I’ve somehow ended up with a LOT of books that I bought and ultimately didn’t end up reading. (7422 pages worth)
Currently reading 10 pages in each book then deciding which would be the easiest and/or most entertaining to read first. Does anyone else have any strategies for clearing backlogs?
I do buy books faster than I read, and my current 積読 is about 20 books high. That’s okay though, I’ll definitely get to them eventually. I have no strategy, I just look at my bookshelf and pick the one I feel like reading at the given time. They will all get their turn, but meanwhile, the 積読 will keep growing. 
Mine’s 24 exactly, so a pretty similar number! They really do just pile up
I wish I were the type of person to just pick up a book and read. I love reading but absolutely never remember to check the bookshelf when I’m bored. (Or the games I haven’t finished, etc.) Maybe I need to paint it glowing neon or put it in a more visible place
I like your way of thinking about it! Very go-with-the-flow
Edit: Realized two of the reading materials on my spreadsheet were actually not really books per se
I tend to prioritise either the slimmer volumes or the ones I know I will get engrossed in! That way I will progress faster and feel a bit better about the pile 
however it should be said that my Japanese 積読 pile is much more under control than my English one… I keep impulse buying books, at least Japanese ones are hard for me to come across so I can’t just pick them up in the same way 
The strategy that worked for me, some years ago, was to put a moratorium on all book purchases, ruthlessly cull the books that I had no genuine interest in, then set a reading challenge on Goodreads to read the 75 books left over within a year. If I wasn’t enjoying the book 25% in, I’d mark it finished and move on to the next one. Since then, my English to-read pile has never gotten out of control again.
Of course, that was for English language books. My Japanese to-read pile has 185 books in it.
Buying books is half the fun. I enjoy filling up my (literal, physical) 積読 bookshelf. Some books are probably going to be there permanently, but that’s okay - so long as I have a variety of things to peruse when I’m deciding on a new book to read. When nothing there strikes my fancy it’s time to buy another batch.
My backlog has 22 books in it currently (including a few “got 70 pages in and stalled out” books but not the 4 I’m actively reading). This is mostly because I buy physical books, and so I end up buying 6 or 10 at a time to save on shipping…
I currently own 218 Japanese books to be read, of which around 60 are textbooks or study resources (dictionaries, Kanji learning resources, shadowing books etc).
I’ve also got around 420 on my wishlist still to get. 
Oh, I’m also working through 8 books atm, 6 of which are different textbooks/study resources (and an answer key for Genki 2).
I’ve got 66 books marked on my Natively backlog/Owned list (about half of which is manga), but the true number is probably higher - I’ve got a bunch of manga on my Kindle that I haven’t gone through to mark as owned yet. I don’t have much of a plan of cutting through it, to be honest; I’d probably attempt some kind of effort if my reading speed was faster. Honestly, probably my best shot would be to devote like two or three months to just reading through all the manga I’ve picked up over the years; I know I’ve probably got quite a few series that aren’t going to be my thing, so it’d be nice to trim those out.
My English backlog… 
Hmm. Let’s not think about it. I guess in all fairness it’s not actually that big; probably about the size of my Japanese backlog or smaller, actually. They tend to get pushed to the side in favor of spending more time with my Japanese books, though, since those take longer to read. I have a goal to clear out my English backlog this year, but we’ll see if that happens or not.
At last count my backlog had crept past 125,000 pages (including VNs - I think about half that or a little less in novels/manga). So I definitely have some work to do 
I definitely can’t relate to this at all 
(But yeah let’s be real half these I bought for the cover)
Edit: forgot the strategy part. Yeah, my strategy had just been to hope I read faster over time but so far my appetite has grown with my reading speed so that has not helped, hah.
I forgot to count my unread e-books 
I recently imposed a no-buy on myself. I think my backlog is somewhere in the 50s? But I keep an imperfect count. My physical bookshelf is overflowing though, so I need to start working through the ones I have!
My backlog was 75 a few months ago but I’ve done a few more hauls since so it’s probably well past 100. You’d think that looking at my overflowing shelves would tell me that I have a buying problem, but I’m convinced that buying a new bookcase would solve that. 
Current strategy is to read two or more books at a time.
My physical 積読 pile is 125 books. 
My digital 積読 pile is even more than that, but currently around 50 are actually loaded onto my tablet for reading. And I have an audible subscription, so in theory whatever is on there is also an option. I am also going to be in Japan again soon. There will be bookoffs in need of visiting. I am a lost cause.
I try to give priority to shorter/easier books and/or books that I am genuinely excited for. 10 pages of a difficult book might take me as long as 20 of an easier book and if it’s too difficult it might put me in a reading slump. But so can a boring, easy book. It’s a balance act.
In comparison: My non-jp physical pile is 130 books and I have 60 books on digital loan or hold from the library. That’s about a year worth of books for me. So, just by numbers the JP backlog is not so bad, if it weren’t for the fact that I read so much slower in Japanese. 
I don’t have a backlog of books I’ve bought but haven’t read, but I do have a decently large plan to read on my AniList, which is currently at 160 (150 Manga, 8 Light Novels, 2 One Shots). I haven’t really put much effort into putting my AniList PTR onto my Natively PTR, so my Natively PTR is mostly what I plan on reading relatively soon, or stuff I found from Natively. There’s definitely a lot things I could add to my PTR on AniList, that I’ve just forgotten to add (mostly LNs), but there’s also some series in there that I don’t even remember putting there at all, so my real PTR could be either be a bit bigger or a bit smaller.
My AniList plan to watch however is way larger. It’s currently at 355 (255 TV, 17 TV Shorts, 27 Movies, 2 Specials, 36 OVA, 18 ONA). I will never watch all of these, lol. There’s definitely a lot in there that I just straight up don’t remember at all, probably much more than my PTR.
I don’t really have any strategy for clearing either, I mostly just watch/read what I want to next. Sometimes, I plan ahead, but that’s typically so I can have a particular anime/manga for a milestone (JoJo’s as 10th anime in Japanese, K-On Movie as 1000th episode of anime in Japanese, JoJo’s as 10th manga in Japanese, etc.). Pretty sure I add more to both faster than I read/watch from the PTR/PTW. Not really super worried about that. My planning sections are more of a “I may read/watch this someday”, more than “I will definitely watch/read this someday”.
I have a backlog of about 20 novels, but maybe half of them are in the “will probably never read” bucket. I also have a backlog of around 80 volumes of manga. A good half of those I bought only recently… there was a 55 yen sale on Amazon and I bought 28 volumes digitally from that. And then I also recently bought two full series sets of 6 and 8 volumes each. Not to mention just random volumes I’ve purchased over the years but haven’t read yet.
So in short, I will clear out my backlog approximately never.
That’s a lot of books! I can’t imagine how large your original English book pile must have been
Mood!
Gotta buy them all from the same supplier too or else they’ll come in separate boxes
Usually I go with honto.jp since Amazon is often separate I think
((That specifically me too))
Sometimes when an illustrator I like does the cover art I buy it without knowing the content
I used to love honto.jp because they had a “ship by seamail” option. Sadly they don’t do foreign shipping any more (except via some setup with a forwarding company), so I’ve moved elsewhere. I’ve used Amazon, cdjapan and Kinokuniya, because the “who is cheapest for shipping” seems to vary. Currently I think Kinokuniya, but it’s a bit of a gamble there because shipping is 3500 yen for anything below 2kg and 7700 above – so you want to get as close to 2kg as you can but absolutely not over it. It’s like a book-buying version of playing blackjack 
