simple excel file, where you can add as many characteristics (such as genre, language, female/male author, country,...) as you like, as well as a column 'read'. If you keep it updated each time you buy or read a book, you can easily keep score on how well your bookish new years resolutions are going :) My friends think I'm a complete geek doing this, but I find it incredibly satisfying to play with my excel sheet haha
I have a notion setup where i track my reading and it was the best decision I ever made concerning books. I can take notes, I can track my progress in percent and it's really easy to filter by whatever characteristic I need.
I think the fact you have so many unread books is a *good* thing! Like you, I have way more unread books in my home, but I love it. Think of it like this. You usually go to a library to pick out books you have not read right? And the library is always growing and adding its inventory. It is the same for your own library at home! Like Belle with the library the Beast gave her, you'll never run out of stories to dive into! Sometimes I look around and feel stressed that I have so much to read, but then I think, "geez, how grateful I am to *have* so much to read!" ❤🌷
Dear Emma, I am sure you would love the count of monte cristo. It's a masterpiece of french literature. The characters and the story have so much depth and it is easy to forget the world around yourself and emphatize with the character's circumstances/ fate while reading this book. I loved every page of it and felt kind of sad when I reached the end because the characters grew dear to me.
Never be disheartened with these results. Harlan Ellison had thousands upon thousands of books in his library, and when asked in a condescending tone "Have you actually read all those?" he'd reply "Who wants a library full of books you've already read?"
I volunteer at our county library. If you're a member of the Friends of the Library ($10/yr) you get all books for 1/2 price. Oh, my! I have a jillion books. My husband said if I take one more book upstairs, it entire 2nd story will collapse.
Just became an even bigger fan of yours as a German who worked 8 years of her early career for Babbel which is still very close and dear to my heart. Good luck on your German journey!
I have a lot of unread books but I find it very comforting to know that if I were to have financial difficulties suddenly I’d still have so many new books to chose from without having to worry about spending a cent 🤷♀️
@@LauraAbbd I love how so many of us use this excuse lmao. The library ain’t goin nowhere…. We just can’t stop buying more books cuz we’re scared we might forget about it and end up never reading them cuz we never bought it 😭
@@Lanerusher haha that’s true ! I buy books cause I love it and I can tbh, those are the main reasons. But my original comment still stands true, there’s comfort for me in knowing they’re here
I am totally in this boat too. People mention the library but the one closest to me closed down during the height of COVID and the next closest has been shortening days and hours open and I think the city is just looking for an excuse to shut that one down too.
A biblotecarian tip for who ever is reading: don't push your books to the back of the bookshelf/the wall, not only looks better but provides better air flow, witch is good for book preservation
I know this comment is a year old but this is actually false. Rare book collectors actually recommend pushing the books all the way in. This is because books of different sizes with leveled spines will in time hurt the bigger books (the covers will become slightly slighty opened forever)
I think its a really good thing that you have so many unread books! I was just speaking about this (I'm a literature student too, now doing my phd). In Japan they call this tsundoku. I think there is much more value in having shelves that show your desire to read rather than how much you can read. Literature is to be encountered and that can't be quantified.
I just did something very similar to this because I have a goal this year to get my physical tbr down to 50% of what I own and needed to know how bad things were. Very similar results to you actually!! I’ve read about 47% of what I own with my worst ratio being general fiction where I’ve only read 25% of what I own. Love hearing someone say on booktube they always want a large selection of unread books to choose from because I feel like booktubers are always so stressed about their unread books and it makes me feel stressed too. But it’s so comforting for me to have years of potential reading in my home. It inspires and motivates me. A couple things I did to get a better idea: I did an unhaul right before counting and removed things I just realistically am not interested in anymore. I also removed a large category of books from counting towards read/unread including things like reference books, guidebooks, coffee table books, and any duplicate copies of books I own. So I counted them to tally my total owned books but deducted them from the total before calculating the ratio of read to unread.
It's always so cool to me when native speakers of English learn German. English is my second language, German is my third so to speak; I'm in no way fluent but I have a bachelor's degree in it (I went on to get a master's but in English only) and recently I've been attending a German course. It's so cool! I found that the best way to really improve language skills is to listen to audiobooks in your target language of novels you know really well. Would highly recommend it to anyone once you get to B1-B2 level!
I speak a little German but I'm rusty, but I got a Rilke edition that has many of his poems published side by side German and English. I am really enjoying going through them and finding the differences in the 2 versions. And it's helping me re-expand my German vocabulary.
I am so into this! The organiser in me desperately wants to do a count and an unread book list with my bookshelves. In fact, that’s now on my list of things to do this year.
I have a Librarything account, which is kind of like Goodreads (I guess) but it lets you catalog all of your books and display them by their cover, as well as add tags, reviews, and comments. I have all my books catalogued, and I have a tag for TBR. So I can open it any time and sort by TBR to see the covers of all my unread books. It's nice to remove the TBR tag every time I finish a book, and I can add a star rating and/or a little comment if I want. You also can search by author or other tags (like all my Russian lit, all my LGBTQ+ authors or themes, etc). It took a while to initially add all the books to the catalog, but now I just add them as I collect. It's really nice to be able to be away from my collection and quickly look up whether I already have a particular book, or which edition I have, so I don't accidentally purchase something I already have. Librarything is free (they used to limit free accounts to 200 books but now it's unlimited!). I recommend it for anyone with a large collection. :)
My weekend has kind of sucked, but your video will definitely make it better, so thank you for all the effort you put into them, I really appreciate it :) ❤️
On a happy note, you could go on a no spend for books and still read a book a day for the whole year and have no repeats 💞 It's always nice to know you have the escape without having to spend money if you don't have it or don't want to. And if that isn't enough, you can always re-re-re-re-re-read Phantom of the Opera 😍 or Frankenstein! My son has applied for English major and I find it exciting to have watched you do your literary education also in Ontario, especially now that I know that's a path he wants to take! The last time he was down East he was gone a month and flew home with an extra suitcase full as can be of books he had got mostly at second hand places. It's beautiful to see people in their late teens and early 20s who are more interested in traveling the universe through books than through screens and video games. For awhile, books seemed like they were going to disappear.
thank you emma - I've been having a weird, not-so-great mental health day today and after watching your video I finally feel ready to tackle some chores from my to-do list :)
I own thousands of books. How many I've read, I don't know. I'd guess 40% might not be far off, though. I'm sure my wife would laugh to hear such optimism. Thing is, as you said, Emma, one's personal library is special. Each book was chosen at the time because it called to me. All any of us can do is keep reading, every day, and finding new wonders. Thank you for a charming tour of your shelves by the numbers. It puts things into perspective. Brava.
