A Local Bookish Light in the Coming Darkness

Writing last week's post about Barnes and Noble and my love of bookstores reminded me it was time to poke the interwebs to see if any new bookstores have opened in my area. I do this every once in a while, usually with only the smallest glimmer of hope. I mean, I do read the local paper, and our city being a pretty small one, they do report pretty thoroughly on new businesses opening up. (Our paper is cutting edge, shut up.)

But lo! This time there was a hit for a store I hadn't heard about. I clicked some links, waiting to find out it was the kind of specialty shop I have no interest in: antique guns and old local maps and every book on military history ever written! ...Actually, that sounds kind of interesting, now I think on it, but it doesn't really fall in the same category as a general interest bookstore. 

But no! New and used books, the links said. Downtown, the directions said. I grumbled a little about the downtown part (one way streets, hassle-y parking), but I girded my endsheets and screwed up my French flaps and set out to find this newcomer. After getting "lost" (I knew where I was, just not where I was in relation to where I wanted to be) and navigating the narrowest parking garage in Virginia (probably), and walking in the wrong direction for half a block (I'm more of a country kind of a person, okay?), I found the bookstore!

Ya'll, this is the tiniest, most excellent bookstore I have ever seen. If this space was larger than my living room, I'll eat my blog. (Shh, I don't know how I would do that either. Shhh.) So their depth of stock was, like, not, but what a delight it was to browse their shelves. Classics, picture books, YA, thrillers, general fiction, sff, local authors, and general nonfiction all had their little sections of the store, and the books on offer were both highly desirable titles and in excellent shape. (I broke my book-buying ban, guys. I had to. Local store, must support. That I broke it about 2.5 times more thoroughly than was probably necessary is a fact we just won't linger over.) Only one person was staffing the store (I don't think there would have been room for anyone else), and we had the best chat about the books I'd selected, the store itself, and events they had coming up. 

After the not-great news coming out of B&N Land, this was such a nice little lift up. While this store wouldn't could replace a Barnes & Noble-shaped hole in my life, it goes a long way to making me a wee bit less verklempt about the apparently (?) impending (?) doom (?) of Barnes and Noble. I will be doing my level best to brave the wilds of downtown and use some of my monthly allowed book purchases to support them with my dollars. 

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?