Adventures in Misshelving

When I was a teenager, I often "fixed" misshelved books when I found them in the bookstore. Usually this amounted to reorganizing the Star Trek novels that had gotten jumbled up and out of numerical order, but sometimes it meant snatching up a book that was in the entirely wrong section of the store and reshelving it where I thought it should go. This practice was born of an obsessive tendency (which I still have, but which I am now better at managing--yay adult levels of self-awareness!) and a particularly youthful pride in noticing that books were where they weren't supposed to be and knowing enough about where they were supposed to be that I could put them back. 

These days I know way more about books and publishing and where misshelved books probably ought to be than I did at thirteen, but while I value that knowledge, I don't think of it as something that makes me a special, special raindrop anymore. Perhaps that is why I almost never "fix" misshelved books anymore. I also know now that while I'm probably right about a book being where it ought not be, I might not be right in my assumption about where any particular bookstore thinks it should be. I've done enough volunteer work in the library to know that well-meaning patrons taking it upon themselves to reshelve books--and getting it wrong--account for many of the books that get lost. I suspect this is true in bookstores as well, especially when you take into consideration special displays and endcaps and the like. Or maybe my ability to leave wandering books alone grew from the delight I take in spotting the volumes that have escaped their homes and trying to figure out how they got to be so far afield.

Probably the most common reasons for a novel to end up resting lengthwise across the top of a row of business books is customers changing their minds about a purchase and not bothering to return the book to where they found it (or not remembering where that was--probably most people don't spend an hour or two in the bookstore every week, like I do). But I have another thought: if I find I need the restroom during a bookstore browse, I set any books I've already selected on top of a row of books that seems likely to remain undisturbed for a few minutes. (It baffles me why more bookstores don't put a small table or chair under their ubiquitous "No unpaid merchandise in the restrooms" signs.) I note the section where I've left them, come back to them after I'm through attending nature, and carry on with my browse. I have never yet come back to find my books not where I left them. If I come across such small stacks myself, I refrain from moving them as I see them as a discrete "I'm just in the loo; I"ll be right back" signal. Perhaps I'm the only one who does this, but I kind of doubt it.

Of course, I still have the odd moment of weakness. The other day I was browsing the Agatha Christie books and noticed that every one was on a single shelf--save one title. As there was room on the first shelf (naturally, since I had removed a few to take home with me), I shifted that title up to join its peers. Can't have the poor thing sitting all alone, now can we? And if I notice one book by a certain author misshelved a few books away from the rest of the books by that author, I arrange them so they are all together. Surely that's just good manners. I once came across an illustrated guide to sex positions in the children's section. That I trotted right back to where it belonged. I don't know if someone was trying to make trouble or simply set it down by mistake, but I like to think I saved somone's mom or dad that day from a conversation they weren't ready to have.

My absolute favorite misshelved book, however, I came across in one of our local Barnes and Nobles: in the sci-fi and fantasy section, a copy of the Bible. I can only assume this was someone's idea of a snicker, and well played you, haha. I almost moved it but then decided, no. It was a curiosity. Let it lie, let the integrity of this store’s particular misshelves stand. I first noticed it seven months ago. It's still there.

What to Do with Problem Books?

In the past few months, several scandals have hit the book/publishing world involving revelations about the behavior of several authors. Other writers and commentators have investigated the myriad reactions of readers to these events and the various implications they have for publishing, and I do not feel like I have anything particularly useful to add to those excellent conversations. Here I would like to talk about a very specific piece of the fallout for readers when an author suddenly feels unworthy of one's attention, but if you would like to dive into the issues themselves, here are some links:

*Sherman Alexie accused of harrassment
*Book Riot Podcast discussion of harassment allegations in children's publishing (start at minute 11:30)
*Santino Hassell accused of catfishing (NSFW: language; TW: emotional abuse)
*Riptide's Statement about Hassell
*When in Romance podcast discussion of Hassell (minute 4:45-17:05)
*The Hopeless Romantic podcast discussion of Hassell and Riptide Publishing (NSFW: language; TW: sexual and emotional abuse)

Right. Now. What do I want to talk about? It's a minor consideration in the face of an ocean of feels including disgust and disappointment toward an author, empathy for victims, distrust of aspects of the publishing industry, and personal questions for readers about how to feel about beloved texts that now seem tainted. But it's a problem I've been considering now for a couple of weeks: What will I do with books I no longer wish to own because I no longer want to have anything to do with the author? 

This particular spate of revelations has not involved any authors whose work is deeply meaningful to me personally, so I have not yet had to grapple with changing feelings about a book that means a lot to me. And I think this is a very real, very important issue. Books matter. They matter because they show us ourselves when we thought we were the only one. They matter because they show us people and worlds we otherwise might never begin to understand. They matter because they help us through difficult times. So if a book that mattered, a book that got me through something, or helped me realize something about myself, turned out to have been written by someone engaging in behavior I find reprehensible, that would make me feel some kind of way. Given the apparent prevalence of such behavior in our societies and how much I read, I suspect someday I will be writing a blog post about what that feeling turns out to be. But for today, I am wondering only about the practical. I now have some books in my possession that didn't matter much to me (in many cases which I hadn't yet had a chance to read) and which I would no longer like to own. 

My recent experiences with trying to keep my bookshelves from taking over the entire house mean that I have some go-to options for ridding myself of unwanted books. There's a nice used book store in town that will buy select used books in good condition; there's another one that will take select used books for store exchange. Our library is always in need of donations. So is the Goodwill. I have friends and family and fellow book club members I sometimes pass books on to if I have no more need for them. Supposedly there are some Little Free Libraries in town where I could drop books off for others in my community to find. All of these are great destinations for books that have served their purpose, for books I'm happy to let go out into the world and be the right book for someone else even if they are no longer the right book for me. But these seem like wrong choices for books I don't want anymore because it turns out their authors have engaged in garbage behavior I can't look past. I don't donate expired food to the food bank; I don't want to donate books that feel nasty to the library.

Practically speaking, I guess, a book is just paper and glue. I could throw them away. Better yet, I could recycle them. (Some books even have a note on the copyright page indicating that they are suitable for recycling. This note always draws me up short. No one drops their book in the recycling bin after they turn the last page, surely? There are so many better ways to "recycle" most books.) Neither of these options feels exactly appropriate either. I try not to over-romanticize books and I try not to anthropomorphize them and I try not to conflate a physical book with the flesh-and-blood human who wrote it. Dropping a novel in the trash is not tossing a human out with the garbage, but darn if I still don't feel comfy thinking about doing it. 

I haven't been able to come up with a great solution to this small problem that feels right to me. (I'm sure there are other people who would (who have) literally trashed books for these sorts of reasons, and hey, you do you. Probably there are also other people who have donated such books to the library or what have you. It isn't, after all, the donator's responsibility to look out for the donatee's sensibilities when it comes to reading material. I'm not here to judge, but *I* can't do it.) So for now, the books in question are tucked away behind other books on my shelves, their spines turned in. They get to carry on existing, but I don't have to look at them. In this case, it's an example of out of sight, very much still on my mind.

Loving Picture Books as a Grown Human

Until recently, I have paid no attention whatever to children's picture books--and the last time I had looked at one with any interest was certainly sometime in my own childhood. But with the birth of my cousin's two little girls--the only children born to my generation in my family with whom I have any real contact--I started picking up picture books again, at first simply to find gifts for my baby cousins, but as time went on and they got older and graduated from board books to glossy picture books, for my own reading as well. 

In the beginning, I didn't pay all that much attention (I'll tell you what--despite my new appreciation for picture books, the baby board book is, I think, still interesting pretty much only to its primary audience), but a couple of years ago I was staying with my parents for a few weeks and found my mom's shelf of picture books she keeps around for when those cousin babies (to her, grand-niece babies, of course) come around. And I sat down with a stack of them and wiled away an hour or so. And what a delightful hour it was. Some of the books thrilled me because of their illustrations, some for the whole package, the way story and pictures worked together. And I felt I was definitely filling a hole, if a small one, in my reading life with those picture books. And not one born of nostalgia, not really--none of the books I read that afternoon were leftovers from my own childhood (though a few of those *are* kicking around). No, it was just the joy of picking up a story, and reading it in one go, and pausing after every few sentences to take in an illustration of what the sentences were saying. It was fun, and relaxing, and plain nice.

So I read picture books now. Since I have no children of my own and live too far away from my little cousins to share books with them regularly, I read whatever strikes my fancy (and I never have to read the same book over and over and over, which I gather is a hazard which comes with sharing the delight of books with young children). Mostly I take the books out of the library, sit down with a stack, and read them one after the other--just as I did that first time with the books from Mom's shelf. I love getting to read three or four or five stories right in a row and love the knowledge that if the first one doesn't wow me, I have another one on deck. I'm supporting my library in ways I wasn't before. I'm reading stories I never would have otherwise. I'm choosing books from a variety of lists of "bests," including bests from many communities and cultures I might otherwise not read much from. I feel like I'm winning all around.

