How To; TBR Jar
If you watched my most recent Book Haul video you would have seen that at the end of the video I chose my next two books to read from two TBR Jars and today I am here to tell you a bit about them and to show how you can make your own as well!
First things first, what IS a TBR jar?
I would like to take this moment to say that I did NOT think up this idea. I got the idea from this video by Rincey Reads who got the idea from mothereffingbooks.
The idea of the TBR jar is to write out every book you need to read, fold them all up and put them in a jar in a random order so you can blindly choose what book to read next.
As you can see, I had so many books to read that I actually had to make a second jar. One is for my hard-copies and the other for me e-books.
Let’s Get Started
So, the very first thing you need to do is write down all the books that you own. You can either do this with pen and paper – see photo – or you can write it out on the computer and then print them all off. I did it on the computer the first time around but wrote out the extra books that I’ve recieved recently just to make it nice and quick to add them into the jar.
Cutting and Folding
Once you have all the books written down somewhere, you need to get out a handy pair of scissors – I would recommend a big pair like in the photo if you have a lot of cutting to do because if not your hand might hurt quite a bit at the end! Then you need to cut the books out in long strips across the page. I did this a page at a time to save stopping and starting. I also did it while watching TV because I found that it was an incredibly long job!
As soon as you have a page worth of slips, you just need to start folding them. For this I folded them in half and then in half again but of course, you can fold them however you want. Once the piece of paper has been folded I put it straight into the jar to save me losing it, just remember to keep shuffling them around while you do it so you don’t know all the books that are at the bottom, middle, and top!
Wahoo!
Then, once you’ve finished all the pages you’ve written on, and placed them all in the jar. You have a fully functioning TBR jar! But before you can pick one out of the jar you should probably think up so guidelines. These will be personal to you. For example, my guidelines are;
1. If you pull out a third or fourth book in the series you haven’t read the second book of, read the second book and put the slip back.
2. If you’re REALLY not in the mood to read the book that comes out, you may re-pick but only ONCE.
3. Once you’ve read the book, feel happy and pick another choice!
But of course, you may have different rules to give yourself when it comes to your TBR jar. And once you’ve sorted those out, you can pick your first read!
Hope that you all have fun if you make one!
Enjoy.
10 Comments
Anya
I did this so that I will read some of the books I’ve had since last summer! It’s a good idea, whoever came up with it first :D
Jen - At Random
What a cool idea! And a great excuse for a craft day :-P
Beverley @ A Reading Daydreamer
This is such a brilliant idea! Must try it out some day! Thanks for sharing it with us :)
Christa @ More Than Just Magic
I have one of these as well! Although I love the idea of splitting print and ebook. Maybe I need two jars too…
Gabby
This is such a great idea, so creative as-well I cant wait to give it a go :) Great post Faye
Nikki @ Foil the Plot
What a clever idea, Faye! I have a tendency to read purely based on what genre I’m in the mood for at that particular time, however, I might have to give it a whirl in the moments when I have no idea what to read.
Sophie
I really love the sound of this. It’d be so good for my TBR pile!
Jacklin Updegraft
Thank you so much for this idea! This is awesome! I always have such a hard time picking which book to read next and can never decide! This makes it so easy!
Tanya @ Mom's Small Victories
I love this idea. I have this kind of jar for kids prizes/activities but the TBR would totally be my prize jar! Right now my time is dedicated to author review copies, book club and challenges but I need to get back to reading for fun for me soon.
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