I love that you do unhauls! It’s so easy to fall into a dragon mindset where you just want hoard over a ton of books. But we’re not dragons! And we don’t have as much time as dragons do! So it makes sense that we have to adjust for our human time 💜

I SO recognize your tbr anxiety. Whenever my TBR is above 40 books, I start getting nervous about the amount of unread books I have 😅

Okay, I did not expect to add like five new books to my wishlist lol. Great video!

I recently unhauled alot too. Sometimes I have to be honest with myself and admit I won't read some of them haha. Great video!

My go to retail therapy is books and I've been in a really deep depression for about 4 years where I was buying books but not reading them. My TBR right now is hovering around 350-400 books. To add more stress to the situation, I am in the process of moving. Moving...my TBR plus the books I've read and want to keep...so moving around 1000 books. Sigh. The struggle is real.

I meaaaan. I get your enthusiasm for that last one, I’m not even into sci fi and from what you said even I’m interested. Also let me say that this method of cutting your tbt is just brillant, not only does it help weeding out what you might not love, but it also gives you an extra push to read those you kept with that little sample.

Shout out to Mass Effect 2, the ultimate stress-reliever ✊🏻

I trick I always follow is checking out books from my local library and then purchase the books I know I'll already like!

As of today, I have 549 books on my TBR; it is a lot, and I want to reevaluate it, but I'm waiting to move to do it, because all my books are not with me, and so I don't see the immensity of the thing ^^' but I know I'll keep most of them because I'm super intrigued by them! But, I also love to get rid of books I didn't like, or don't intend to read after all :)

I ADORED “Heart of Iron” and I cannot wait for the sequel.

You may have just added a couple to my Goodreads tbr. I personally have three tbrs, 1- virtual -goodreads where I just add things in the moment that sound good to me, and every couple months I'll go through and clean it out. I have a pile of books in my room where I was left alone in a book store and picked things up that sounded cool, I go through this pile about once a month and see if I'm still interested in all of them. Then I have a shelf of my immediate interests in books, tends to be a mix of just bought, keep meaning to get to and ones I'm thinking I'm in the mood for, I'll look at it a couple times a week and adjust with book in the pile if my mood changes.

I've just discovered your channel yesterday and you really motivate me to read more! I just love listening to you and I like the way you describe how you get to your decisions and the reasons you give for liking or disliking a book. By the way, I am one of those people with a 500+ TBR... I just can't help it, I am just greedily buying books that sound remotely interesting! ^^ And I really leave books on my TBR forever. Just finished a book I bought 17 years ago and I loved it now. It just needed the right time and mindset for me to like it, or I needed to go through some stuff in my life to like it. ("Summer sisters" by Judy Blume) This happens to me a lot. That I buy a book, don't read it for years and when I am finally reading it I am beyond thrilled and really thankful and happy for having found such a gem in my treasure chest of unread books. Currently I am reading "The handmaid's tale" by Atwood, which I bought in 2007, and I love it. Well anyways, I love what you are doing, thank you so much for your effort!

This motivates me to try this! I’ve been trying to reduce my TBR and be less consumerist this year. I just want to buy less things. I don’t have a lot of space and I don’t want clutter. It is really hard to apply this to my life while I watch booktube because I’m always hearing about new books. Thanks for the motivation to keep working towards my goal.

i tend to enjoy historical fiction in movies more so than in books, too! something about the atmosphere of watching it on screen works better for me

I definitely hear you with wanting to cut down on your TBR. I have such a weakness for used SFF books that sound cool, so I end up getting a lot of books really cheaply, but I've been doing a really good job of not hauling too many books this year. In fact, my book haul this month is only 4 books (2 of which I've already read), and I've read 13 books this month already.

I want to reduce my entire TBR to zero - just to achieve that, and then build back up to no more than 7-10 at a time. I read about 30 books a year and have 76 currently. I should be done by the end of 2021 max and I’m getting quite good at saying to myself, “Are you gunna read that this week? No? Well, wait to buy it until you will!” ☺️

I relate so much to you because I have the same goal and seeing my tbr books stresses me out even though I've gotten them down to 60 from like 300 one time because I want to have 20 by 2020, I have 20+ new releases I'm definitely still getting this year, so I have to read another 60 books this year if I want to achieve that. Yikes! I've been so ruthless with dnfing this year but I just have to be if I want to fill my time with books I'm loving and get to that goal. Your unhauls always inspire me, I've watched your konmari one countless times when I need that motivation to do it again!

Heart of Iron is so good. I try to tell people about it. I can't wait for the second one. I hope you enjoy it too. 💖💖💖

I think if I've had the book for over a year and haven't read it, I have to give myself a really compelling reason to keep it. I also cull my shelves a couple times a year and if I'm not going to reread or lend out the book, or it's not got some sentimental value to me, I pass it on.

I differentiate between my near-future TBR and my goodreads "want to read" list.The latter is like three pages long; the former is what I don't want to have to return to the library without finishing lol. Sometimes I'll start a book from the want to read list, not really be hooked, and return it to that same list to give another shot at later.

YAY!!!!! Such a great idea!!!!! I'm super happy you're doing this; it creates so much FREEDOM. I've been a fan of this tactic ever since I saw Rachel/Kalanadi try this last summer :D

The Ruin of Kings is now one of my favorite books! I just finished it last month! The writing style is so original and the overall story amazing! I can’t believe it is a debut!

I have so many space books on my tbr pile! So excited to hear you're doing a space themed readathon soon.. sign me up! Save me from my own TBR anxiety! LOL

It's so hard to have a small tbr when books that sound amazing keep getting released! XD

I have more than one thousand books in my Goodreads 'to read' list and I don't stress about it, but have fun going through the big shelf and fishing a new title out of it. I know that even if I read three books for the rest of my life I'll never read all the books so why worry. I also read my physical books regularly but I haven't thought of reading the first chapter of each to unhaul books. What happens though is that I do give up on books if after 40-100 pages I see I don't really want to finish them.

I’ve switched over to mostly ebooks from the library and it’s made it so much easier on myself to avoid my hoarding tendencies

I just refocused my tbr into top 30 series/ authors for each author I gave up to 3 books. Eg. Rick Riordan 1. The dark prophecy , 2. The burning maze 3. The ship of the dead Maggie Stiefvater 1. Blue lily lily blue 2. The raven king And I put it in the order of the series I want to read first. if I finish one series/ author then I can replace it with something else.

YES!!! The Love that Split the World was wonderful! I love Emily Henry’s writing style. Glad you kept that one!

Legit you have got to have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. I've been watching your reviews for quite sometime and they are super entertaining and informative! Really helps me narrow down my TBR

I love book unhauls. One, it gives me the spark to re-read stuff. Second and third it's nice reminiscing on books, and just generally I like the decluttering process.

Loved this video! I got more books I want to read now. I hadn’t heard of any of those. I had a huge problem with accumulating a TBR and then losing interest in the books. It didn’t help that I went off like reviews and the synopsis and nothing else. Eventually I did a huuuuge book unhaul of both books I read and ones I hadn’t touched. After that I went 100% digital. Now I don’t buy another book till I’ve finished or DNF’d the one I’m reading. I also always read the first chapter before buying. I just download the samples of books I find interesting in the meantime. It’s been super liberating and now I read more than ever.

i haven’t watched the video yet but im so excited!! ☺️

Will you be doing a part two of this? Or so this again until you get through all of your TBR I would love to see another video like this!! The Ruin of Kings sounds awesome. I have 50 books on my TBR as well and I read first chapters about once every month and then try and read the one I’m most interested in that month and then go from there!

I’m not going to lie, I have some books I’ve owned for over 5 years (probably going on 8-ish) that I haven’t read. I have one shelf of my bookcase dedicated to my TBR and I tackle this by having my bf randomly pick a book now and again and sometimes he gets those stragglers that have been there for forever. And wouldn’t you know it, they go immediately into the “to donate” box once I’m done. There’s a reason they’ve sat there so long. 😂

I loved "Heart of Iron". I went in with no expectations and knowing only that it was an Anastasia retelling with a Girl with Amnesia, her robot companion and a disillusioned young noble. I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen because I have seen this setting a thousand times but boy, was I wrong! It went in a totally different direction and I loved it! I didn't think the author would have gone there, but I'm glad she did. Even the romances that happened weren't between the characters that I expected. It was a pleasant surprise.

