I am currently reading one book. This should be a simple, pleasant statement. Unfortunately, my brain has other ideas. While my eyes are technically fixed on a single novel, some frantic little administrative department in my head is simultaneously cataloguing what I should read next, panicking about what I’ve already forgotten, and mentally rescheduling my entire TBR like it’s a quarterly business review. Very relaxing. Very cosy. Absolutely not what books were invented for.
The TBR is, I think, the root of all of this. What started as a fun little wishlist has quietly become a pile of unpaid invoices, all of them staring at me from across the room with the energy of something overdue. Every time I open Instagram or Kindle, someone is describing another novel as devastating, life-changing, or the best thing they have ever read, and naturally I add it immediately, and naturally I do not start it for four months, and naturally I feel guilty about that for absolutely no reason because nobody is grading me on this. Nobody except my own brain, which has apparently appointed itself head examiner and is not giving out gold stars.
Being a writer, of course, has added a completely unnecessary extra layer to the problem. Now I am never just reading — I am noticing pacing, dialogue, structural decisions, and every beautiful sentence that makes me feel personally targeted by someone else’s talent. I will be halfway through an excellent romance and suddenly start questioning my own characters’ chemistry. I will read one clean, devastating line of prose and mentally resign from writing altogether. The comparison is never fair, obviously. I am holding a finished, professionally edited novel and measuring it against whatever questionable draft is currently sitting on my laptop, judging me. Anxiety, as it turns out, has very little interest in fairness.
So I am attempting something radical. I am trying to read the book I am actually reading. When my brain starts drifting to the next one, I’m coming back to the page. When a recommendation appears online, I’m saving it without restructuring my entire life around it. The TBR does not need to be conquered. It is not Everest. Nobody is waiting at the finish line to hand me a certificate for reading everything I once thought looked interesting.
Currently reading? One book with my eyes. Three with my anxiety. But we’re getting there.
