November Book Haul

This is going to be a rambly essay-length description, go get some tea before you start. I was watching a video by Raeleen (padfootandprongs07) about book buying and guilt which you should totally watch because it’s great, and I started to feel quite guilty about this video. I buy a lot of books that I do want to read, but often it’s a ‘some day’ and not a ‘right now’ thing, and that sucks. Then they’re just there growing dust, and that sucks.

There was a lot of that this month because of all the CHEAP DEALS but, do I really want to read 3 Edith Wharton novels? Nope. And I want to read The Miniaturist, for sure, but will I get around to it soon? I don’t know, I’d like to, but like Raeleen says it’s so much nicer buying something you’re excited for and getting started on it straight away. Guilt, what a bitch.

So I decided to do something about it, and not a purge because the idea of giving away things that I’ve paid for without getting any value from them makes me feel even more guilty because I probably couldn’t afford them in the first place. Instead I reordered my bookshelves (practically a weekly ritual) into #1 things I’ve read #2 things I want to read next and #3 things I want to read eventually (I don’t think I have anything which doesn’t fit into these three categories, which is good). If I keep #2 under, say, 20 books, when I buy books they go on that shelf (which will hopefully pull my book-buying down a little and make me more aware of what I do buy) and then over time I’ll transfer things from shelf #3 to shelf #2 when I’m really up for reading them, thereby slowly reducing the size of shelf #3. The idea is to not add to shelf #3 because that’s the thing that’s making me feel guilty in the first place. Sense? Sense.