December Book Haul
It’s a little late, but I have a good reason: I’m moving. Across the country. Needless to say I’ve been a bit busy, especially in December. BUT I’ve been rather amazing with my not-buying-books schtick. REALLY amazing! And no, it wasn’t a book buying ban (well, for hard copies, yes, because I had to pack all mine). It was just practicing immense restraint.
First the hard copies. Unfortunately, I packed them before I took a photo of them so forgive my break from routine.
Both books I had on my want list, and both came from PaperBackSwap.
Now for the ebooks.
It’s more than I thought I bought last month, but compared to months past, it’s way down. Honestly, I thought I had some of these for a while. December’s pretty much a blur for me so I don’t remember actually buying some of these last month. I swore I bought them earlier than that, but nope!
According to my December Book Haul post from last year, I ended the year with 1,186 books on my TBR pile. I do know that pile climbed to a peak somewhere between 1,300 and 1,400 before I started culling it for my move. As of right now, I have 818 books on my TBR and dwindling.
Woohoo!
I purged a lot of books from my TBR pile. Especially my physical one in preparation for this move.
All of these got donated, and then some from my actual library of books I’ve already read. It’s literal hundreds of books. Then I decided to purge my ebooks as well. Some of these have been sitting in my pile for ten years or more. My tastes change, and needless to say when I started reading those blurbs, so many of them were solid mehs for me. And I don’t have time for mehs. I still have 818 that aren’t (excluding the ebooks I haven’t gotten to culling yet).
I don’t want to accumulate books for the sake of accumulating them anymore. Those I do have left I know I still want to read right now, and I want to try and get to them. With a read goal of 30 this year, obviously I won’t be getting to all of them any time soon. But it hasn’t been a problem for me NOT to buy new books during this time of restraint. Granted, having to move them is certainly motivation enough for me to hold myself back.
But don’t confuse that with me not buying anymore. Oh that will certainly happen, especially indie books as I continue to wade into the self-publishing realm, and want to not only support the authors within my genres, but see what the market is doing and have good comps on hand. These last couple of months have really kept me honest, and it was effortless. I’d like to think I’ll carry this thinking into the new year.
Hopefully. 😬
