I Am Book at the Bottom of Your TBR Pile

At least one morning a week, I rock side to side to knock us all over, startling you awake and hoping you’ll forget that I’m always at the bottom of your TBR pile that never stops growing. 

It hasn’t worked yet. Not for me, anyway! 

What’s unfair is that you’ll sometimes change the order of the books that come before me when you reassemble the pile from the mess I’ve made on the floor, but you always remember that I belong at the bottom, weighed down by books with smaller page counts and lightweight covers.

I comfort myself with the fact that you probably need the heaviest book you haven’t read to be the base, or else your TBR pile won’t be structurally sound. I’m at the bottom for architectural reasons; it is not a reflection of what I’m about.

Our order in the pile is suggestive at most. I’ve seen you pull from the middle, the top, second from me—THE BOTTOM—like you’re maneuvering a Jenga tower. I curse your habit of buying more books than you have time to read! You’ll never get to me if you keep this up.

With all your trips to the bookstore, I don’t understand why you can’t find one to take my place. I suppose I’m just that stable and reliable. What other book would be sturdy enough? The Dictionary? The Encyclopedia? The Bible? Any candidate for the new bottom of your TBR pile would need to have a hardcover and be too cumbersome to bring on a subway commute (something in Infinite Jest or Anna Karenina territory).

I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like to reach the top of the pile. How would this change the structure? Would I have the smallest page count? Be a paperback instead? A different position would completely change how I understand myself.

Is it really my size that keeps me at the bottom? Or is it my…complexity? I’m a little self-conscious that my contents might be described as “challenging.” Well, if that’s your reasoning, then I’m sorry to be in the possession of a philistine. 

My life could be worse, I suppose. It’s not that I’m insecure about being at the bottom of your TBR pile. What’s nobler than being the book that holds all other books up?

At least I’m not a coffee table book! No book wishes for that fate. We hope to be more than a decoration—we want a purpose. We’re like people in that sense.

If only you knew my I had feelings…

“Don’t take it personally,” you’d say if I told you that it’s not what I want anymore.

I need you to make up your mind about me. Not just me—all of us! I’m not the only one who’s been in this pile for months. But we’re a TBR pile; the name suggests that our stay here should only be temporary.

We agreed to be piled up in the corner of your bedroom on the condition that we’d soon be read and placed on the bookshelf. Even the nightstand, where you keep the books you’re currently reading, would be a welcome improvement.

We’re (I’m) on the floor in the corner, a growing tower against the wall by your window. I know what you’re thinking: At least there’s a view. The only view I get is of the backside of the slightly smaller book on top of me, for I’m the book at the bottom of your TBR pile! And I have feelings, though I’m trying not to take it personally.

I may have the hardest cover, I may have the highest page count, and I may be challenging. Well, take it up with (out on) my maker. I am what I am; my author has made me.

You’ll regret the day you put me at the bottom of your TBR pile. Perhaps you’ll die before you read me, and won’t that be funny? So the joke’s on you if you want to keep adding more books to your TBR pile than you’ll ever have enough years to complete.

You’ll be dead and rotting, and I’ll be laughing. 

JK! JK! You’ve given me my identity, I suppose.

I may not always like being the book at the bottom, but who else would I be? The book at the top of your TBR pile?

Ugh, is that your bookshelf I hear laughing again? Like a Greek chorus, it mocks me and the others for being TBR. But who are they to laugh at us? They’re already read. They have nothing to wait for but the day when you decide to give them away, making space for a book like…ME!

I’m the book at the bottom of your TBR pile. I’m waiting to be read, and life could be worse.