I haven't read any of those books but City of Lies is definitely on my TBR!!! I went through a phase where I bought everything that sounded even vaguely interesting, which I am now regretting, and I do a lot more general way of unhauling. I look at the books and I try to see if I remember anything about them and if it is no I read the synopsis to see if it still interests me. I only do this for my physical TBR because my ebook TBR terrifies me. Lol

I feel the same way as you with historical fiction. The synopsis of a lot of them intrigue me, but I can’t bring myself to care enough or want to read them. Give me a tv series of movie of it and I’d totally watch it.

I go through my Goodreads TBR at least twice a year, read every single synopsis and remove the ones I'm no longer interested in. Usually, if I can't even remember what the book is about before reading the synopsis, I take that as a good sign that I'm not excited enough about the book and remove it. That being said, but TBR is insanely huge. I try to keep it under 200 at all times. I'm currently unsuccessful with that. 😂 I'm at 234 right now, but 30 of those are books that haven't been released yet so maybe I can exclude those ones, which means I'm at least close!

I used to be in the 20-30 range for my TBR but lately it's been inching up so I'm at 55 now! Hoping to get it back down to around 30 by the end of the year though, we'll see how that goes 😅 Out of the books in your video I've only read one and that was Heart of Iron. I love Anastasia and actually quite enjoyed it! From what I remember it had a little bit of eye-rolling YA silliness but not too much and I liked what it was building up to with the world and everything, the sequel comes out soonish and I'm definitely going to pick it up!

I have The Ruin of Kings on audible, super excited to get to it now, sounds interesting. I do reevaluate my TBR... I do something similar to try a chapter but I never read the full chapter. I usually know within a page or two if it's something I'm still interested in. I recently have done a few major unhauls and now have a TBR of books I'm all excited to get to.

I have a similar goal to yours for my TBR but I currently have around 130 books so quite a way to go to bring it down! I don't often unhaul books I haven't read as I like to always give books a chance :) The River of No Return does sound really good!

The FEAR that ran through me when you held up Amberlough and I thought you might not like it :'D I'm glad you decided to keep it though, it's one of my all time faves

I actually ended up listening to Heart of Iron and I enjoyed it. Hella diverse, too. 💜

The only one of these I’ve read is City of Lies. Based on what I remember of your comments about shadow of the fox I’m not sure how you’ll go with it. It’s first person with two perspectives ( a brother and sister) and I struggled to tell them apart. The world building was interesting but I only just got through the perspective.

Loved this type of video, Sam! You’re such an eloquent booktuber and I love your rationale behind why you keep/get rid of books. I never even knew about Amberlough before this vid but I have added it to my tbr because it sounds just my thing 😁 Really glad you’re keeping Heart of Iron - I also own the book and hope to read it very soon!

This is such a clever idea, reduce your TBR bit by bit. At some point you will hit your target, for sure. I think I'm going to adopt this ;0) Happy reading anyway.

I just read Ruin of Kings and actually it gets fast into usual fantasy unfortunately, like there are bits and stuff of what happens in prologue but its basically just telling the story from how they got there..

Ive learned you like the word intrigued 🤣 thanks for the book recs. Added a heap to try.

I knew I would enjoy Amberlough from the first sentence! Ended up four starring it. Maybe four and a half. It's different from what I normally grab, and I ended up being happily surprised. ☺ I do hope you enjoy it when you get to it!

I loved that you said, as evidence by, like your TBR is a care plan!!! Lol ( from one social worker to another) I absolutely loved that. Love your channel. It is a breath of fresh air

Your unhaul made me put books on my TBR. I love the Mass Effect series, it is my favorite RPG series of all time and really just one of the best gaming experience I have ever had. Gonna add Barbary Station to my "after the Expanse" space opera list.

i mean, my tbr is like 10 books long, im gonna read all of those soon. Sure, theres like two classics ill never read - but they were gifts and id feel rude getting rid of them

I can't wait to hear about your thoughts on Barbary Station. It's been on my to buy list for a bit just for the space, pirate, f/f , themes.

i love this shirt!

