Last weekend I pulled a goodly portion of my unread hardbacks off the doublestacked shelves in the study and corralled them on a wicker etagare in the bedroom. I'm calling the collection my Case of Guilt. If these books are the first things I see when I walk into the room, surely I'll want to read them next, surely I'll not be as quick to order additional hardback brethren for which there is no room. At my current rate of speed it would take me at least a year to get through them all and shouldn't that realization be deterrent enough?
I hope I won't reach the end of the year and realize what I've really assembled is a Case of Neglect. If so, I'll need to turn these shelves into, say, a favorite authors showcase and turn these books back into the herd.
:) Might try a mix of favorites and these. Or a coupling, like, one favorite for every err..one from the herd.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised so see some things I've read. All in all, a corpus delecti.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I'm not the only one with this situation. I try to look at it not as books that I'm neglecting, but more like my reading IRA fund--things to read when I'm old or times are lean and I can't afford to buy books. See, it's not about bad book purchases, it's about investing for the future. Doesn't that feel better?
ReplyDeleteClaire
www.somanypages.blogspot.com
All the books in my bedroom fall into this category. Stacks of them and sadly it's not been any sort of deterrent for me at all!
ReplyDeleteI've got all my unread books on the same shelves that are right across the room from me in my study, so I see them all the time. Unfortunately, this has the effect of making them all seem familiar and therefore not quite as enticing. I wonder if I'm actually accumulating more books because of this arrangement ... at any rate, good luck!
ReplyDeleteAll of my books are interfiled; I put them wherever there is room (and on tables and chairs and under them...) So I sometimes come across a book I didn't recall I had. And haven't read. I now have 3 stacks beside the bed -- one of library books, one of currently underway books, and one of 'next up'. I don't think the floor piles are really working though...too many stubbed toes.
ReplyDeleteNo guilt! Sometimes we all buy books that we think we'll want but that just weren't right. This winter I went through and separated my books into ones that I was finally willing to let go of (either I didn't want, or I wasn't really interested in reading again) or ones that I wasn't sure about, or ones I wanted to keep. And eventually I realized I was ready to let go of even the ones I wasn't sure of without reading them, other than a small handful. It was VERY lucrative! And it opened something up that let me start getting my huge stacks of books at the library first and then see which ones I wanted to actually own. But I really had to let go of all the "shoulds" in my head about the books I own first!
ReplyDeleteGood luck with that. ;) You're an addict like the rest of us. The first step is admitting you have a problem. The second is reveling in it.
ReplyDelete