See that photo above? That's the bookcase in my bedroom. My bookcase of UNREAD books. The books I've read are on bookcases elsewhere in my house. This is all books I've acquired but yet to read.
I still remember when my friend Chris came to my house for the first time some years ago and I was giving her the tour of my house. I pointed to this bookcase and said "and this is my famous 'to-read shelf.'" (And the bookcase definitely had less books on it at the time than it does today!) She responded "When you said you had a bookshelf of books to read in your bedroom, I imagined a shelf with a few books on it - not a whole bookcase!"
And in fact, back in the day, that's pretty much how this shelf started out. I literally am always reading a book, so back in the pre-kindle days, I never wanted to be in a situation where I finished a book and didn't have another book to pick up immediately, and of course I wanted to have a choice depending on what I was in the mood for. For a while I would hold steady at maybe 10 or so books on my to-read shelf. This was back when you had to actually visit a bookstore in person to buy books. Then the internet came, and in addition to the ability to order whatever books you wanted, there was the chance to peruse bargain books online. So a good number of the shelved books on the top 2 shelves constitute books I bought as cheap bargain books. The third shelf is all books my sister gave me after she read them. We used to swap books, until she got an e-reader. And most of the fourth shelf and most of the first stack on the top shelf are books I got from my friend Sarah, as we have exchanged books with each other for years. (There are also a few advanced reader copies I won from Goodreads, and a few of Dan's unread books.) And neither Sarah nor Lisa want their books back, so it's not like there's a hurry to get through those books. And the second stack on the top shelf is books that belong to my 13 year old daughter that she has read and I want to read too, many of which she bought with gift cards. What I'm trying to say, is at least I didn't actually pay full price for most of these books, and more than half of them have already been read by someone else. That's something, right?
And part of the reason this bookcase keeps getting more and more full is that I primarily read on my kindle. So last year, of the more than 100 books I read, I think I only read around 12 hard copy books, therefore not making much of a dent in the bookcase.
But you guys, it gets worse. So much worse. Because now that I read primarily on my kindle, my true book collection is hidden from the world. And the amount of UNREAD books on my kindle is way bigger than the amount of books on this book shelf. And again, I can try and justify it by saying at least I didn't spend full price on most of those books either. A good chunk of the books on my kindle are books I got for free from Netgalley, which is a website where you can request copies of books (usually books that aren't out yet or have just come out) in exchange for reviewing them online. And for a good number of the rest, a few years ago, I instituted a rule for myself that since I already had so many books, I would no longer buy books from Amazon unless they were $3.99 or less, unless I needed them for book club. And even the $3.99 and under books I won't buy if I can get them at the library, or can borrow them for free with the Kindle Lending Library program.
Frankly I'm not sure why I'm confessing all this. Maybe it's so I can make a couple of book-related resolutions and if I've made them public, I might have a better shot at holding to them. Some of them I've already started trying to implement. So here goes:
- Stop requesting books from Netgalley and Goodreads unless I've heard of the book or author. No matter how pretty the cover looks!
- With respect to those $3.99 and under books, if the title or author isn't one I recognize even though I added it to my wish list at some time in the past, re-read the description and check reviews and consider if it really is a book I'm going to read, or if it's just going to end up sitting on my kindle for years. If the latter, forget about the fact that it is cheap and just delete it off my wishlist instead of buying it!
- Unless it's a book I need for book club or an absolute top-priority read, stop borrowing as many books from the library and concentrate on books I already own.
Will any of this make a difference in slowing down the pace of my book accumulation, and working through my book stash? I don't know! But at least there are worse problems to have than an addiction to books, right? 😜
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