Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

As I mentioned before I am both an avid reader and an avid collector of books. Anyone who loves books and reading will recognize that those are two different hobbies. As you can see in the featured photo, my collection of books is starting to reach the point of needing creative storage solutions. While I may love the aesthetic of a chaotic bookshelf, I practically need a more simplistic organization system.

The main contributor to the chaos is how many books are unread or partially read. As you can see from the chart a full 52% of my books are unread and an additional 11% are partially read. I am almost certain that if I were to read these books at least some could be donated. I will say one of the partially read books on this list is my current read The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix. The others either are books where I read the chapter appropriate to my needs or they got too intense with their tension and I had to take a break. Babel by R. F. Kuang is one that I loved but the plot was gaining so much tension as it worked towards the climax and I wasn’t in a space where I could engage with it. I am looking forward to returning to it. I’m also looking forward to making a more significant dent in this overwhelming collection of 180 books.

Part of my storage solution that you can’t see is that I also have a bookcase in Maryland. This bookcase was filled when I still lived at home. Some of these books have been unread in my collection for at least 7 years if not more. And despite the fact that I declutter my books at least once a year these books have made it through each because I am genuinely interested in reading them one of these days. Some of these books were either brought to Boston or bought after I lived in Boston and I read them. They were good enough that I wanted to keep them, but I knew I wouldn’t be rereading them soon enough to warrant keeping them in Boston. These factors contribute to a more even balance of the 78 books on those shelves.