The last time I picked up a stack of picture books at the library, several members of my book club were with me. To a one, they expressed confusion at my choice to read children's books without any children. I tried to explain, but just got weird looks. Ah, what they are missing.

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. 

Ominous Changes Come to Barnes and Noble

If you are elbows-deep in books news like I am, you've almost certainly heard about the recent layoffs at Barnes and Noble and the subsequent speculation about what they mean for the future of the bookseller. The news doesn't seem to be bubbling up too far into the mainstream, however, so here's a quick summary of what's happened, a round-up of pieces about it, and a few of my thoughts about the situation for your very much perusing pleasure.

The Sitch:

Reports are that last Monday (12 February 2018), full-time Barnes and Noble employees across the country arrived at work to learn that they had been laid off. Reports differ about whether/how good severance packages offered were, and some laid-off employees have said that they were told they would be welcome to apply for part-time positions in a few weeks. Consensus seems to be that the lay offs came without warning. The first articles I read about the lay offs identified the jobs cut as lead cashiers, digital leads, and receiving managers. As more information came out, it sounds like B&N has fired all or nearly all of their full-time store employees nation-wide.

The Links:

*At Fortune, Barnes and Noble Is Laying Off Workers Amid Declining Sales

*At Publisher's Weekly, B&N to Save $40 Million Following New Layoffs

*On Tumblr, by a former employee, The Entirely Unnecessary Demise of Barnes & Noble

*From Book Riot, podcast episode 248, No Heroes, from 12:59 through 38:00

My Thoughts

Ouch, you guys. I don't see any way to look at this where it isn't bad news for book lovers. First, and most importantly, there's the human cost of the lay off. I know that lay offs aren't a new thing and that it's a reality for many, many people that they show up for work one day and find out there *is* no work. Knowing that doesn't make me feel any better about the several thousand people who just lost jobs that I valued them doing. Just, jeez.

Beyond that, my thoughts basically boil down into three main categories.

First: What does this mean for Barnes and Noble?
Of the many things I am not, near the top of the list is a business person. I wouldn't have the first notion how to run the business of a bookstore, never mind a bookstore chain, but I think any time a company dumps near-as-makes-no-difference all of their full-time, experienced employees, that's bad news bears for the company. 

Specifically, the employees that B&N has fired are the most knowledgeable employees, the employees most likely to be able to help customers choose books or help them solve problems on their Nooks. The people who are gone are the people who knew the most about helping customers in a bookstore. You can train just about anybody to look up inventory, point someone in the right direction, and run a cash register. You need knowledgeable, experienced people to help you find the perfect read for your aunt Sally who likes to knit and read about murder. The people who would have been best situated to do that at B&N are the people they just fired. 

That being the case, I'm expecting B&N as we know it will not be around much longer. Either they are in a spiral into failure and will be gone entirely in the near future (in this scenario, I assume these lay offs are a last gasp, not something anyone thought was a good idea in terms of how to run a bookstore) or they are looking to reinvent their stores, making them into something more like the grocery store, maybe. "We have stuff, we can point you to the stuff, but don't ask me how best to do up a Sunday roast." 

Second: What does this mean for book selling in America?
I mean, again, this is not my bailiwick. I envision some scenarios, though.

Maybe B&N carries on much as it has and it turns out not that many people were using the experience of those employees after all. (I doubt it, though. I think this is one of the primary reasons people go to a bookstore rather than ordering online.)

Maybe B&N reinvents themselves into a leaner version of what they are now and they become a more robust competitor for Amazon. Depending on what that leaner version looked like, this might be all right. More competition is good. Keeping brick and mortar bookstores open is good. 

Maybe B&N goes out of business and that sparks a resurgence in independent bookstores, causing already existing ones to thrive and more to open. Thumbs up. I'm not holding my breath on this one, though, honestly. I'm trying to imagine being a prospective small business owner and saying, "The chain failed in this market so obviously I will do great!" and I'm having a hard time picturing it.

Maybe B&N fails and another existing chain jumps in to take over many of their stores. Eh? Better than a stick in the eye, I guess. Also, how enthused I was about this would depend a lot on which chain did the jumping in. 

