[This is part one of a two part post on my relationship to my TBR pile.]

I’ve been thinking about the changes that my romance reading has wrought in my life. It’s no fun blogging about the obvious ones: I’m less dissatisfied with my life of drudgery now that I can escape into fantasy on a regular basis; I’m more likely to excuse bad male behavior because I understand how hard it is to be a man; I have a reliable way to satisfy various psychological needs created by a patriarchal culture that cannot fulfill them; I’ve lost several IQ points, considering that every minute of romance reading could have been spent with Chaucer or Dickens; and my ability to tolerate moral ambiguity has gone straight to “h-e-double-hockey sticks”, as we say round these parts. ;)

But none of those things really matter to me given a much more serious state of affairs:

I now have a TBR pile.

It exists, it takes up space I don’t have, and it only shows signs of growth.

You, dear reader, may not recall what it was like not to have a TBR pile, so let me refresh your memory (don’t worry if you don’t get it the first time. Read and repeat until it starts to make narrative sense.):

Once upon a time, I bought a book, and I read it. While reading said book, I did not shop for a new book. Why? Because I already had a book. When I finished the book, I just went to the bookstore and bought a new book. And so, the circle of reading continued. It was elegant in its simplicity, unassailable in its logic, and deeply kind to my wallet.

And then … something happened.

When I try to connect the dots in my romance acquisition habits from then to now (B.P — before the pile, to A.P  — after the pile), I hear an odd popping sound and feel a little dizzy, which tells me that I am doing battle with a force much stronger than my own brain, but in the name of honesty in blogging, I’m going to try to retrace my steps:

At first, it was just buying more books at one time than I could read. I don’t know where to lay the blame for this, but I am pretty sure it had to do with the “Buy 3, Get a 4th Romance Free” deal at Borders.

Then, it was my need to support my local used book seller. After all, he has so many romances and we live in such a small town… and since they’re “pre-read” it’s not even like buying books. It’s more like — er — adopting them.

Later, I thought I could satisfy my new thirst for more books by merely browsing blogs in romancelandia. Predictably (oh, how clearly I see it now) I found myself filling comment boxes with  “That sounds great, I’ve got to read that one.” which automatically generated a series of actions that (I’m foggy on precise sequence, although I know it has occurred, via backwards induction, every time the UPS guy rings my bell) included Bookmarks — Amazon — Search — One Click.

But then, when my wallet began to protest, I hit EBay, and, as everyone knows, in order to get that one out of print Jayne Ann Krentz or Judith Ivory you want, well, you’re positively forced to buy a “lot” of 3 or maybe 20 other books along with it. (But when you divide the price by the number of books, as I explain patiently to DH, it comes out to like fifty cents a book, so I am actually SAVING us money).

The final straw came when books started literally throwing themselves in my path, or at least, that’s how it felt to me when my local supermarket started hosting a used book table to benefit local charities: at 25 cents a paperback, all those old Silhouettes look pretty darn appealing. And did I mention it’s for a good cause?

So now I have this TBR pile, and a constant desire to add to it. Oddly, nothing makes me less likely to actually read a book than placing it in my TBR pile, and I can tell this is not an unusual state, when so many romance bloggers use coercive techniques, such as public shaming, to get each other to delve into said pile (TBR Challenge anyone? Hmmmmm???).

I’m not particularly acquistion oriented. I hate shopping actually, and do it as infrequently as possible. I don’t collect anything (Unless grudges count. Kidding!). I don’t buy jewelry, knick knacks (shudder), or kitchen wares. My personal style was set in my early twenties, trends be damned, and my clothes shopping has mainly consisted of replacing items as they have worn out with new items as close as possible to the originals.

So my TBR pile baffles me.

And yet, my TBR pile doesn’t care if I accept its existence or understand its evolution. It only wants to be fed. And feed it I will. Dammit.

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