Books

The only thing that stops my book buying is storage space. I…… I may have a problem.

I have one shelf on my bookshelf which is for books I haven't read yet. I'm allowed to fill it up however much I want, but never spill out of it. It's been pretty good for me.

My wife and I used to go to used bookstore all the time and do this. We have a lot of books. We both like to read, but work a lot so have little time to actually finish a book.

Hopefully as we get older we will have more time.

Good think about books is that they are pretty hardy.

My wife and I have a large collection of books, 2 wall to wall bookcases. It's a lot, and we've also donated a lot of books. We buy them all the time. And no, we haven't read all or even most of them. We've probably, collectively, read about 50% of what we have.

We read a lot, but we don't view books as just something to read, but also something to collect. Much like some people collect and display coins or figurines, we collect books. So we also have a lot of very nice leather-bound, 1st editions etc.

We have toned down our spending the last two years or so because money is a little tighter than it used to be, but we still buy collector editions and support Kickstarter campaigns.

I mostly read on Kindle Unlimited. A lot of the progression fantasy and cozy fantasy books are on KU (my current favorite subgenres), so there's no shortage of books to read. In addition, there's plenty of self-pub fantasy and sci-fi books (there are two competitions: SPFBO and SPSFC which help in finding good ones to read).

Yeah, I used to be a sucker for doing this with real books and now because I don't have the storage space I'm just a sucker for doing it with ebooks!

I do only get books that I know I will actually want to read, and it may even take me a year or two to get to it/get around to finishing it but it's not usually a waste. It sometimes certainly is. But I think the ratio of books I'll read at some point/books I'll die without opening it's much better.

Either way I definitely always have a massive backlog.

I don't see this as a negative though - I always have something to read!

I buy books, most of the times I read them. ebooks have been my salvation space wise, project Gutenberg saved me money wise, at least for the classics.

I'm only allowed one shelf dedicated to TBR. It has helped a lot.

I would really love to get one or two small press subscriptions again. I had one from Fitzcarraldo for a bit and it was such a delight when a new one, completely unknown to me, arrived in the post.

But I had to be rehoused into pensioner housing last year and it's a tiny cottage. For every thing which comes in, something has to go.

Books are hope. And we all need more of that.

I try to limit my book buying already for a few years, by wanting to read a book at least three times before I buy it. (doesn't always work, but at least it keeps me from impulse buying every book that sounds vaguely interesting.) Also I reread and lent from the library. so I do not always read new books exclusively. And once I read a book I wonder if I see myself rereading it, if yes it can stay, if no it can find a new home by secondhand bookstore or free little library.

I have a strict set of rules, and I've managed to hold on to them for over 15 years now.

• I never buy books I do not intend to read in the near future.
• I have a "to-read pile" that never exceeds more than 10 to 12 books.
• No book gets to go on the shelf of my library unless I've read it.

I used to hoard and display my books, thinking they represented me as a person. About 8 years ago I made a hard decision that I didn't like my walls lined with shelves and I donated all of them except for a few that I couldn't part with. Now almost everything I read is on an e-reader and my house only has a couple of occasional physical books out. I'm glad that I did it, since I prefer my new decor.

Don't look at my spines. DON'T LOOK AT THEM

but yes, I'll read books on my computer and then get a physical copy if I like it. I tell myself I get them so I can re-read them or lend them out, but I never do lol.

I kind of have the opposite problem. I feel no joy in reading anymore and struggle to find books for leisure which I find in any way interesting. (currently everything I read is textbooks, reference manuals, and some other books about things I want to learn or think I should learn)

I largely limit myself to ebooks or audiobooks now, which generally means I've no need to purchase a book before the very second I intend to read it, unless I expect to be somewhere without internet for a while and need to predownload stuff.

If there's a book in interested in but won't be reading right away, then I put it on a TBR list. Previously on Goodreads, ATM I'm using Storygraph. Then when I'm looking to read something new I skim through the TBR list and pick something off of it to borrow or buy. In that sense it's less a backlog and more a menu lol.