Maybe B&N fails and Amazon has less competition and the brick and mortar bookstore becomes even rarer. *sigh* I fear this is the road we are on, and I'm not about it. I think Amazon has a place in a robust book-selling market, but the fewer other choices we have, the worse off we are, I'd say. Also, while I imagine a lot of Barnes and Nobles are located in neighborhoods that have other options for book-getting (libraries, Targets, easy delivery by UPS or USPS, etc), book deserts are a thing, and even if closing stores aren't in places that most need better access to books, losing 600+ stores nationwide certainly isn't going to help.

Third: What does this mean for me?
Obviously I'm not an impartial observer here. I'm hugely invested in there being a bookstore in, if not my neighborhood, then at least my town. In my town, B&N is the only store selling primarily books that are primarily new. (Target has books; we have a used bookstore; we have no independent.) Going to the bookstore is a major thread in the fabric of my life. I don't just like to read, I like to go to the bookstore. I like to browse the shelves, I like to look at what's new, I like to pick up a book and read a little of it before I buy it, check out the font, the feel of the object in my hand. I know I'm not alone in this, but I know I'm almost certainly not the average book buyer either. But it isn't just those of us who are into the objectiness of the books who will lose out if there aren't any bookstores to go into. Browsing, in the way one can do in a store, cannot be replicated online. Or at least it has not yet been done so. You can browse online, but it is not browsing, it is not the kind of discovery that I revel in when all the books are lines up before me in neat, real rows. Is that a romanticized view of the bookstore? Yes, definitely, a bit. But it is also true.

And While I'm Wishing, I'd Also Like a Pony

As a book lover and a bookstore lover, this is what I'd love to see Barnes and Noble do. There may be a floppity gillion business-y reasons why none of this would work, but it's what I'd like, in my dreamland bookshop of bliss:

*Give the books pride of place in the store. Don't make me walk through umpty-dump displays of stuff before I get to them. Especially get the Nook display away from the front door. I have no problem with ebooks or with a bookstore having an ereader and staff who can sell it to customers and help them use it or troubleshoot it. But let the bookstore be a bookstore, not an electronics store. Put the Nook counter off to the side somewhere easy to find. Don't make me walk around it to get to the physical books.

*Continue to sell coffee but reduce the cafe seating. Use some of the saved space to maintain a better depth of stock and to...

*Provide scattered clusters of comfortable seating throughout the store. You want people to browse and stay a while looking at your products. Give them somewhere to rest a moment and further consider their potential purchases. Allow customers to take their covered drinks into the stacks to seek out that comfortable seating. Now they are enjoying their coffee in eye-line of a book they might buy instead of segregated in a separate section of the store where they might not see another thing for sale other than the drink they are sipping.

*Provide an easy-to-access, customer-friendly in-store computerized method of checking the store's stock. Include a way within this system for customers to see where the book is in that store. If the employees can see that the book is supposed to be on an end-cap in Fiction, customers should be able to see that too.

*Bring back New Releases Shelving. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: shelving the new releases among all the stock instead of separating them out is a terrible idea. The fastest way to make me click a button on Amazon rather than coming to your store is to make browsing in your store hard. Shelving the new releases this way makes browsing in your store hard.

*Reduce the amount of stuff in the store that is not books. Fewer toys, fewer games, fewer puzzles, fewer gifts, less stationary. Not none. A nice selection of unique items in all of these lines seems like a perfect accompaniment to books. But streamline it. Make it take up less space.

*Increase depth of stock. Obviously some titles are never going to be worth keeping in stock because it is so unlikely that anyone will buy them. But do better. Expand the romance, mystery, and SFF sections. Consider splitting SFF into separate science fiction and fantasy sections. Make it a policy to keep the first book of any series you carry in stock at all times. Get in stock backlist titles by authors who have new books coming out. 

*For the love of all printed matter, get new releases on the shelves by opening time on Tuesday mornings. Nothing is worse than dropping by to pick up a new release you've been waiting for for months only to find that you don't have it yet.

*In short, be a bookstore above all else. I feel a little flippant here, I'll be honest, but I wonder if the answer to competing in the current bookish marketplace isn't trying to be a little bit of everything but being the one thing bookish people can't get online: a pleasant, quietish place to browse and discover and linger.


I don't actually want a pony don't nobody give me a pony.

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?