I love books. Always have. (When I was a kid, I went to the library during recess.) I love to browse books, read books, and (sadly) buy books.
My BetterWorldBooks account tells me that I bought $105.97 worth of books last year. Sounds low. I guess some of my books were purchased at Barnes & Noble and other bookstores. My estimate is that I spent at least $250 on books in 2009.
At one point , I realized that I was buying books faster than I could read them. Pretty ridiculous. So I put a rule in place that I could only buy new books when I had read all the books I already had. Then I rediscovered the library. I think it was when I was contemplating buying No Impact Man. It just felt hypocritical to buy this book. So I strolled over to the library (we’re lucky to have a public library across the street) to look for it. It felt like coming home! Why did I ever stop going to the library?
I decided not to buy any books for the remainder of the year. I am continuing with this resolution in 2010. So now when I find a book I want to read, I first check the library catalog online. If the library has the book, I put the book on my library list. Here is a sample of said list:
- The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating – Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon
- Take back your time: Fighting overwork and time poverty in America – John de Graaf
- Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the twenty-first century – Juliet Schor
- Born to buy: The commercialized child and the new consumer culture – Juliet Schor
- The not so big life: Making room for what really matters – Sarah Susanka
- Living the Simple Life – Elaine St. James
- American Mania – Peter Whybrow
- Dreaming Green – Lisa Sharkey
- Half the Sky – Nicholas Kristof
- The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
If the library doesn’t have the book in question, I add it to my BetterWorldBooks wish list, where it sits until somebody buys it for me (or I delete it because I lost interest). I have also started putting a few books/DVDs out on swaptree.com. I haven’t had any matches yet, but I need to put more items out there. This way I can also get rid of some of the books I don’t need anymore. This post on a minimalist approach to books helped me get over the hump as it relates to holding on to books. Books are for sharing!
Well done for getting back to the library. In the UK I always worry that if we do not use them then the funding will be cut – again! We have already seen a reduction in the amount of ne books being purchased. There is a really good system here that they will find a book for you from another branch within the county (state in US).
Kite runner is brilliant!