Inspiration on Monday: TBR Tin

Inspiration on Monday is an awesome creative link up hosted by Trish at Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity.

Because this week is the Re-Readathon I decided to post about this a couple of days early rather than missing it (again).  

For this week's link up I decided to post about my recent excursion into making a TBR tin. A few weeks ago, when I made my resolution not to buy books for the rest of the year, I decided that I also needed a fall back for when none of my books were really calling to me, and after perusing Pinterest I decided the time had come to make myself a TBR jar. I will say that during the course of making it I did slightly come to regret that decision, but now that it's done it's already been immensely awesome so it's definitely worth the effort. 

So I looked at various people's posts about making beautiful jars and being really crafty, and then I decided to just be lazy and use this awesome tin we had lying around (there is minimal actual craftiness in this post). 

Honestly I thought that the addition of 700+ unread book titles to the tin was work enough without starting up with the paint and glitter, but I applaud those who do! 

After I found the tin I stared writing all the titles of my unread books out, then cutting the papers into strips and folding them like so:

I set myself a routine of doing at least one shelf per day and finally I was finished! I did make a lot of extra work for myself by putting each book in a series in, whereas it would have made sense to just write the name of the series instead and then keep putting it back in the tin until the series was finished (thanks instagram friend for that tip!) Ah well, we live we learn. 

Here's what it looked like when it was done:

I have already used it to pick out books for the 24 hour readathon, one and a half of which I actually ended up reading during it, so it's been successful so far, and having it does make me feel less stressed about what to read next and less likely to rush off to the library and get twenty books (although that does still happen from time to time!). Weirdly I think having it may be making me less wary of what to read next, if that makes any sense at all? Because I know I have something to make the decision for me, it's easier to make the decision for myself...

Anyway! If you'd like some examples of how to actually make your own TBR jar/tin/whatever, rather than just using what you have lying around and being lazy like me, here are some other posts:

Make a Book jar with different colours for different genres (why oh why did I not do this??)

Make a glittery book jar

How to put book pages on a jar (actually a candle tutorial but just don't do the cut out and it would work amazingly for this!)

A TBR Jar Reading Challenge 

Wonderful Wednesdays #2 - Biographies

Wonderful Wednesdays is a meme hosted by Tiny Library . It is about spotlighting and recommending some of our most loved books, even if we haven't read them recently.  Each week will have a different theme or genre of book to focus on.

This week's theme is biographies.

I thought about this quite a lot, and I've decided that my favourite biography (although it's by a group, rather than a single person) has got to be The Freedom Writers Diary.

I actually hadn't read this book until after my roomate at the time made me watch the film, but it was (and still is) one of those films which inspired me so much that I immediately went out and bought all the associated reading material. And by the way, if you haven't seen the film, you really really should.

Basically, the diary is a collection of entries from the diaries of High School English students, most of whom live in the Projects in Long Beach, California. It's basically a record of the way in which their English teacher, Erin Gruwell, uses books, and different forms of English, to inspire the children, most of whom are gang members, or living in horrific circumstances, trying not to get shot everytime they walk out of their door.

The reason that I love this book, and the film, is that it helped to reaffirm my belief in the healing,motivating, and inspiring power of books, at a point when I was having doubts. And on top of that, it's a hugely moving and inspring read!

As well as this, the other biography that I would recommend, especially for anyone who actually teaches English, is 'Teach with Your Heart' by Erin Gruwell, which is actually the biography of the teacher, rather than the students. It's also a great book.