Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

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It’s overwhelming to constantly feel behind on my goal and continually finding/being exposed to new things to want. I’m constantly exposed to urges to buy books from Goodreads newsletters, from personal recommendations to friends, and from the attention-grabbing covers in stores. I’ve mostly been able to hold off on actually buying new books but the list of borrowed books I’m working on is longer than I’d like. I currently am partway through both The Women of The Far Right by Eviane Leidig and The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. Both are borrowed from libraries. I also have another library loan American Table by Lisa Kingsley in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and my partner loaned me Batman Hush by Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, and Scott Williams. The TBR started on Goodreads at 246 and after taking an afternoon to cull it I’m landing at 144 books. Based on my recent history it will take me two and a half years to get through that list. I’m absolutely shocked by the number of duplicates I deleted. I fully removed 5 pairs of duplicates and 4 duplicates of books I still want to read someday. Additionally, my physical TBR was at 105 unread or partially unread books and now I’m down to 83.

The biggest change was to the number of read books I had on my shelves. I saw Simple Happy Zen include in a video a picture of her bookshelves where she had maybe max 5 books, most of which were being borrowed from the library. For some reason that’s really stuck with me. I love personal libraries on Pinterest, but my life will never be a magazine. Honestly, I never re-read books, so why should I own them when I can borrow them? I cannot physically bring myself to do such a massive purge of my books right now, even when I told myself earlier this year that I could. But it could be something nice to strive for. I know I am supposed to be on a no-buy for books (and a few other things) but I feel that a low buy has been better for me. Since the start of the year, I have bought 3 books, one of which I’ve already read and since donated.