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buy fewer books challenge

And I’m trying the ‘not buying books’-thing, again

Yeah, I know that this is at least the third time. In a row no less, and it has never really worked before.

The first time I decided to only buy books by certain authors, and nothing else. Next up I discovered Deborah Geary and bought all her books because I wanted to binge-read them. And then the year went downhill from there.

Last year I tried a version of the challenge that was a little less ambitious. Didn’t work either. My budget software tells me that I spent about 70 Euros per month on books. I own enough books, all books that I am still excited to read, to last me for a year. Maybe longer.

I was already committed to this when I read the last post on Raptitude but he says it all much better than I could. Especially the part where he describes the high one gets from buying a new book. And then it sits there on the enormous pile of other books, books that I couldn’t wait to read when I bought them, same as that new one.

Since I do crave the newness I am leaving myself an out, I will stay in Kindle Unlimited. In the last two months I have been finding more and more interesting books on there, and I have been reading a lot of them.

So the rules will be:

  1. The only new books I am allowed to buy are ones that are new ones in a series that I already have bought.
  2. I am also allowed to buy „Barking up the wrong tree“, „Unlearn Your Anxiety and Depression“, „The Emotion Thesaurus“ and „Shadow Rising“. I thought about buying all of those right now before my challenge starts on January 1st but then decided against it.
  3. I am also allowed to read as much on Kindle Unlimited as I want to.
  4. I won’t click on any links to books even if they look really interesting.
  5. I won’t download any samples.
  6. I won’t get any free books unless they are already in my ‚buy later‘-collection.
  7. I unsubscribe from the BookBub newsletter.
  8. I will read the excellent books that I couldn’t wait to read that are already on my e-reader and my shelves.
  9. I am allowed to buy the books I already pre-ordered but I am not allowed to pre-order any more books. If they are in a series I usually buy I can buy them just before reading them.

I hope that this will reduce the piles of unread books, and also reduce the feeling of overwhelm. And re-introduce me to the joy of the books I already have here. I also might re-read a book or two, something I used to love. There are books in my library that I used to re-read every year but I don’t do that anymore.

I will report back on how the whole thing goes.

This will be interesting.

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