I've always been a book lover and an avid reader. There were always books on my house growing up. I didn't start strongly collecting and developing a personal library until I started working at a book store in college 10 years ago. In the past 10 years how I view and collect books has changed so much.
When I started working at a bookstore I started to feel the urge to own every book I ever read and to have a large owned TBR pile. I dreamed of having huge shelves full of books and having my own personal library.
Between my husband and I over a few years we accumulated hundreds of books through work, the used book store, thrift stores, etc. We read a lot of them too, but realistically, we were never going to read all these books, even if that was our intention.
We eventually bought a house and I had space for the library of my dreams. We had it all set up and cozy, but it turns out, we never used the space. We prefer to either read in the living room or in bed. Eventually, I moved a lot of the books out to the living room so I could at least look at them.
Over the next few years I started losing interest in buying books and during COVID I actually stopped reading. I went from 50+ books a year to 12. Eventually as things got back to normalt love for reading came back. I culled my TBR to about 50 books and spent a year reading through them.
Now I have 3 books left of my physical TBR and it feels great. I've been using the library so much more and I've also really been loving my reader. I just went through my shelves today and have about 45 books I plan on donating. These are all books I had planned on keeping because I rated them highly, but it occurred to me today I'm never going to re-read them so why keep them.
I'm much more content today utilizing my library and only buying books sparingly. I don't feel overwhelmed by my unread books, and I don't feel like I'm missing out by not buying books. I love that I can save space with having books on my e-reader.
I still love books and I love reading, I just no longer want my home to be filled with hundreds of books I've never read, or will never re-read.
by Embarrassed_Bee_5623
8 Comments
I do almost all of my reading on my kindle app on my phone but i still buy physical copies of the books i enjoyed the most. On my bookshelf theyre nice mementos of enjoyable reading expeirences and a nice home decor (in my opinion). Books are also great conversation starters.
For my kids I also want to subconsciously foster a love of reading and normalizing a home full of books.
Very similar experience here: worked in a little indy bookstore (great job, abysmal pay) and accumulated quite a few books. 20 years later I’m trying to pare a lot of it down. eReaders are great for having an extensive virtual bookshelf without having to move and store 40+ boxes of books.
I really try to buy few physical books nowadays.
I can really relate to this! Same as you, loved the idea of having all my read books in a physical form on the bookshelf. I still adore going to the Indy bookshops, there’s some magic in it.
However, I also started using a library with an e-reader instead of buying tons and tons of books and couldn’t be happier.
I do buy books still but maybe 15- 20 a year compared to a 10 a month like in my book buying peak 😅
I would say my borrow-to-buy ratio is around 80/20, and I only buy a book if I intend to read it right away. The few books I’ve bought that I didn’t read right away inevitably ended up not getting read/getting read months or years later
I will say, if my library didn’t have Libby I’d probably end up buying books a lot more. Their physical selection always left a lot to be desired
I resisted e-readers for so long. I can’t take an entire physical library on vacation, though, so that was what nudged me to the e-reader (I used to have to pack an extra suitcase filled with books).
Now that I have a Kindle, it is so much easier to stick in my purse than paper books, and paper books don’t have a built-in adjustable light and now I just hate reading paper books.
From a standpoint of creating a tangible historical records for whomever finds our ancient society, I love the idea of physical libraries. I just don’t ever need to ever visit one again.
Also, how the heck did you *STOP* reading during Covid. That was my only escape!
Bookseller here, with a similar story. I still read physical books, but I don’t keep them. After I’ve done reading them, they go back to the second hand bookstore.
One thing about missing out:
You will always — always — miss out. It’s a rigged game. Because imagine there was a magic pill you could take which would bend reality such that you can do mutually exclusive things so as never to miss out on anything.
Even in that scenario, by virtue of it being impossible to miss out, you will miss out on missing out. And the pill is so good you can’t miss out on missing out, well then it failed to make you miss out on missing out on missing out. Etc, etc.
#RightToLibrary
Honestly, the joy is in the reading itself, not the ownership. Realizing you don’t need to re-read everything is a huge step, and the library is a godsend.