Decision paralysis – too many books, too little time!
Sometimes there are too many choices. And it's paralyzing! Like when you go to a restaurant, and their menu is 30 pages long, and you can’t decide what to get because it all looks amazing. And while you want to order it all, you know you can’t because you’ll explode if you do. That’s been happening to me with books! We all know my TBR is completely out of control. I add way more to it every week than I could ever read in the same time frame. And thanks to several new groups I discovered on FB, I recently came across multiple new authors whose books I would really like to read. And outside of those groups, I found several other new-to-me authors who were recommended by other authors I like. And then still more were recommendations from other readers that I know. So here I was, having just finished a standalone book that was recommended by an author who always has really great suggestions, and I didn't know where to go next. I'd added so many authors and series to my TBR that I was paralyzed with indecision.
I decided to start narrowing down the list of what to read next to authors that I actually have some form of a connection with personally. Either I had joined their groups and actually interacted with them, became friends with them through mutual friends/other authors, or they were active in other general romance groups that I was mutually a part of as well. And after doing that I was still overwhelmed with choices. I actually had an anxiety attack while sitting in bed holding my Kindle in one hand and my phone open to my TBR in the other. And I really couldn’t explain why I was having so much trouble with this. Was it because I didn't want to let down an author that I had personally connected with? It's not like I would never read their books, it just wasn't going to be today. And at the rate I was going, nothing was going to be read today because I was too anxious to read anything.
After reassuring myself that I was not a bad person for not reading everything by everyone all at once, I decided to go back to a series that I had partially read by an author who’s ARC team I had recently joined. That was a solid reasonable connection. Reading more of their backlist would only make me a better ARC reader for their future books, right? And I had always intended to finish the series anyway. But for some reason I had it in my head that I needed to read something completely new. Who the hell made up that rule? And this book is new, to me. I haven’t read it before. But it wasn’t a new author. Or a new series. And for some reason, in my overwhelmed brain, it didn’t count. Time out! I make the rules here! New rule- read whatever the frack you want. Wait, that’s not a new rule. It’s a guideline I completely forgot existed. So after convincing myself it was okay to read a new book, in a series I had already started, by an author I’ve already read multiple times, I finally settled in and started Reid by Melanie Moreland. And my entire soul rejoiced. Seriously! My shoulders dropped, my breathing evened out, my headache went away, my stomach settled down. OMG- I seriously gave myself an anxiety attack over picking a book! This was not ok!
Once I calmed myself down, and snarfed water through my nose before finishing the first chapter, I dropped into Melanie’s FB reader group to share that lovely analysis paralysis anxiety inducing episode. I can’t be the only person to ever experience that, right? Definitely not. And not only did other readers share their similar experiences, I was 100% validated in choosing Reid over everything else. A few people said they were either headed back to re-read Reid, or going to dive into it as their next new read. Because, yeah, this book is pretty damn awesome. I’d like to think I helped influence their decision on what to read next. But let’s be honest, Reid did that all on his own.
I know my TBR isn't going anywhere. I will never suffer from a lack of books to read. And come December into January I'm going to have quite a bit of time to read and write while I recover from surgery. So for now, I’m going to remind myself to stop stressing over what to read next. My ARC schedule is my priority, but in those in-between spaces, I’ll just take things one book at a time, one series at a time, one author at a time. Because there are literally no rules about what to read next next.