I didn't buy a lot of physical books but a ton of ebooks in the last years. And I have probably 1000 at my parent's place in Romania. Some of those books in Romania will not survive the move to a new apartment that is ongoing--because they were purchased cheap in bulk and they don't interes anyone in my family. I read about 100+ a year now but I'm a dummy and keep grabbing them from the library. So I will never catch up with my shelves. But that's okay. I don't just keep books for myself, but for my parents, spouse and the kids we may choose to have as well. And that is okay. That's how I became a reader: because of the 1000 books in my grandpa's library that turned into my parents library that will become my library.
"I like having a lot of books just there for me...when I need to have them." YES a lot of times when I choose a new book to read it ends up being one that's relevant to my situation or time of life, or teaches me a lesson I need just then. (Love, someone with ~2900 books, maaaaaany of which are TBR.)
I keep telling myself I’ll be glad to have so many unread books (and so much yarn) if unemployment ever hits. For right now though, having a job is both 1) hindering my hobbies and 2) fueling the process of accumulation.
I started watching this video after a rough day; haven’t been feeling well lately… but your videos are a treasure to me! I truly love how inspiring and strangely consoling your content is! 💛🌿
Don't feel guilty about having so many unread books. It's a wonderful thing actually to have so many waiting for you. Great video Emma, and you look gorgeous with long hair. Lots of love 🌟
Since finding booktuber this past year I have collected many, many books most of which have not been read yet! So I have a quite a few to pick from. Add to it the Kindle editions and audible library! So little time... too many books.
As I'm starting to gather more books (I found some cheap book outlets/ second hands yay!), I've started a list with all the books I've read in alphabetical order and a list with all the books I own or I want to own a physical copy of and it helps so much when I'm out and can't remember if I own a certain book or not. I also keep unread books on a separate shelf, they don't deserve to be with their family (same editions) until they're read. :d
I have about the same amount of books as you! But only 83 unread, mainly because I made a big dent in them in December. You have so many masterpieces to look forward to!!
Watching this video led to hubby and I having a long conversation about personal librar8es and the varied opinions on them. Are they to display books you've read? Keep books you love? Store books you haven't read? How do they reflect the reader? I know owning books and reading books are two different hobbies - I read more library books than I read from my personal shelves, but I often pick up a copy of a book for my shelves if I've read the library book and enjoyed it. Some books I even have multiple editions because I couldn't decide which one I loved most. Then there are favorites reads I don't own any copies of, there are authors I buy anything within their body of work. I'm of the opinion that a balance of read and unread books is best, and that simply being surrounded by bookshelves is as good a reason to own them as any other reason. I mean, people collect ceramic frogs or unicorn art or shoes or cookie jars... bookshelves at least insulate a home and don't need as much dusting. This morning, curious, I counted (and by counted I mean I averaged the number of books per shelf)to get an idea of how many books I own. It was substantially more books than I thought! Granted, I've many more decades to collect them than you but, eep, I could easily open my OWN library! My books really grew the last few years (pandemic) because being with my books or in my garden were my sanity keeping, happy places. I unhauled a lot of books (hundreds of them), and then went out and bought new books to place them(hundreds and hundreds of them). Taking a wild stab at the percentage of books on my shelves that I've read, I'd go with 25%? The good news, at the rate I read books these days, and if I don't ever buy another book, and I only read from my shelves, I'll easily finish reading them all right before my 100th birhday. Unlikely though, as I'll probably buy more books, and my library is a five minute walk away.
Hi Emma! This video really encouraged me, so thank you for sharing! I counted the number of books I owned vs read pretty recently myself. I own 700+ books, but I haven't read 550 of them. That seems pretty bad, but I'm being gentle with myself because I love collecting books and go thrift shopping often. It's my challenge this year to only read books I own. Alongside that, I am also trying an Around the World Challenge. However, I have added the challenge of reading both a fiction and non-fiction book from all the countries since I am currently working on a Masters in History.
Persuasion is one of my fav Austen novels! Its very autumnal in terms of setting and how ppl of that time viewed Anne as "past her prime". Anyways, you should read it in the fall.
I suspect I am far from being the only book lover that increased the rate of growth of their home libraries the last several years, based on how many Booktubers and Bookstagrammers I hear talking about READING FROM THEIR SHELVES this year. I, too, have set that goal for myself.
I really loved A Tale of Two Cities when I read in high school to analyze the rhetoric. Persuasion is one of my favorite novels, but I do think someone younger (under the age of 30) may not appreciate it as much as someone who is older.
I am from Germany and I'm very interested in learning languages,I already learned Spanish by myself to a basic level and now I'm on norwegian and french.It makes me always smile when i come across other language-interested people on the internet..It's a beautiful language and I'm sure you won't regret learning it properly
I know you need to read books you already own... But you would adore A Gentleman In Moscow! Especially since it takes place pretty much entirely in a hotel. But of the books you already have, I'd highly recommend going for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - I think you'd love it!
Although I too am a little addicted to buying books, I don't like it when my unread collection are more than the read. It's rewarding to see my shelf filled with annotated books which has never happened cuz my tbr pile is overflowing and also I don't keep books I disliked.