One thing that helps ease my conscience about getting rid of books is that I can always go to the library and borrow one of those books again should I change my decision to read it. As of yet, I have never gone back to the library to try to read them. Lol. Just something to help you in the moment of indecision.

I wished I only have 51 books on my TBR! My TBR is waaaaay too massive, but I can’t stop buying more books😅I used book-buying as a mood enhancer/stress reliever, which might have been the worst idea I had ever have😫 Any tips for sticking to book-buying-ban?

Great video, Sam! I feel you on the Swan Gondola. It’s based on my own city and I still don’t care enough to read it! 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yup definitely found some books that I want and probably ones that I don’t think are for me.

According to Goodreads I have about 120 unread books, and I really want to cut that down, but that will also require buying fewer books, which is a difficult challenge on its own.......

I got ruin of kings for my birthday in May (I chose it) and it sounds like it will be an amazing read!

I understand your frustration with your TBR. I'm also bouncing around the 50 mark with my books and I'm getting really frustrated with it. I have the terrible habit of getting books and reading them almost immidetly allowing my backlist to languish. So even though my TBR technically isn't growing it isn't shrinking either.

This is such a good idea! I just counted and I currently have 31 books on my TBR, and even that already mildly stresses me out a lil sometimes lol

Oh, I've been meaning to give praise to your new outro music and image. It's gorgeous and moving and wonderfully on point for how I see you. I do miss the lovely font you've used all these years for your thumbnails though. It was easy to read and so aesthetic, and would probably harmonize beautifully with the newest bits. Love you and your channel, Chica! 😻

I read Ruin of Kings and really loved it! The way it is written is quite different and can be confusing, however i enjoyed it a lot. I found the main character funny, i liked his way of thinking. Though there were some parts of the worldbuilding that confused me a bit. Overall, enjoyed it a lot and cannot wait for the second book!

I read The Ruin of Kings during the last Tome Topple and I really liked it (4.5 stars) even though part of it is first person which I don't usually enjoy. I usually go through my TBR once every ~6 months and pick off things I'm no longer interested in and donate them. I still have a really large TBR but until a few years ago I almost exclusively bought books I had already read and loved so the owning a TBR is a new feeling for me. I think eventually I want to get my TBR down to ~50 books.

I love this video Sam! I always find the First Chapter challenges interesting when people are trying to cut down their TBR. Also I just want you to know, I’m super happy The Thousand Names made the cut but PLZ PLZ PLZ don’t let the fact that I gifted you that book stress you out at all about keeping it 💕 if you gotta ditch it you gotta ditch it & I support you 502027494% 💕

Awesome Video! And I love your nails!

I read Sky Without Stars last month and talked about it in my last wrap up! And you're absolutely right, I felt like it was really heavy handed with the straightforward reinterpretation of les Mis in space. Plus, if you only read the first chapter then you haven't met the other main characters yet, and they're both awful lmao

i have a thousand books in my house and I've read like a hundred of them. The most "evaluating" I do is the occasional purge of an author. I recently dumped all my V.E. Schwab because no one ever told me how many TWs are in those books and they are very triggering for me and apparently all of them focus on those same triggers! So, those left my house. I did recently box up a ton though, because there's no room for them, so we'll see how many I wanna keep when those unbox. I'm never worried about my TBR though. It doesn't stress me out, and I acquire ebooks very fast these days, so my digital TBR rivals my physical one.

I love this idea! I think I’ll run off and do the same with my TBR lol

*Looks at my thousand book tbr* yeah it's small enough😅. Good job on getting your tbr even smaller❤❤!

I’m no longer sure what my tbr even is... I’ve tons of unread books, unacquainted books, and books I’d love to read at some point. All I know rn is what I have on my library hold list.

The Ruin of Kings is HARD to read but really enjoyable. I know a lot of people think it’s overly convoluted and complex and I agree with that. But it’s a book I was happy to work through! Hopefully you enjoy it

I have 38 unread books in my room. I really want to keep the number of books on my physical tbr low as well! To many books is overwhelming for me!

