At the beginning of the year, I seemed to do a lot of moaning about my book-buying-ban. I was thinking about it again last week when I blog-slapped* Marie Kondo.
But in actual fact, I’m killing it. After the initial few weeks of hyperventilating every time I went near a book shop, I’ve calmed down and can now safely walk through the Readings New Releases section without needing to breathe into a paper bag.
Jenny and I ate cake together a month or so ago and she asked me how I was finding the ban. She’s set herself a similar reading challenge this year (but is not feeling the love in the same way I am…. at this stage, anyway). We talked about how reading from what we already own influences what we choose to read next. It was a good discussion because I hadn’t really thought about how my ban was playing out until our chat.
What I realised was this: I’ve tuned-out the noise. And publishers, book shops and social media are a very noisy lot. But because I’m not buying into it this year, I’ve stopped listening. And it’s quite refreshing.
All of that said, the rubber hasn’t truly hit the road yet (unlike Jenny who had a face-off with Rushdie) – I still have a few ARCs, enjoyed the Stella prize shortlist and have so many books in the TBR stack that I was busting to own that I don’t feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel.
My TBR stack is still stupidly high (372) and I need to make more of an effort to read the hard copies (they take up space) but it’s not growing… So, onwards and downwards with the book-buying-ban.
*I just made that up. Is it a thing?