Wanting to Want Fewer Books

I have never been terribly discerning about the books I buy. I have always spent my book budget on whatever looks interesting, gathering a collection of books I might like to read some day. In my early adulthood, this method worked reasonably well for me. My book budget was small, so my collection grew at a fairly slow rate, and I was in grad school for English, so it made a certain amount of sense to snag books I knew I would have to read whenever I came across them, especially if it was on the cheap. But as the money available to buy books has increased and the books I will have to read has decreased with my circumstances (pretty much to zero), this method has become unwieldy and almost absurd. I now buy far more books in a year than I could read in the same time. For me, the point of owning books has never been solely to be able to read them, so I spent a few years unperturbed by my wacky ratio of books bought to books read, figuring that if we had the money and the space and if it brought me joy to acquire so many books, where was the harm?

I still think pretty much along those lines, except that we don't really have the space any more (there are only so many places you can put bookshelves in a house, alas), and almost more importantly, I no longer think it brings me joy to acquire so many books. I still love (*love*) a good browse and splurge in the bookstore, but it's become a bit like the way I love French fries: fully and genuinely in the moment, but not so much in the long term. I will never be able to read everything that's ever been written, and having so many unread books in the house is starting to feel more like a sad reminder of that fact than an abundance of reading riches. 

I've been hovering for a few years on the realization that I will have to alter my book-buying habits (or somehow score a Beauty-and-the-Beast-level library--and the kind of house palace that could hold it), but a recent development has made me want to. We have a spare room in our basement (I think of it as the lumber room, but I think we're in the wrong century for that to be entirely apt), and we recently cleared it out (again--I swear stuff multiples down there). We ordered a few more bookshelves to put in the cleared out space and to relieve some of our upstairs bookcases of their double-shelved burdens. I spent much of this past weekend reorganizing the shelves in the sunroom (my "office," where my desk, my couch, and most of my books are--and where I spend most of my waking hours) and hauling some two hundred books downstairs. The sunroom shelves are so much more open now. Don't get me wrong--there's no free space, no room to set a nice vase of flowers or a treasured tchotchke or anything. Some of the shelves still have a small "extra" stack of books sitting in front of the row or resting across the line of books. But none of the shelves are fully double-shelved anymore, and the crevices between bookcases are no longer stuffed with the odd books that just had no where else to go. And I like it. I like being able to see everything that's there. I like the little slivers of empty space. I like the tidiness of it, the sense of abundance coupled with control. I like that the books do not seem to be completely taking over the room. I like it so much that I want to keep it that way. And the only way to do that is to be discerning about which books come into the house from now on. (And more ruthless about which ones leave. But that is a topic for another day.)

I hear tell of readers who only keep the books that have special meaning to them. I never saw the appeal in that before, but I'm getting to a place where I can just about imagine it. It sounds freeing. And terrifying. Something to contemplate... another time, perhaps.

The Well-Laid Plans of a Mood Reader

I talked last month about how being a mood reader sometimes gets in the way of my overall intentions for my reading. So in 2018 I'm starting my reading year with a plan! 

First I've identified the things that are important to me in my reading life:

Reading diversely

Supporting the library

Disrupting choice paralysis

Abandoning fewer books

In support of these things I value, I've laid out a few goals:

Read with intent.

I will always be a mood reader, and it will never work to try to force myself not to be. So I will still allow myself to choose a good deal of my reads by snatching up the thing that feels right for the moment. But I've set myself several goals of intent that should help me read more diversely: 

*Read at least ten books by authors of color

*Read at least ten books by LGBTQIA authors

*Read at least three poetry collections

*Read at least three books in translation

*Read at least four nonfiction books that are not memoirs

Read from my shelves.

I have so many books I haven't read. (So many.) And literally hundreds  of them are books I really, really want to read. Thing is, there will always be more books being published that I also really, really want to read. I will never get to read them all. So I'm aiming to ignore FOMO this year and concentrate on the books already in my possession. To that end, my goal is to:

*Read at least ten books I've been meaning to read (from my TBR)

For both of these first goals, I have made a list of possibilities from my own shelves to fit the goals. The lists are diverse in genre, so hopefully having something to turn to with lots of choices for lots of moods will help me choose a book to fill a goal based on my mood. (Geniuuuus.)

Buy Fewer Books

The best way to get myself to read the books I already have is to make that my only choice. However, I know from experience that  nothing short of true financial disaster or a complete denial of access to bookstores could keep me on a true book-buying-ban. So I'm shooting for a modified one:

*1-3 books purchased per month, the majority of which should not be impulse buys (that is, they should be books I know about, have read about, have been anticipating, maybe even that I've read a sample of online)

*1-2 books from Book of the Month club per month, with judicious use of the ability to skip months

*Purchase up to two sequels per month, provided that I am ready to read them  

*Whatever the distribution of books through allowances above, total number of books bought in any month from all sources may not exceed five

*Exceptions can be made for special occasions (e.g. a vacation which features a trip to a special bookstore) 

*Autobuys will not count, up to five autobuys for the year 

That works out to up to five books a month, or up to 60 books for the year (with the possibility of a handful of "extras"). That may not seem like much of a ban, but compared to recent years, it would be a massive improvement. Unfortunately, so far this modified ban is going... poorly. I gave myself permission to hold off on the ban until after I had spent some of my Christmas gift money. And, well, oops? Ban starts *now*. You! Yes, you. In the bathrobe reading this from behind a cup of tea an hour after you should have gone to bed. Hold me to it, okay? TY.

In support of buying fewer books, I plan to:

*Use the library as a treat rather than the bookstore

I often treat myself to half an hour in the bookstore after a hard day or after accomplishing something that was a challenge. I won't completely deny myself this pleasure, but I'm planning on using the library for this purpose more. When I inevitably walk out of the library with a stack of books, I can take them back again no harm done instead of desperately trying to find shelf space for them and kicking myself for bringing even more reading choices into the house.

Choose Reads from Small Piles

I get paralyzed by too much choice super easily. I look at my bookshelves and find so many things I would like to read that suddenly I don't want to read any of them. Buying fewer books should help stem this problem for me, but I'm also implementing a new plan to choose my next reads from a small group. For example, if I'm in the mood for a romance, I will pick five romances from my shelf and choose from those alone. Or if I'm not in any particular kind of mood, I'll just grab five books at random from which to choose. Or choose from among the ten books I purchased most recently. Or choose any one book from any one shelf. Or make use of my LibraryThing catalogue where I have things extensively tagged. (Dataaaa).

If I can pull off all these individual goals, I think abandoning fewer books will just happen on its own, as I'm quite sure that is primarily a function of reading aimlesssly and choice paralysis.

So there it is. The Plan. May it survive longer than any of the other reading plans I have ever devised. *pets plan*

How about you? Do you have a reading plan for 2018?