Life Snapshot: I Finally Saw My Whole Reading Pile

Last time I told you how I became an ebook phone reader. Here, though, is the part I left out... once reading moved onto my phone the books all scattered. My go-to app is Kindle as so many services feed into it. Library e-loans... I used Overdrive then later switched to Libby. Years ago I discovered NetGalley and though I prefer Kindle some books are understandably only available on their NetGalley app. Then came Amazon First Reads and Prime Reading... all through Kindle. The odd book lived on Audible... an Instagram ad once got me a three-month trial with a couple of those are still in my library. Recently, after another round of ads, I used Apple Books to buy a Patrick Stewart audiobook collection of Shakespeare's sonnets... and found a few already sitting there from ages ago. Plus, of course, I still have physical books either on my shelves or shared with my kids. So my books are really everywhere and yet somehow and sometimes... nowhere.

I knew it was a lot. But I didn't truly know how much.

Long story short one thing led to another and I ended up building an app that allowed me to use website access to import my books from several websites, added a screenshot reader to add books from apps, and a barcode scanner for my physical books. The end result? My TBR pile materialized in a single spot... and I was shocked!

NetGalley gave me a current count on their website so between audiobooks and the ebooks I knew I had 535 books before I ever added it. But the others... 26 Apple Books, eight Audible audiobooks, currently 14 Kindle ebooks (need to scan more... First Reads adds up), five Libby books (mainly suspended holds), six Prime Reading books, and 50 physical books just in my office alone (read many of them but also shared probably that much with my kids over the years)... I saw the whole picture and was shocked at the 644 books that day... then by the time I sat down to write this, it was already different and had gone up!

Despite, or because of, the high number I'm glad I built the app and can see all the books in one place allowing me to make a better decision on what I should read next and shop from what I already have. That said... the NetGalley number has risen since the first NetGalley import attempt... it's the emails. They all sound so good and I try not to add to it, but then I do.

And yes, I thought I'd be feeling dread at such a large pile... but surprisingly it's more a relief. I can't shrink a pile I don't fully know exists and now that invisible pile is available for me to search through when I hear about a new book, filter by what I want when I want it, meander through a scroll when I don't, and easily see everything and where it's from when I want.

Seeing all these books in one place didn't make the pile bigger. It made it, for the first time, something I could actually start to tame.

That said, I just noticed another email from NetGalley... and that Libby Facebook group is sharing epic finds... ooh notification from Kindle about three months free of Unlimited... maybe I need to ignore them and simply open Simply TBR and browse what I have instead... anyway... that's what I've been building. It's out now, and you can find it and the whole backstory over on its landing page.

— Kyra 💕