I use an app on my phone called Book Crawler and I’m able to scan my books in and maintain a database (that is exportable to Excel). I love it! I can tag each book as read or unread, owned or not, star rate each book I’ve read, and tag by genre. It’s really cool and I think you might love it.
I'm in the middle of the same challenge. I need to take it easy because sometimes it's overwhelming and it could put me into a reading slump. Btw, I'm giving García Márquez a second chance. It was a must at school and didn't enjoy his work. I've read 4 of his books the last two weeks (so far, so good), getting ready for A Hundread Years Of Solitude. And all of this because of your recommendation. 💜🤗
I have many unread books so your video made me feel great. I’m not alone. I feel happy knowing I have so many books at my disposal. I think the root of this is in childhood when I remember one day searching the house for something to read. I ended up with a gothic romance my mom owned. I also take out tons from the library which have due dates so my books have to patiently wait.
Emma! 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World was one of my favorite books of last year!! Such an incredible and heartbreaking portray of a life, her connections with others like her thru being different, generational trauma, Turkey in a time of change and unrest and so much more 〜
I've made a resolution this year to read only read books from my physical tbr (not including the books I have to read for my book clubs. So far, I'm doing pretty good. I've read about 4 books off my tbr and 2 for my book clubs. I own 376 books and have read 132 books. So I've got a ways to go and have only read about 35%, but I'm confident that I can read at least 100 from my tbr.
You've inspired me to do the count as well. I have 612 books (596 currently on my shelf, 16 lent) Not read: 111 (honestly, I thought I've been better but I do read a lot library books. Umberto Eco's books: 40/ 7 unread (I have to savour them, there's not gonna be more) Terry Pratchett's books: 46 Latinamerican literature: 88 Nobel prize winners (not counting latinamerican): 31 nonfiction: 240 (271 counting Umberto) books on food culture: 48 You have so many wonderful books to meet from your shelf. I've also updated my list of people I've lent my books to, so thank you.
I did this recently, and added a new owned tbr shelf to my goodreads. It really holds you accountable and makes you focus on what you already have! I have started using a random number generator and that list to make headway on my list.
love your videos emmie! this inspired me to count my own shelves to see how many unread books i have. i've read 81 books out of 207 books on my shelves which is only 39%. i expected better but i did read more ebooks and audiobooks last year than usual. its a goal of mine to crack down on my tbr more than usual this year.
I had a mini library around 300 books with years of collecting, but then I started to be minimal few years ago, so I kinda stopped buying physical books. Now I'm using the library more and reading online. I only buy the books I really love enough to own a physical copy and the books for my degree. I'm actually reading more than the time I used to buy and read (nowhere close to you though). Have a list and buy only the ones you really want. That way you won't have much of unread books (not a hate comment ok, just a suggestion).
This is me now OMG. Last year I unhauled about half the books I owned and at the start of 2023, I made sure to finish up reading all the unread ones I wasn't sure I wanted to keep or not. So now I only have about 100 books, 0 of them unread. And I'm the happiest reader I've ever been xD And now fully into the habit of only buying books I really love after trying them elsewhere. Makes for the best bookshelf ^^ And keeps me motivated to keep reading since I can pick up WHATEVER I want on a whim ~
Read the Count of Monte Cristo!!! It’s a little confusing because the book is quite long and there are many characters, so I’d recommend annotating. Anyway it’s amazing and I think it would be a 4 or 5 star read for you.
My friend just sent me a quote about a library/ long TBR being like a wine collection. You collect in advance and pull out the perfect one when the mood is right!
Aaaa excited for this new video about your TBR! I’ve been trying not to buy new books and I think this will provide the right motivation 😌 I think beginning with whatever books will motivate you to read more of them (ex. Manga, shorter books, poetry, etc.) is a great way to start.
I have a similar proportion of read:unread, but it's mostly because I sell/give away a lot of books once I've read them, so a book doesn't necessarily jump into the "read" count after I read it from the unread pile.
this was so fun! it had my mind spinning for some challenges, like trying to read a norton anthology in one day/week 😂 I agree with many others that owning books you haven’t read is a great investment, especially when so many are gifts! thanks for sharing!!
I can’t wait for you to read The Witcher, I think you will love it 😍 fyi first Witcher books are short stories and are called “last wish “ and “sword of destiny”, so you can keep up with the boos you own so blood of elves etc.
Hi. I tried reading The Witcher, but started from Last Wish and dnf-ed. Could you explain to me how the order works and wether I can skip short stories, since I am interested in trying again?
@@nanam6403 First I would like to apologize for my English as I am Polish so my grammar will be probably all over the place :) To be honest I think that if you didn’t like the first book which is “The last wish”, you probably wouldn’t like the rest of the books as all of them are written in the same spirtit. But anyway I hope you start again and this time you would love it so here is the correct order: first there are two books with short stories 1-last wish 2-sword of destiny. Short stories are really important as we get to know the characters and topics for the main story. Then we start the main story with Ciri and Geralt: 3-blood of elves 4-time of contempt 5-baptism of fire 6-tower of swallows 7-lady of the lake. And then at the end you have kind a like a bonus book called 8-seasons of storms which is not related to the main story.
@@MsKoocek Thank you so much. I think I just don't like short stories, so I would like to try novels, just in case the format was the problem. I'm trying to branch out into fantasy, so if you have recomendations, please share them with me.
Honestly... I'm happy that I'm not the only one who has a lot of unread books on my shelf 😅This makes me feel so much better about my situation. I don't think I'm over 50% either, but I'm not mad about it actually
Thanks for another great video, Emma . . . I like having a lot of unread books. They are my fortress of sanity, my battlements against the unrelenting chaos that too often seems to follow me home. One of these days I guess my books are going to reach SABLE: Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. And that’s OK. The only problem with stacking up lots of books is the urge to read them all at once.
As a german person, I think it’s so interesting that you want to learn german! It’s hard but it would definitely be worth being able to read Rilke in the original language :)
That task would be so easy for me haha I put all of my books on my Storygraph and they give you a detailed graph for your TBR on category etc lol my TBR is roughly around 80 books and it scares me a lot, because I am not 100% excited about reading some of them. I even kicked 20 or more off because I just don't feel like reading them after all. I tagged them with "Owned-but-currently-not-interested" so I can always can come back later. But I also have a lot of e-books included in all of that
I read about 100 books per year, for the past 35 years and I own: 2 classics, 3 Children's books, 4 literary fiction novels and 6 non fiction books ☺. I only own my top favourites of all time. Please read Titus Groan next, it's an unusual, exquisite book! As for the German: work on the ch-sounds, otherwise it sounds perfect👌, good luck!
Ooh you neeed to read Piranesi, it was in my top 3 for last year. Amazing. 5 stars haha. I would not at all be disappointed about your shelves, you seem like annoyed that you havent read them all yet but you don't have to have read them all at once. It's okay to have unread books to enjoy when you get to them :) I have 13 unread books and 7 coming in the mail for my birthday haha. I only own about 100 physical books (of my own, my kids probably have more than I do combined) and last year I read 32, my goal was 25. My goal for this year is 35 but I think I can do 40. I am not an extreme reader haha.
Oh jeez. I know I am bad with not having read a lot of what I own. My husband built me a library room last summer so I do have a lot of room to keep buying books, but I feel I am not in a good headspace for reading these past few months due to my job. However, while I don't feel up to reading to much at the moment, I am still getting great enjoyment going and buying books! :)
For the witcher series I really recommend reading The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny before Blood of Elves. Even though it says thats the first book in the series you will likely be lost without at least heaving read The Last Wish.
I would suggest prioritizing the books that are aeveral stories in one book, and where you've read most of the stories or at least the main story, as these seem like book you could finish up relatively quickly to get them moved over into your "read" column.
Hi Emma. What a beautiful video, helps me stay motivated and try to get through my physical Tbr so thank you very much for that. I wanted to tell you, I know that you have Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar in your unread books and I can’t stress this enough, please read it, it’s so amazing!!! It’s a book like none other and I mean that literally, a beautiful read. That’s all, you are amazing!
To quote Borges: “Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.” Guess: 60%. I agree, there's nothing wrong with having more books to read!
I've read 227 books so far. I haven't yet counted the unread books that I have, but I guess my TBR goes up to 200 books. I separate the books that I've read from those that I haven't, and I write down in a notebook the titles already read.
Nothing beats a big book for escapism. Yesterday I was able to escape a conversation with a really annoying person by throwing my book at them and running away.
Escapism is dumb. Literature is suppose to expand our emotional capacity and perspective, not allow us to fall inside of our own delusions.
😂good one
lol - there's a good short story!
Yh then no one will question having paperbacks over hard ones 😂
That sounds terrible.
I saw a quote recently that said we should think of a TBR list not as an unread library but like a wine cellar, a collection of books waiting for the proper time and mood to be read. I like this very much! Have a great week, Emma! 🙂
love this quote 😩
Since Jack Edwards mentioned this quote, I always say that to myself:)
So true!
That's literally my mantra for years!
Not me using this now to keep buying more books lmao
Umberto Eco had 30,000 books in his library. When astonished visitors asked if he'd read them all, he'd tell them that of course he hadn't read all of them - he was constantly adding to the library and to stop would be to say that he had stopped searching for knowledge. His maxim was that one should have as many unread books as one's finances allowed.
Thank you for posting this bc I’m feeling so embarrassed about my unread/owned ratio
@@meganvaughn776 Thank you Megan. I'm sure that all of your ratios are lovely. :)
Buying so many books isn’t “searching for knowledge”, it’s hoarding, it’s consummerism, and it’s lack of self control. Hundreds or thousands of unread books in your bookshelf won’t make you or your life any better.
@@priiifrg I think that you missed the point, Karen. He had read most of them over his lifetime - he thought that the question ''have you read all of them?'' was a bit silly because if you read a lot of books then you are always looking for something new to read. People aren't just buying more books for the sake of it - they're going to read them. I wonder why you're here.
Lol I read "one should have as many unread books as one's finacé allows" 😂 it's true though, they've got to put up with a lot 😂
Somehow it's a very comforting thought for me to know that no matter what happens in life, I'll always have a bunch of unread books ready waiting for me that I am excited for🖤
i love this ❤❤
EXACTLY. Every time I finish a book I get sad as if I don’t basically buy 2 new books with every book I finish reading
Omg yes! This is a beautiful way to see my tbr lol
As a German, I love seeing people learning our language :)
Ja, ich auch!
Yess, es ist so süß ihren Akzent zu hören:)
Man im trying but i gave up on studying it now im just listening to it every day
@@vulee100 Listening to German is a good idea, but please don't give up!
@@lina.laura.isabelle oh i won't just never studied a language, english i learned over many years with tv, movies etc and now can read books in it so its weird
I own 102 books, and 23 are unread. My plan is to have them all read by the end of this year! I also use the library a ton!
this sounds like a plan - how far have you come yet? (lol I can't form a complete, grammatically correct sentence atm)
I counted my books at the start of the year and I have 390 unread books out of a total of 1260. I go back and forth between being excited to have so many options and overwhelmed by the number of unread books. This video was such a delight! 💕
Emma, now that you are a college graduate, please consider doing a career goals video. Grad school? UA-cam? As an English major, I find it interesting to discover what other literature graduates plan on doing with their degrees.
I think she said she’ll be doing that in her “hate comments” video! I’d also like to see that video 😊
I’m an English major, too! My career plans are book editing and getting a masters so I can teach high school English. What are your career plans??
I majored in English with a minor in creative writing. I ended up finding a job in editing at a publishing company.
Highly recommend putting all your books in a simple excel file, where you can add as many characteristics (such as genre, language, female/male author, country,...) as you like, as well as a column 'read'. If you keep it updated each time you buy or read a book, you can easily keep score on how well your bookish new years resolutions are going :) My friends think I'm a complete geek doing this, but I find it incredibly satisfying to play with my excel sheet haha
I do this for my tbr! I can spend hours working on it
I have a notion setup where i track my reading and it was the best decision I ever made concerning books. I can take notes, I can track my progress in percent and it's really easy to filter by whatever characteristic I need.
i would suggest downloading the storygraph app to do these very things (but also understand if you're having fun with your excel sheet)
I think the fact you have so many unread books is a *good* thing! Like you, I have way more unread books in my home, but I love it. Think of it like this. You usually go to a library to pick out books you have not read right? And the library is always growing and adding its inventory. It is the same for your own library at home! Like Belle with the library the Beast gave her, you'll never run out of stories to dive into! Sometimes I look around and feel stressed that I have so much to read, but then I think, "geez, how grateful I am to *have* so much to read!" ❤🌷
1,000 books is officially a library! 📚
found a Jack Edwards fan 👊😂
I'll just hit the 900 mark. 🥰
Dear Emma, I am sure you would love the count of monte cristo. It's a masterpiece of french literature. The characters and the story have so much depth and it is easy to forget the world around yourself and emphatize with the character's circumstances/ fate while reading this book. I loved every page of it and felt kind of sad when I reached the end because the characters grew dear to me.
I second this. The Count of Monte Cristo is amazing. One of my favorites.
For me it's my favorite book so far, it's amazing. So glad to see more people think that way! :)
Aah! It's my favourite too.
I'm currently reading it and I'm having so much fun time
I adore the movie and bought the book like two years but I'm intimated by how big it is lol it looks so scary but I really want to read it
Never be disheartened with these results. Harlan Ellison had thousands upon thousands of books in his library, and when asked in a condescending tone "Have you actually read all those?" he'd reply "Who wants a library full of books you've already read?"
I volunteer at our county library. If you're a member of the Friends of the Library ($10/yr) you get all books for 1/2 price. Oh, my! I have a jillion books. My husband said if I take one more book upstairs, it entire 2nd story will collapse.
Those same words have been said to me! 😊
Just became an even bigger fan of yours as a German who worked 8 years of her early career for Babbel which is still very close and dear to my heart. Good luck on your German journey!
I have a lot of unread books but I find it very comforting to know that if I were to have financial difficulties suddenly I’d still have so many new books to chose from without having to worry about spending a cent 🤷♀️
You can go to a library, theyre free
@@Grettss as a librarian, I know 😂 but you never know what life brings you and if there will be a library close by !
@@LauraAbbd I love how so many of us use this excuse lmao. The library ain’t goin nowhere…. We just can’t stop buying more books cuz we’re scared we might forget about it and end up never reading them cuz we never bought it 😭
@@Lanerusher haha that’s true ! I buy books cause I love it and I can tbh, those are the main reasons. But my original comment still stands true, there’s comfort for me in knowing they’re here
I am totally in this boat too. People mention the library but the one closest to me closed down during the height of COVID and the next closest has been shortening days and hours open and I think the city is just looking for an excuse to shut that one down too.
A biblotecarian tip for who ever is reading: don't push your books to the back of the bookshelf/the wall, not only looks better but provides better air flow, witch is good for book preservation
Oo thank you!
I know this comment is a year old but this is actually false. Rare book collectors actually recommend pushing the books all the way in. This is because books of different sizes with leveled spines will in time hurt the bigger books (the covers will become slightly slighty opened forever)
I think its a really good thing that you have so many unread books! I was just speaking about this (I'm a literature student too, now doing my phd). In Japan they call this tsundoku. I think there is much more value in having shelves that show your desire to read rather than how much you can read. Literature is to be encountered and that can't be quantified.
We appreciate Emmie's dedication and consistency. God bless her.
I adore your little library. It's beautiful🥰
Thank you so much! 😊
You are brave for doing this. I see new books all the time and I get them, not realizing that I have books that I own that I haven't read lol
I just did something very similar to this because I have a goal this year to get my physical tbr down to 50% of what I own and needed to know how bad things were. Very similar results to you actually!! I’ve read about 47% of what I own with my worst ratio being general fiction where I’ve only read 25% of what I own. Love hearing someone say on booktube they always want a large selection of unread books to choose from because I feel like booktubers are always so stressed about their unread books and it makes me feel stressed too. But it’s so comforting for me to have years of potential reading in my home. It inspires and motivates me.
A couple things I did to get a better idea: I did an unhaul right before counting and removed things I just realistically am not interested in anymore. I also removed a large category of books from counting towards read/unread including things like reference books, guidebooks, coffee table books, and any duplicate copies of books I own. So I counted them to tally my total owned books but deducted them from the total before calculating the ratio of read to unread.
Yyy
emmie i hope you plan on filming a "ranking every classic i read this year" video for 2022, those videos are some of my favs from you💓
It's always so cool to me when native speakers of English learn German. English is my second language, German is my third so to speak; I'm in no way fluent but I have a bachelor's degree in it (I went on to get a master's but in English only) and recently I've been attending a German course. It's so cool! I found that the best way to really improve language skills is to listen to audiobooks in your target language of novels you know really well. Would highly recommend it to anyone once you get to B1-B2 level!
Why not read them instead of listening to them?
I speak a little German but I'm rusty, but I got a Rilke edition that has many of his poems published side by side German and English. I am really enjoying going through them and finding the differences in the 2 versions. And it's helping me re-expand my German vocabulary.
Suddenly my 22 unread books seems like a breeze 😂
I am so into this! The organiser in me desperately wants to do a count and an unread book list with my bookshelves.
In fact, that’s now on my list of things to do this year.
I have a Librarything account, which is kind of like Goodreads (I guess) but it lets you catalog all of your books and display them by their cover, as well as add tags, reviews, and comments. I have all my books catalogued, and I have a tag for TBR. So I can open it any time and sort by TBR to see the covers of all my unread books. It's nice to remove the TBR tag every time I finish a book, and I can add a star rating and/or a little comment if I want. You also can search by author or other tags (like all my Russian lit, all my LGBTQ+ authors or themes, etc). It took a while to initially add all the books to the catalog, but now I just add them as I collect. It's really nice to be able to be away from my collection and quickly look up whether I already have a particular book, or which edition I have, so I don't accidentally purchase something I already have. Librarything is free (they used to limit free accounts to 200 books but now it's unlimited!). I recommend it for anyone with a large collection. :)
My weekend has kind of sucked, but your video will definitely make it better, so thank you for all the effort you put into them, I really appreciate it :) ❤️
Same. These videos calm me.
I have a system where all my unread books are standing, and all read books are stacked. Makes it much easier to keep track!
On a happy note, you could go on a no spend for books and still read a book a day for the whole year and have no repeats 💞 It's always nice to know you have the escape without having to spend money if you don't have it or don't want to. And if that isn't enough, you can always re-re-re-re-re-read Phantom of the Opera 😍 or Frankenstein!
My son has applied for English major and I find it exciting to have watched you do your literary education also in Ontario, especially now that I know that's a path he wants to take! The last time he was down East he was gone a month and flew home with an extra suitcase full as can be of books he had got mostly at second hand places. It's beautiful to see people in their late teens and early 20s who are more interested in traveling the universe through books than through screens and video games. For awhile, books seemed like they were going to disappear.
thank you emma - I've been having a weird, not-so-great mental health day today and after watching your video I finally feel ready to tackle some chores from my to-do list :)
Makes me feel a whole lot better about the stacks and stacks of tbr books I have here hehe
I own thousands of books. How many I've read, I don't know. I'd guess 40% might not be far off, though. I'm sure my wife would laugh to hear such optimism. Thing is, as you said, Emma, one's personal library is special. Each book was chosen at the time because it called to me. All any of us can do is keep reading, every day, and finding new wonders. Thank you for a charming tour of your shelves by the numbers. It puts things into perspective. Brava.
I didn't buy a lot of physical books but a ton of ebooks in the last years. And I have probably 1000 at my parent's place in Romania. Some of those books in Romania will not survive the move to a new apartment that is ongoing--because they were purchased cheap in bulk and they don't interes anyone in my family. I read about 100+ a year now but I'm a dummy and keep grabbing them from the library. So I will never catch up with my shelves. But that's okay. I don't just keep books for myself, but for my parents, spouse and the kids we may choose to have as well. And that is okay. That's how I became a reader: because of the 1000 books in my grandpa's library that turned into my parents library that will become my library.
A Thousand Splendid Suns wrecked me. It’s incredible. Especially with what’s going on in Afghanistan now. It’s so good.
your videos are comforting
"I like having a lot of books just there for me...when I need to have them." YES a lot of times when I choose a new book to read it ends up being one that's relevant to my situation or time of life, or teaches me a lesson I need just then. (Love, someone with ~2900 books, maaaaaany of which are TBR.)
I keep telling myself I’ll be glad to have so many unread books (and so much yarn) if unemployment ever hits. For right now though, having a job is both 1) hindering my hobbies and 2) fueling the process of accumulation.
I started watching this video after a rough day; haven’t been feeling well lately… but your videos are a treasure to me! I truly love how inspiring and strangely consoling your content is! 💛🌿
Don't feel guilty about having so many unread books. It's a wonderful thing actually to have so many waiting for you. Great video Emma, and you look gorgeous with long hair. Lots of love 🌟
Last year I catalogued all my books into StoryGraph: I own 140 books and read 62% of them.
Since finding booktuber this past year I have collected many, many books most of which have not been read yet! So I have a quite a few to pick from. Add to it the Kindle editions and audible library! So little time... too many books.
As I'm starting to gather more books (I found some cheap book outlets/ second hands yay!), I've started a list with all the books I've read in alphabetical order and a list with all the books I own or I want to own a physical copy of and it helps so much when I'm out and can't remember if I own a certain book or not. I also keep unread books on a separate shelf, they don't deserve to be with their family (same editions) until they're read. :d
I have about the same amount of books as you! But only 83 unread, mainly because I made a big dent in them in December. You have so many masterpieces to look forward to!!
Watching this video led to hubby and I having a long conversation about personal librar8es and the varied opinions on them. Are they to display books you've read? Keep books you love? Store books you haven't read? How do they reflect the reader? I know owning books and reading books are two different hobbies - I read more library books than I read from my personal shelves, but I often pick up a copy of a book for my shelves if I've read the library book and enjoyed it. Some books I even have multiple editions because I couldn't decide which one I loved most. Then there are favorites reads I don't own any copies of, there are authors I buy anything within their body of work. I'm of the opinion that a balance of read and unread books is best, and that simply being surrounded by bookshelves is as good a reason to own them as any other reason. I mean, people collect ceramic frogs or unicorn art or shoes or cookie jars... bookshelves at least insulate a home and don't need as much dusting. This morning, curious, I counted (and by counted I mean I averaged the number of books per shelf)to get an idea of how many books I own. It was substantially more books than I thought! Granted, I've many more decades to collect them than you but, eep, I could easily open my OWN library! My books really grew the last few years (pandemic) because being with my books or in my garden were my sanity keeping, happy places. I unhauled a lot of books (hundreds of them), and then went out and bought new books to place them(hundreds and hundreds of them). Taking a wild stab at the percentage of books on my shelves that I've read, I'd go with 25%? The good news, at the rate I read books these days, and if I don't ever buy another book, and I only read from my shelves, I'll easily finish reading them all right before my 100th birhday. Unlikely though, as I'll probably buy more books, and my library is a five minute walk away.
Hi Emma! This video really encouraged me, so thank you for sharing!
I counted the number of books I owned vs read pretty recently myself. I own 700+ books, but I haven't read 550 of them. That seems pretty bad, but I'm being gentle with myself because I love collecting books and go thrift shopping often. It's my challenge this year to only read books I own.
Alongside that, I am also trying an Around the World Challenge. However, I have added the challenge of reading both a fiction and non-fiction book from all the countries since I am currently working on a Masters in History.
Persuasion is one of my fav Austen novels! Its very autumnal in terms of setting and how ppl of that time viewed Anne as "past her prime". Anyways, you should read it in the fall.
The inventory of this video is so soothing to my soul.
I suspect I am far from being the only book lover that increased the rate of growth of their home libraries the last several years, based on how many Booktubers and Bookstagrammers I hear talking about READING FROM THEIR SHELVES this year. I, too, have set that goal for myself.
I really loved A Tale of Two Cities when I read in high school to analyze the rhetoric. Persuasion is one of my favorite novels, but I do think someone younger (under the age of 30) may not appreciate it as much as someone who is older.
I am from Germany and I'm very interested in learning languages,I already learned Spanish by myself to a basic level and now I'm on norwegian and french.It makes me always smile when i come across other language-interested people on the internet..It's a beautiful language and I'm sure you won't regret learning it properly
I know you need to read books you already own... But you would adore A Gentleman In Moscow! Especially since it takes place pretty much entirely in a hotel. But of the books you already have, I'd highly recommend going for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - I think you'd love it!
I have these two books. Need to read them! Thank you for recs. 💐
This Earth of Mankind is so great and I've never heard anyone else mention it. I hope you enjoy!
Although I too am a little addicted to buying books, I don't like it when my unread collection are more than the read. It's rewarding to see my shelf filled with annotated books which has never happened cuz my tbr pile is overflowing and also I don't keep books I disliked.
I use an app on my phone called Book Crawler and I’m able to scan my books in and maintain a database (that is exportable to Excel). I love it! I can tag each book as read or unread, owned or not, star rate each book I’ve read, and tag by genre. It’s really cool and I think you might love it.
Number of books unread = Number of enjoyments to be experienced in the future 📚✨
I'm in the middle of the same challenge. I need to take it easy because sometimes it's overwhelming and it could put me into a reading slump. Btw, I'm giving García Márquez a second chance. It was a must at school and didn't enjoy his work. I've read 4 of his books the last two weeks (so far, so good), getting ready for A Hundread Years Of Solitude. And all of this because of your recommendation. 💜🤗
I have many unread books so your video made me feel great. I’m not alone. I feel happy knowing I have so many books at my disposal. I think the root of this is in childhood when I remember one day searching the house for something to read. I ended up with a gothic romance my mom owned. I also take out tons from the library which have due dates so my books have to patiently wait.
Emma! 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World was one of my favorite books of last year!! Such an incredible and heartbreaking portray of a life, her connections with others like her thru being different, generational trauma, Turkey in a time of change and unrest and so much more 〜
I've made a resolution this year to read only read books from my physical tbr (not including the books I have to read for my book clubs. So far, I'm doing pretty good. I've read about 4 books off my tbr and 2 for my book clubs. I own 376 books and have read 132 books. So I've got a ways to go and have only read about 35%, but I'm confident that I can read at least 100 from my tbr.
All I have to say is I can’t WAIT for you to read Piranesi!!! Not only is it a great story, but it’s a fantastic experience while reading it
You've inspired me to do the count as well.
I have 612 books (596 currently on my shelf, 16 lent)
Not read: 111 (honestly, I thought I've been better but I do read a lot library books.
Umberto Eco's books: 40/ 7 unread (I have to savour them, there's not gonna be more)
Terry Pratchett's books: 46
Latinamerican literature: 88
Nobel prize winners (not counting latinamerican): 31
nonfiction: 240 (271 counting Umberto)
books on food culture: 48
You have so many wonderful books to meet from your shelf.
I've also updated my list of people I've lent my books to, so thank you.
I did this recently, and added a new owned tbr shelf to my goodreads. It really holds you accountable and makes you focus on what you already have! I have started using a random number generator and that list to make headway on my list.
This is so great as im organising my bookshelf right now and now im doing this too! X
love your videos emmie! this inspired me to count my own shelves to see how many unread books i have. i've read 81 books out of 207 books on my shelves which is only 39%. i expected better but i did read more ebooks and audiobooks last year than usual. its a goal of mine to crack down on my tbr more than usual this year.
I had a mini library around 300 books with years of collecting, but then I started to be minimal few years ago, so I kinda stopped buying physical books. Now I'm using the library more and reading online. I only buy the books I really love enough to own a physical copy and the books for my degree. I'm actually reading more than the time I used to buy and read (nowhere close to you though). Have a list and buy only the ones you really want. That way you won't have much of unread books (not a hate comment ok, just a suggestion).
Love that! ❤ I want to try the same as soon as I finished my 160 unread books over the course of the next two years. 😊
This is me now OMG. Last year I unhauled about half the books I owned and at the start of 2023, I made sure to finish up reading all the unread ones I wasn't sure I wanted to keep or not. So now I only have about 100 books, 0 of them unread. And I'm the happiest reader I've ever been xD And now fully into the habit of only buying books I really love after trying them elsewhere. Makes for the best bookshelf ^^ And keeps me motivated to keep reading since I can pick up WHATEVER I want on a whim ~
Read the Count of Monte Cristo!!! It’s a little confusing because the book is quite long and there are many characters, so I’d recommend annotating. Anyway it’s amazing and I think it would be a 4 or 5 star read for you.
My friend just sent me a quote about a library/ long TBR being like a wine collection. You collect in advance and pull out the perfect one when the mood is right!
Aaaa excited for this new video about your TBR! I’ve been trying not to buy new books and I think this will provide the right motivation 😌 I think beginning with whatever books will motivate you to read more of them (ex. Manga, shorter books, poetry, etc.) is a great way to start.
I have a similar proportion of read:unread, but it's mostly because I sell/give away a lot of books once I've read them, so a book doesn't necessarily jump into the "read" count after I read it from the unread pile.
this was so fun! it had my mind spinning for some challenges, like trying to read a norton anthology in one day/week 😂 I agree with many others that owning books you haven’t read is a great investment, especially when so many are gifts! thanks for sharing!!
