The new book rule: two out, one in
Almost the first thing you learn about me on entering my flat is that I love books. There are books everywhere – I have 4 dedicated bookshelves, and other shelves labelled “to read”, or “reference”, or “maths”, or “cooking”. There are also a fair few books that haven’t found their way to shelves yet (I’m not very tidy…). Now this is all very well, but recently my “to read” shelf became so full that new books are now going straight to the main bookshelf!
Now I have always defended my stance on owning books that I haven’t yet read. Often I know I’ll want to read a book *eventually*, just not yet, but I want to own it now! And I love the feeling of scanning my shelves, looking for something to read, when my eyes pick out a book, bought many months ago. “Aha! I want to read that!” I think. I can’t begin explain the joy of it, except it’s a bit like finding books you didn’t know existed in your very own bookshop. Also, I want books in the same series in the same edition, so that they look nice on the shelf.
However, recently the situation has become a little ridiculous. I cannot guess what proportion of the books I own that I’ve read, and when my boyfriend and I go on holiday we do tend to egg each other on to buy more and more – leading to totals of around 15 books bought per holiday (between us, I quote the joint figure because invariably I buy more). I definitely can’t read books as quickly as that and as a result my shelves are overflowing and I am considerably poorer.
You know that feeling when you see something in a shop that you’ve hunted for for ages in vain, and now you’ve found it you’ve picked it up and won’t let it go? I seem to get this *all the time* with books, and I’m starting to think I might have a bit of a problem. So my boyfriend gave me a rule to follow, to help clear my backlog (he is playing along as well, but hasn’t got nearly so many unread as me). I’m allowed to buy one new book for every two that I read.
Simple, really, and perfect for clearing the backlog. There are a few rules:
- Book Club books don’t count as either a book bought or a book read.
- Knitting books don’t count (I have already taken advantage of this and bought this lovely book, Knitting Little Luxuries).
- Books given as a present don’t count as books bought.
- You can give a book to a charity shop instead of reading it (we’re still debating this one, I’m all for it because the aim is to clear the backlog, right? and I hate giving things away, so I’m unlikely to abuse it).
So how have I done so far?
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Read:
- Beyond the Glass – Antonia White
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Bought:
-
Read:
From now on I’ll try and post joint book reviews for each pair, and mention which book I’ve bought because of them. I wonder if there’ll be any patterns?
9 Responses to “The new book rule: two out, one in”
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January 25th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
I highly recommend LibraryThing as a way to keep track of percentages read! It does require a big initial investment of time — I catalogued all of my books over a couple of weeks where I didn’t do much else, but now it’s much easier to keep track. And I can tell you that I have not read 592 of the 1,713 books I own.
Working in publishing makes this all so much worse, because it’s not just buying the books (I can’t remember the last time I paid full cover price for a book without using a gift card) but getting books for free. I will never again be able to read all the books I own.
January 25th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
I gave up on the idea of ever having enough shelves a long time ago! In my dream house I have a huge library with floor to ceiling bookshelves (ideally with those horizontal sliding ladders), but in reality it’s four bookcases and a lot of piles, stacks and boxes.
One day…
January 25th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
@Emma You aren’t encouraging me to stop! I just think ‘must…buy…more…’ when I picture your overflowing shelves. When I move in with my boyfriend we’re going to have to have a dedicated library, but we can’t decide how to taxonomise (?) it – he prefers by height and I like alphabetical by author.
@Ellen I must admit I sometimes scroll down the LibraryThing book pages and long to be able to fill all the fields in, but I genuinely don’t have time at the moment. It’s on the long term list of things to do.
I’m glad your percentage is (probably) worse than mine, it makes me feel much better. But I don’t have the publishing excuse!
January 25th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Ooh, good rule! How long do you think it’ll last…?
January 25th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
@Rachel: I *hope* a while. R has more self discipline than me so that will keep me on the straight and narrow!
January 25th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
I am strongly in favour of acquiring books a good time in advance of when you want to read them! This is because to decide if I want to read a book, I read the back cover, the first couple of pages, and a few pages randomly in the middle of the book, in order to get a feel for it. However, that spoils the plot! So I wait to read it until I have forgotten all about it, and then I get a lovely surprise when it turns out to be eg. a different genre than I thought.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:42 am
Ah yes, I recognise all of your symptoms only too well. In my eyes, a house can never become a home until it is stuffed full of books, and to me and my lovely husband, getting rid of books is like jettisoning old friends. But when the kitchen and/or bathroom is no longer accessible without mountaineering equipment sometimes action has to be taken…the only trouble is, we then feel the urge to go out and fill the empty spaces as soon as possible! I’m starting to get seriously tempted to get a a Sony eBook thingy as a space saving device, although I don’t know if one of those can give you the same feeling of pleasure as seeing all of your book friends, old and new, lined up beckoning to you…
Re your reading list – I’ve munched my way through all 3 of the Stieg larsson’s and they are all exceptional, you’ll enjoy them a lot. And as for Antonia White, oh my word what treats you have in store!! I’ve loved those books since I was about 18 and couldn’t hope to understand them all. Every time I go back to them they mean more to me – happy reading!!
January 26th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by joanna_m, Cathy Dean. Cathy Dean said: RT @joanna_m: My new book rule: http://is.gd/73BRz << if you like books, you'll love this
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January 31st, 2010 at 4:12 pm
[...] here is my first joint book review. I’m not sure how this would best work – GCSE english lit: “compare and [...]