Genre guides · August 9, 2026

What Does TBR Mean? The Reading Acronyms Explained

TBR, DNF, ARC, HEA, BOTM — a plain-English glossary of the acronyms readers use on BookTok, Goodreads and Bookstagram.

TBR — To Be Read

Your list of books you intend to read. Also used as a verb ("it is on my TBR") and a unit of shame ("my TBR is 400 books"). A TBR is a wish list, not a debt.

DNF — Did Not Finish

A book you abandoned. Marking something DNF is a skill: it frees you from sunk cost and, on a shelf, tells you honestly what does not work for you.

The rest, quickly

• ARC — Advance Reader Copy, a pre-release edition sent for review.
• HEA — Happily Ever After. Romance-genre guarantee.
• HFN — Happy For Now. The softer version.
• MC — Main Character.
• FMC / MMC — Female / Male Main Character.
• CR — Currently Reading.
• BOTM — Book of the Month.
• OTP — One True Pairing. The couple you are invested in.
• SFF — Science Fiction and Fantasy.
• Romantasy — fantasy where the romance is load-bearing.
• Spice — how explicit the romance is, usually rated in peppers.
• Slow burn — the relationship takes most of the book.
• Trope — a familiar pattern, used approvingly here, not as an insult.

Why a TBR gets out of hand

Because adding is frictionless and finishing is not. The fix is not a shorter list — it is a list you can filter, so "short fantasy I already own" is one tap rather than a scroll through four hundred titles you added in 2023.

Shelfies is a modern, mobile-first reading tracker with AI recommendations, progress tracking, streaks, and quotes — built to replace Goodreads and StoryGraph for readers who want a faster, prettier experience.