I don't know why I find unhauls so titillating lol it's like, we all LOVE to buy books and it's usually private or secretive when we choose to remove books 😄 I don't really have a "TBR", it's just my personal library to collect books I'm interested in. I'm a mood reader and switch up genres often so I have a lil bit of everything.

I actually have been hearing a lot about Sky without stars a lot of people say it’s really good! I haven’t tried but I want to lol. But I understand I hauling good for you!

I really love this video and the idea of it even though I'm really not a TBR kinda person lol

I'm trying to lose my physical TBR and turn it into just a digital list that I pull from the library. It's hard though, because while I have a great library, they don't get EVERYTHING I want to read.

Currently my physical tbr is fourteen. I'm kinda proud 😂🤔✨

I find trying the first chapter a really useful way to decide on books I'm not sure about!

Not sure if I ever mentioned it, but I read River of No Return back when it first came out and really enjoyed it! I read a book called the Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic around the same time and they were both gems! It's been a good 5 years since I read them though and I wonder how I'd feel about them these days. I've been holding out hope you'd read River of No Return so we could hear your thoughts on it since I haven't found anyone else that's read it.

I usually unhaul books in the spring by taking them up to my local used book store to sell back for store credit.

Heart of iron was incredibly lovely. I remember absolutely adoring it - although, i will be honest, i am so trash for the anastasia story and i didnt know about that going in and i was surprised by that plot element, sooooooo ... circumstances

I did something like this but with my samplers on my kindle:)

I think I might try the Swan Gondola

Heart of Iron was very very good!!!

Ruin of Kings was really good and had a really magical and fantastical feeling to it. It had a MAJOR cliffhanger tho so I’d wait till closer to October (when the second comes out) to read it

I kept getting distracted by your shirt. I want it in every possible colour. I need to go through my books soon and do an unhaul. Not reading as fast as I'd like to.

The City of Lies seems really cool. Oh I find that as well with historical fiction, I don't love books focused on it but I adore movies and tv shows, and it is almost opposite with SFF I will occasionally like a SFF show or movie but often not despite loving novels in the genre. Capitol in noir that sounds good.

I enjoyed Sky Without Stars, but I can see why it wouldn’t be for everyone, especially if you don’t feel strongly about Les Mis. I didn’t think it was perfect, and holy hell is it long, but I still liked it 🙂 On the other hand, I was bored to tears with Heart of Iron, which really bummed me out because I was super intrigued about ‘Anastasia in Space.’

Oh my goodness Amberlough is AMAZING, SO SO SO GOOD, I saw you pull it up and panicked and am now very relieved you are keeping it. I also *just* finished Starless and overall did not love it (2.5/5). GOOD CHOICES.

I tried to read Amberlough but just couldn't get through it. I hope you have better luck with it

I have over 400 books on my TBR. 🙃😳 Sorry, that probably just gave you major anxiety! That counts physical books and ebooks, I have almost an equal amount of each. I am _trying_ to keep it under control though, my goal is to read more books than I obtain in each year. Currently "obtained" is slightly higher, but that's because of the Hugo Voter Packet. Hadn't heard of _The Swan Gondola_ before, but just added it to want-to-read - I'm always interested in books that feature World Fairs, for some reason.

I evaluate my TBR about three times a year. I’m not buying books like I used to when I first found book tube so the majority of things I do want to read. However, there are books I may have lost interest in or I read and just don’t want to keep them.

I haven’t even heard of a lot of these books 😂

I bet that Kameron Hurley was The Light Brigade, huh? I read it a few weeks ago and I STILL haven't rated or reviewed it on GR. I considered DNFing at 10% but then re-listened to the last 40% twice. But I can't bring myself to recommend it my baybees without massive disclaimers. It was fascinating, and challenging. I respected it immensely, while also resenting how freaking bleak much of it was. ... Well, hell. I guess I just reviewed it after all. LOL

I read The Love that Split the world. I have a half spoiler rant review about it on my channel, but in short, I hated it, it was very problematic. The mystery was just interesting enough that I kept reading it, but it was a 2 star book.

“As evidenced by” I see your social work language lol

This makes me want to unhaul. Probably just reread the synopsis and see if I am still interested. I also want to get my TBR down. I have 94 unread books.

Your eyes have such a beautiful shape.