I can’t wait for you to read The Witcher, I think you will love it 😍 fyi first Witcher books are short stories and are called “last wish “ and “sword of destiny”, so you can keep up with the boos you own so blood of elves etc.
Hi. I tried reading The Witcher, but started from Last Wish and dnf-ed. Could you explain to me how the order works and wether I can skip short stories, since I am interested in trying again?
@@nanam6403 First I would like to apologize for my English as I am Polish so my grammar will be probably all over the place :)
To be honest I think that if you didn’t like the first book which is “The last wish”, you probably wouldn’t like the rest of the books as all of them are written in the same spirtit.
But anyway I hope you start again and this time you would love it so here is the correct order: first there are two books with short stories 1-last wish 2-sword of destiny. Short stories are really important as we get to know the characters and topics for the main story.
Then we start the main story with Ciri and Geralt: 3-blood of elves 4-time of contempt 5-baptism of fire 6-tower of swallows 7-lady of the lake. And then at the end you have kind a like a bonus book called 8-seasons of storms which is not related to the main story.
@@MsKoocek Thank you so much. I think I just don't like short stories, so I would like to try novels, just in case the format was the problem. I'm trying to branch out into fantasy, so if you have recomendations, please share them with me.
Honestly... I'm happy that I'm not the only one who has a lot of unread books on my shelf 😅This makes me feel so much better about my situation. I don't think I'm over 50% either, but I'm not mad about it actually
oh my gosh, green glass house is like THE winter book. I re-read it every December it's so cosy and fun.
The side eye of horror when you got to the Old Curiosity Shop lmao 5:35
Thanks for another great video, Emma . . . I like having a lot of unread books. They are my fortress of sanity, my battlements against the unrelenting chaos that too often seems to follow me home. One of these days I guess my books are going to reach SABLE: Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. And that’s OK. The only problem with stacking up lots of books is the urge to read them all at once.
As a german person, I think it’s so interesting that you want to learn german! It’s hard but it would definitely be worth being able to read Rilke in the original language :)
Ich bin deutsch und habe leider immer noch kein Rilke gelesen haha, muss ich unbedingt nachholen!
I've been wanting to count my books as well, so thank you for the motivation! I literally pulled out a clipboard and counted mine along with you. :)
I did this a few days ago and you made me feel so much better now, so thanks😂
I catalogued my books just last month: 266 in total and I've read 179 of them, so 67%. I'm rather happy with that!
If you ever read A Little Life, can you please do a vlog or in depth review of your thoughts? Love this video btw!
16:32 calcifer literally picking up and moving the blue box (?) is killing me
That task would be so easy for me haha I put all of my books on my Storygraph and they give you a detailed graph for your TBR on category etc lol my TBR is roughly around 80 books and it scares me a lot, because I am not 100% excited about reading some of them. I even kicked 20 or more off because I just don't feel like reading them after all. I tagged them with "Owned-but-currently-not-interested" so I can always can come back later. But I also have a lot of e-books included in all of that
I read about 100 books per year, for the past 35 years and I own:
2 classics, 3 Children's books, 4 literary fiction novels and 6 non fiction books ☺. I only own my top favourites of all time.
Please read Titus Groan next, it's an unusual, exquisite book!
As for the German: work on the ch-sounds, otherwise it sounds perfect👌, good luck!
Ooh you neeed to read Piranesi, it was in my top 3 for last year. Amazing. 5 stars haha.
I would not at all be disappointed about your shelves, you seem like annoyed that you havent read them all yet but you don't have to have read them all at once. It's okay to have unread books to enjoy when you get to them :) I have 13 unread books and 7 coming in the mail for my birthday haha. I only own about 100 physical books (of my own, my kids probably have more than I do combined) and last year I read 32, my goal was 25. My goal for this year is 35 but I think I can do 40. I am not an extreme reader haha.
Oh jeez. I know I am bad with not having read a lot of what I own. My husband built me a library room last summer so I do have a lot of room to keep buying books, but I feel I am not in a good headspace for reading these past few months due to my job. However, while I don't feel up to reading to much at the moment, I am still getting great enjoyment going and buying books! :)
For the witcher series I really recommend reading The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny before Blood of Elves. Even though it says thats the first book in the series you will likely be lost without at least heaving read The Last Wish.
I must say that I cried a little when you said that you wanna learn German and visit Germany :') It makes me very happy
Red Lipstick Emmie needs to visit a lot more okay? You look fabulous and no matter what we love you, Emmie✨
I would suggest prioritizing the books that are aeveral stories in one book, and where you've read most of the stories or at least the main story, as these seem like book you could finish up relatively quickly to get them moved over into your "read" column.
Hi Emma. What a beautiful video, helps me stay motivated and try to get through my physical Tbr so thank you very much for that. I wanted to tell you, I know that you have Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar in your unread books and I can’t stress this enough, please read it, it’s so amazing!!! It’s a book like none other and I mean that literally, a beautiful read.
That’s all, you are amazing!
If you want a slow and intriguing read I would highly recommend A Winter’s Promise! I loved it despite hating most of the characters.
To quote Borges: “Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.”
Guess: 60%. I agree, there's nothing wrong with having more books to read!
everyone collects and reads differently! it's nice to have such a wide selection to be able to choose from.
I've read 227 books so far. I haven't yet counted the unread books that I have, but I guess my TBR goes up to 200 books. I separate the books that I've read from those that I haven't, and I write down in a notebook the titles already read.
i cannot stress enough how badly i need you to read the raven cycle, i'm convinced you're going to like it
This makes me feel better about my long physical TBR! I'm in a similar position to you. I will say, Prometheus Bound is one of my favorite plays!
You should definitely read "A thousand splendid suns". Believe me it's heart wrenching.
I read Perfume a couple years ago and still think about it all the time!