The Terrible Beast (also known as my To-Be-Read list)

I can remember a time when my library book pile was running low, so I pulled up the library site, fingers poised to type in the title I wanted.

And I couldn't think of one. I hmm'd and haw'd and finally googled for the ALA lists, choose a couple, and that was that.

Six months later, I started following book blogs. Eight months later, I started my own blog. Not having a list of books I want to read? That, Bloggy friends, is a thing of the past.

I follow blogs in Google Reader, because it's easy to keep things unread and star stuff and the like. And whenever I see a post that contains an interesting title of a book, or an intriguing cover, or a raving review, I click the little star. Sometimes I star upwards of ten posts a day. Every couple weeks, I go the Starred section of Reader and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll (just when you think the scrolling hits the bottom, the little blue bar jumps up twelve feet) until I reach the very last posts I've starred - which, by the way, are the posts I actually want to have forever, like questions to ask agents or how to play zombie tag.

Then I pull up Goodreads, find the last post on a book I want to read, and begin the arduous process of locating books, adding them to the comes-in-November or comes-in-March or whatever shelf, and finally, the to-be-read shelf.

As of today (September 16th, because I'm writing this post early), I have 236 books on my to-be-read list. But that's only the LIST, because I have 160 starred posts on Reader, and there are four unread blog posts in my reader right now and THEY ARE ALL REVIEWS.

I've tried to tell myself not to star things so much, but how can I? I'll be reading and think OMGIMUSTREADTHATRIGHTNOW, RIGHTNOWITELLYOUORIWILLDIE. And then I see my TBR list and think OMGTHISISAGOODONE and I'll go to the next page and think OMGOMGOMGLOOKATALLTHESETHEYAREALLSOGOOD and go to the third page and think NOOOIWILLNEVERGETTOREADALLTHESE.

I don't even know how to handle the Terrible Beast anymore. How do you guys do it?

(PS: A lot of you said in the survey that you like the short story-type posts. Well, look out for one on Thursday!)