If you’re a reader, you won’t need the initials TBR explained. Our to-be-read piles are discussed with fellow readers in tones of mild to moderate alarm, as though they might one day take over our houses, our lives and eventually the civilised world.

But I love my TBR pile. The idea of running out of books to read fills me with a chill of utter terror. I would vastly prefer my TBR pile rose to the ceiling, then fell and crushed me under the weight of all those wonderful words, rather than dying of boredom because I have Nothing To Read and am reduced to scanning the ingredients panel of a cereal packet for intellectual stimulation.

When you’re writing a book, the statistics are terrifying – 2,239,409 books have been published so far this year alone (according to http://www.worldometers.info/books/). But as a reader that’s entirely comforting – two and a quarter million really would be a TBR pile to reckon with! Even I, the most picky reader who doesn’t get past the first page of 90% of what I pick up (although I do pick up a LOT of books), couldn’t run out of books with so many waiting for me.

I’ve just tallied up my bookshelves and kindle/kobo and I stopped counting when I reached 50 TBR books. That was higher than I thought, given that I’ve just finished a couple of good novels and was wailing, “Now I have Nothing To Read!” Still, you can never get too many – maybe a quick trip to Waterstones wouldn’t hurt…

How about you – how many books do you have waiting to be read, and how many makes a suitable buffer against running out of things to read?