No New Books in November
I’ve mentioned before that I have a serious spending issue, especially when it comes to buying books. When I was a student I also bought a lot of clothes, to the extent that when I was moving out of one of my rooms I had to enlist a ruthless friend to help me get rid of some of them. In the past few years I’ve mainly bought books. (And food… but food is kind of a necessity.) As I now have a bookshelf creaking under the weight of all the books I own, and a Kindle that could keep me occupied for a good few months if I ended up bedridden, I have decided that I am not going to buy any books in November.
The idea is that this will spur me on to read the books that I already have. Also, if I read a paperback, I’m going to donate it to a charity shop when I’m done with it, or give it to a friend… or do a book giveaway. The possibilities are endless really, but what’s important is that I want to get out of the habit of hoarding books and never reading them. Books are pretty useless as possessions, really. They’re nice and I love a good bookshelf and I can’t imagine a house without books but they’re not ornaments and there’s no point me having so many unless I’m reading them.
So. I don’t know who is going to hold me accountable to this, but that’s the plan. No new books for the entire month of November. When December rolls around I might have to give in to the temptation of Christmas-related deals in bookshops and on the Kindle store. Maybe you would like to join in and we can hold each other accountable? I don’t know if other people feel as much guilt as I do over the amount of books they own, but if you do… leave a comment telling me you’d like to join in!
Here are my rules, in brief:
- I will not buy books from charity shops, bookshops, supermarkets, or any other shop.
- I will not buy books online from the Kindle store, or any other website.
- I will not accept books for review from NetGalley, or any other review opportunity.
- I will accept books from other people (mainly because this is wishful thinking and nobody gives me books).
- I will read as many books as humanly possible from my stash and from my Kindle.
That’s about it. It’s easy, but it’s going to be so hard. At the end of the month I’ll do a recap of the books that I managed to read (hopefully lots). And maybe give some of them away, if people are interested in getting my cast-off charity shop books.
