shopping my shelves: re-discovering books on my tbr

reducing my book consumerism & reading books i already own

Feb 09, 2025

You may have heard the ancient proverb: buying books and reading books are two separate hobbies.

It’s a truism that I try not to adhere to, because I don’t want to have stacks and stacks of unread books in my home just because I craved that hit of dopamine from purchasing something. I also don’t have the space for it, and the more my physical TBR builds up, the more I feel pressure to read, which just takes away the enjoyment. But I’d be a hypocrite if I said I didn’t regularly go into a bookshop and bring home a brand new shiny book that then remains sat on my shelf, unread for months.

I indulge in retail therapy as much as the next person; when I’m in a good mood I like to buy myself a treat, when I’m in a bad mood I like to buy myself a treat (or several). But the buyer’s remorse soon creeps in, and I chastise myself for my own consumerism. Did I need those new trainers when I have pairs I’ve hardly worn at home? Or that new jacket when the weight of my jackets are already threatening to pull down the hook on the back of my bedroom door? Or that pot of nail varnish that if I wasn’t in such a rush to buy something, I’d realise I already have in that exact same colour in my bathroom cabinet (this happened to me last week).

But I have noticed when it comes to books, I don’t have that same level of guilt. Surely it doesn’t count as consumerism when I’m buying something that’ll enrich my mind. Right? Right?

Like most of us, I’m not immune to the huge billion-dollar book marketing machine. Over the past two years, I’ve been so focused on new releases, falling victim to publisher’s glitzy campaigns that leave me scrabbling to get my hands on the hottest new books that everyone is talking about. Meanwhile, the swathes of unread books on my shelves continue to grow. But this year, I have decided enough is enough. My bookshelves are overflowing to the point that they are currently double-stacked (which I hate intensely but needs must), and piles of unread books have now migrated onto my bedroom floor.

Of course I could do a big clear-out, but these are books I once purchased (or was gifted by publishers) because I was excited to read them, so why deny myself of that pleasure? So this year, instead of heading into the bookstore when I want to read something new, I’m going to be shopping from my shelves and prioritising my physical TBR.

To start off this new goal, I spent the evening reorganising my shelves to see what unread books were hiding from my view. These are some of the books I re-discovered and will be reading soon:

The Lightness - Emily Temple

One year ago, the person Olivia adores most in the world, her father, left home for a meditation retreat in the mountains and never returned. Yearning to make sense of his shocking departure, Olivia runs away from home and retraces his path to a place known as the Levitation Center. There, she enrols in their summer program for troubled teens, and finds herself drawn into the company of a close-knit trio of girls determined that this is the summer they will finally learn to levitate, to defy the weight of their bodies, to experience ultimate lightness.
But as desire and danger intertwine, and Olivia comes ever closer to discovering what a body – and a girl – is capable of, it becomes increasingly clear that this is an advanced and perilous practice, and there’s a chance not all of them will survive.

The Late Americans - Brandon Taylor

In a university town, a circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection while they try to work out what they want, and who they are.
As they test their own desires in a series of relationships, these young men and women ask themselves and each other: what is the right thing to stake a life on? Work, love, money, dance, poetry? And what does true connection look like, in an age of precarity?

Three Rooms - Jo Hamya

A young woman starts a job as a research assistant at Oxford. But she can't shake the feeling that real life is happening elsewhere.
Eight months later she finds herself in London. She's landed a temp contract at a society magazine and is paying £80 a week to sleep on a stranger's sofa. As the summer rolls on, tensions with her flatmate escalate. She is overworked and underpaid, spends her free time calculating the increasing austerity in England through the rising cost of Freddos. The prospects of a permanent job seem increasingly unlikely, until she finally asks herself: is it time to give up?

Overland - Yasmin Cordery Khan

London, 1970. Fresh out of a dead-end job, Joyce answers an ad in the local paper: Kathmandu by van, leave August. Share petrol and costs. Joyce is desperate to escape life in suburbia, and aristocrat Freddie looks like he can show her a wild time.
Together with Anton, Freddie's best friend from boarding school, they embark on the overland trail from London to Kathmandu in a beaten-up old Land Rover. But as they cross the borders into Asia, Freddie can't outrun his family's history, leading to devastating consequences for everyone.

Nothing Is Lost - Cloé Mehdi

In a small town just like any other, a police identity check goes wrong. The victim, Saïd, was fifteen years old. And now he is dead.
Mattia is just eleven years old, and witnesses the hatred and sadness felt by those around him. While he didn’t know Saïd, his face can be seen all over the neighbourhood, graffitied on walls in red paint, demanding “Justice”. Mattia decides to pull together the pieces of the puzzle, to try to understand what happened. Because even the dead don’t stay buried forever, and nothing is lost, ever.

Mother In The Dark - Kayla Maiuri

Growing up in working class Boston in an Italian American family, Anna’s childhood was sparse but comfortable—filled with homemade pasta sauce and a close-knit neighborhood. Anna and her sisters are devoted to their mother, orbiting her like the sun, trying to keep up with her loving but mercurial nature as she bounces between tenderness and bitterness.
When their father gets a new job outside the city, the family is tossed unceremoniously into a middle-class suburban existence. Anna’s mother is suddenly adrift, and the darkness lurking inside her expands until it threatens to explode. Her daughters, trapped with her in the new house, isolated, must do everything they can to keep her from unraveling.

Tom Lake - Ann Patchett

It's spring and Lara's three grown daughters have returned to the family orchard. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the one story they've always longed to hear - of the film star with whom she shared a stage, and a romance, years before.

The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule - Angela Saini

Award-winning science journalist Angela Saini goes in search of the true roots of gendered oppression, uncovering a complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present.

Study for Obedience - Sarah Bernstein

A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him.

Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs - collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies 'just beyond the garden gate.' And as she feels the hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother's property, she fears that, should the rumblings in the town gather themselves into a more defined shape, who knows what might happen, what one might be capable of doing.

If you’ve read any of these, I’d love to hear your thoughts on them!

shopping my shelves: re-discovering books on my tbr

reducing my book consumerism & reading books i already own

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