Bookish Thoughts: Too Many Reading Choices Can (Sometimes) Be A Bad Thing

As I was looking over my bookshelves the other day searching for a new book to read I found myself feeling a little overwhelmed by my rather daunting TBR pile (my TBR pile was also the subject of a separate post last week, click here to read it).  While I have tons of unread books to choose from, many of which I'm quite eager to read, it took me a long time before I finally settled on something -- Pilgrim by Timothy Findley, an e-book housed on my Kobo and not sitting on my physical shelves at all.  My issue was not a lack of good reading material to choose from, but rather that I simply have too many books to pick from.

Given that my reading selections and how I feel about them depend, to a large extent, on my mood, I've always liked to maintain a large TBR. This ensures that no matter what my mood I'll always have a book to match it -- yes, I recognize that in this age of e-readers I can now access books not already sitting on my shelves at the touch of a button and so I don't need to stockpile them, but I prefer paper books even though I do love the convenience of my e-readers. But lately, even though I continue to buy books on a regular basis, I've stopped purchasing them simply because they are on sale and I might like to read them someday.  I've stopped buying all or some of the books in a series before I've even read the first one (learned my lesson the hard way with that one), and I no longer buy books simply because other people liked them.  In short, I've come to realize that if I don't start tackling my towering TBR pile and slow down on the book buying, I'm never again going to be able to make a quick decision about what to read next!  I never thought I'd utter these words, but it seems I've finally learned that too many books to choose from can (sometimes )be a bad thing.

How about you my fellow bookworms? Do you sometimes find that maintaining a large TBR pile prevents you from quickly deciding what to read next?