eloise goes to the beach

Why I still let myself acquire books…within reason

When I laid out the rules for this “Read What You Own” challenge, I specified that this was not a “No Buy” challenge. There are specific instances where I’m allowed to buy/acquire new books. I didn’t want this challenge to become a slog. And if getting new books wasn’t enjoyable, I wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place!

There are a few times in the year I really enjoy getting new books. First, it’s tradition that my father takes me to this little bookstore and gets me books for my birthday each year. That’s obviously something special I’m not willing to give up. Second, a couple of times a year we have a charity book sale at my work: this is something I want to support and have decided to continue to do so during this challenge. But I have made the rule that I must already have a book on my “want to buy” list in order to buy them during these times, and not just pick up a ton of books willy nilly. I also will read them within a reasonable amount of time so they don’t add to my unread books. (I do spread them out a bit with books I expect to DNF read in between.) I also periodically cut books from my “want to buy” list so it is only books I really want to read.

I also am allowing myself to continue series’ that I am already reading during this challenge. One thing I’ve noticed so far is that I forget what happens in series if it’s been too long between books. If I’m enjoying the series enough to continue (I’ve been making an effort to stop series I don’t enjoy any more) then I feel I should get the full effect of them and not minimize them by potentially waiting years to continue them. I’ll be reading a lot of “so so” books, even if I end up DNFing them, so I feel it’s reasonable to allow myself periodically to read something I know I will really enjoy.

Finally, I am allowed to get books and audiobooks from the library for book clubs, but I do try to be selective about the books I join in on and don’t read just any book. Audiobooks I listen to in the car, so they don’t really impact my “reading time”.

The one type of book I am not allowed to buy during this challenge are digital books. Mainly they are too easy to stock up on and never read, because they aren’t “in your face”. But I’ve also soured to them recently. They are great for saving space, but I don’t like that they aren’t really something that you own. It never really bothered me until several books I had bought disappeared from my Amazon content library (and Amazon told me I would have to buy them again if I wanted to read them). Luckily, they weren’t anything I had spent a lot of money on, but I decided I don’t want to potentially throw money away: if I buy a book, I want to be able to read it as many times as I want without someone taking it away from me. I’d rather get a book from the library, to be honest.

The second reason I’m not as keen on digital books is, I admit, for petty reasons. I have an old model kindle. BUT I love it. I love that it looks like a book page, not a tablet screen. I want to keep using it until it dies. Years ago Amazon took away the ability to wireless deliver books to it. That didn’t bother me, it was no big deal to download the book and transfer it to the kindle. But in February Amazon took away the ability for me to download the books. They already limited who could download the files (people with newer kindles could not), so there was really no (good) reason for them not to allow me to continue to do so. I am all for a company protecting its assets from piracy, but this felt (to me) like a money grab rather than actually to protect theft. Now, I don’t tell other people not to use Amazon, or criticize people who do (and I still buy other things from them sometimes), but those are the reasons I choose not to use them for digital books (or video or music).

Long story short, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reading some books that I don’t already own during this challenge. But the books must be 1) well curated so there is a good reason to read them, 2) read within a reasonable amount of time from purchase so they aren’t adding to my unread books, and 3) a small percentage of what I’m reading – they shouldn’t overtake the challenge. Some acquisitions under very specific guidelines will keep this challenge fresh so I can actually complete it.

Week 12 Update

This week I had an extra day off work, so as a little mini vacation I spent it reading some books from authors I had enjoyed when I was younger, but had never gotten around to reading. Here are the totals: