I love buying books. I love owning books. For me, the idea of a library, a place I can freely borrow books from but then have to return them, is like some kind of elaborate torture.
So, a while ago I committed myself to reading a bunch of books I had purchased but never read. It's so much easier to buy books than it is to read them that my to read pile became some literature or publishing based equivalent of that episode with Lucy and Ethel working in the chocolate factory.
So, in an effort towards necessary frugality and to fulfil the promise that an unread book implies is broken, I've listed some big players on my bookshelf that I absolutely must read before I can buy any more books*.
The list of books I still have to read is available on Goodreads. This doesn't include the five books I am technically "currently reading".
The one I am mostly reading currently is Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
I mention all of this because I almost succumbed to a purchase when I saw that Freedom, a new novel
The list keeps getting longer because, as easy as it is to buy books for oneself, it's even easier to receive them as gifts. That, of course, has happened from time to time since I made this promise to myself.
So I'm making the promise public in an attempt to hold myself to it. If you see me buying a book for myself, stop me and I will continue to try to stop myself.
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*The exception to this rule is the purchase of books at an event where the author is signing books. That is more about the opportunity to add to my collection of signed editions than it is about the actual book. Two books have been purchased under these conditions: How the Universe Got Its Spots: by Janna Levin
I hear ya, buddy.
Not so long ago I compiled (in Numbers, no less) the list of all the books in my bedroom that I owned but hadn't yet read. Then I did some elaborate math to determine if I read one of those books per month I would finish that list in 6 years.
I also toyed with the idea of not buying any more but frankly, I was only fooling myself.
I toy with this idea from time to time also, yet in the last few years I am lucky to get through three or four complete books a year (that is, not including individual chapters etc of non-fiction), yet I would find it hard to believe that less than a dozen have entered the house in any of those years. Yes, I do literally have hundreds of books waiting for me. No, I don't really have a good plan for getting through them given my family and work commitments. The only thing that I can say is working is my plan to buy less books in total, and to stop buying any reference works or other tomes that will realistically be overlooked in favour of Google, should I ever need them.