Hey bookworm friends. Happy Friday! I have not done any Friday memes in 2026 yet so I thought it was long past due. I have a busy weekend coming up which starts tonight. We’re going to a friend’s house to learn how to play Draw Steel (Critical Role’s answer to D&D) and doing session zero! I’m literally so so excited! But in the meantime, it’s time for Meme Medley Friday.
Today’s Friday Bookish Memes Are:
Link-ups
Books From the Backlog is hosted by Carole @ Carole’s Random Life
Friday Face-Off is hosted by Lynn @ Lynn’s Books
Let’s Talk Bookish is hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits & Dini @ Dinipandareads
I encourage you to check out the hosts’ posts and remember to link up with them if you want to participate in any of the memes!🖤
Books From the Backlog
Books from the Backlog is a fun way to highlight some of the neglected books from our bookshelves.
My neglected book of the week is:
Unsouled by Will Wight
Series: Cradle
Genre: Fantasy
Published by Hidden Gnome Publishing (indie)
Format: Ebook
Why did I add to my shelf? I heard good things about this series and when I saw it on on Kindle for free I grabbed the entire series!
Synopsis:
Sacred artists follow a thousand Paths to power, using their souls to control the forces of the natural world.
Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan.
When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must defy his family’s rules…and forge his own Path.
Friday Face-Off
In Friday Face-Off, Lynn invites us to compare book covers. Pick a book that has alternative covers to showcase, then choose your favourite.
Today’s book in the ring is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson!
VS
This book has been around since the 1960s so there are tons of editions! I intentionally picked two covers I like in order to make the competition more difficult. Aesthetically, I really enjoy 2024’s edition with the blackberries and thorns. The typography in the negative spaces is also great! But the 2006 edition’s black and white illustration always draws my eye and sets the tone of the story so well. The dark and oppressive atmosphere, all the judgemental looks of the townspeople, and their manic eyes! Every detail feels so perfectly thought-out and executed.
And the Winner is: Option 1
Let’s Talk Bookish
Let’s Talk Bookish is a meme where participants discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts. The topics for each month will be posted on Book Nook Bits & Dinipandareads one month in advance.
Digital vs Physical Decluttering
Prompts: How do you manage your digital library (Kindle, Kobo, etc.)—do you delete books you won’t read, or do you let them pile up? Do you feel less guilty about owning too many digital books versus physical ones? Which is harder to let go of: a well-loved physical book or a purchased e-book?
I have a Kobo so I don’t really do Kindle. The book I shared for Books From The Backlog is a perfect example of a rare time I got a book from Kindle, then completely forgot I even owned! I bought my Kobo in 2020 when everything closed down during the pandemic so that I could still borrow library books. And that’s pretty much still how I use it; for the library but also for ARCs. I don’t often buy e-books because if I’m going to spend money on books, I much prefer to own a physical copy!
Do you delete books you won’t read, or do you let them pile up?
My e-books don’t get audited extremely closely, mostly because I don’t have that many taking up space in my reader. I let them pile up, and when I read them I don’t delete them unless I absolutely hated it! I thought it would be fun to go into my Adobe Digital Editions and see how many books I have on there right now and how many of them are still unread. There are 67 e-books on there but I’ve only read 9 out of my current collection (as of 2025, when I got a new laptop). Which means that I have 58 non-library e-books to still work through. They’re mostly from one bundle I bought with a few ARCs sprinkled in there.
Do you feel less guilty about owning too many digital books versus physical ones? Which is harder to let go of: a well-loved physical book or a purchased e-book?
I don’t really feel guilty about the digital books I own. While I’d like to read more of them, I don’t feel like I’m wasting money if I don’t get to them. I’m more concerned with reading the physical books on my shelves. If I choose to delete an e-book, I barely bat an eye. I appreciate the extra flexibility that having access to e-books gives me but I will always be a physical reader at my core. Plus e-books don’t have that ‘collect-ability’ aspect to them, at least to me. I actually feel way more guilty about the messiness of how I track my books digitally.
Throughout the years it’s been done partly through GoodReads, here and there on The Storygraph, and most recently on Fable (not to mention my spreadsheets)! If anything needs a good de-cluttering it’s all of that! I actually broke down yesterday and joined LibraryThing because I intend that to be my main tracker going forward. I’m tired of updating a thousand places when I finish a book and that one seems to have a lot of the functionality I want in one place. That being said, I’m still going to keep SG & Fable for the buddy read/ book clubs that I’m in. Well, I may gave gone slightly off-topic but it’s actually the type of digital de-cluttering that I’m working on right now!
Let’s chat in the comments!
How do you track your reading? Or, which cover did you prefer?
