Joseph ’s Comments (group member since Jul 28, 2009)

Joseph ’s comments from the Book Buying Addicts Anonymous group.

Of the 4227 works of fiction I currently own, a little over half of them, 2135, are TBR and I have no problem still buying more. I like collecting and knowing that when I am in the right mood I will have the right book.

One book delivered today:

I guess posting that article here is kind of preaching to the choir, huh? ;-) We know not to feel guilty, it's our friends, family, etc. who need to learn to stop trying to make us feel guilty! lol

A must-read article found at http://bookriot.com/2014/05/20/defens...

By Amanda Nelson
May 20, 2014

I’ve been diving into the BookTube recently (the community of book vloggers on YouTube) where “hauls” are common- videos about all the books the BookTuber has purchased over the past week or month or whatever. There’s common language across these video channels when it comes to adding these books to TBRs (To-Be-Read lists): language of guilt or embarrassment, “I’m so bad,” language that you see on any blog post/Twitter discussion/comment section about a TBR. It’s not surprising to me that people feel automatically defensive when exposing the books they own that they haven’t read. One of our own recently wrote about her TBR and had to be defended from accusations of being a hoarder,* a term that comes up frequently whenever someone talks in public about having a personal library.

I say: let’s put an end to TBR shame.** Not just the shaming of people who own a lot of books they haven’t read yet, but the guilt from the people doing the owning. If having a TBR stresses you out or your physical TBR is so large that it’s reduced the functionality of your living space or you’re spending money you don’t have on an increasingly large pile of books you won’t read, by all means, re-evaluate your choices and ditch the pile. But if none of those things apply to you, don’t let anyone make you feel guilty about your reading life.

Because here’s the thing: you shouldn’t feel badly about something you enjoy. I have about 160 unread books in my house- enough to fill to overflowing an entire IKEA bookshelf-and I just like the sight of it. Will I get around to reading all of those books? Who cares! It’s an ever-evolving pile: stuff is constantly being culled out and discarded, or read and moved to the other shelves, or being added as I pick up new books I want to read. That shelf is part of the daily rhythm of my life, it’s something that brings me a measure of contentment, and I don’t see why I should feel badly about those things just because someone else (usually on the internet) might express disapproval.

There’s not a number at which a TBR becomes suddenly immoral. You’re not in an objective safe zone at 99 and in the Very Bad Person Zone at 100. You don’t need to apologize for loving an activity and owning the items you like in order to do that activity. A reading life is a rich experience that isn’t limited to the actual act of reading- it’s also wandering through the library and being suddenly aware of how loudly you walk. It’s petting a cover with an interesting texture. Picking a new ereader and a cover for it that has some pun on it. Discovering new reading apps on your phone. Building up a library (or not, if you don’t want to) of editions that make you happy, whether those are digital or physical. Developing a TBR (or not, if you don’t want to), that might *gasp, the horror* contain books you never actually get around to. There is no one-size-TBR-fits-all-readers wrong or right choice. There’s no good or bad book pile. There is only your reading life and what is right for your situation and your preferences.

So (TBR) pile on without shame, my friends. In the wise words of Dave Grohl, “I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If you fucking like something, like it.”

*And before anyone starts comparing having a library to hoarding, this article about the difference between collecting and hoarding from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America might be of use. Let’s not use a term for an actual mental illness to make self-righteous statements about readers who have different reading lives than we do, kthanksbai.

**Especially if you’re a woman. Not that men don’t feel TBR guilt, but I see this sort of apologizing-for-expressing-joy-in-a-thing more often from the ladies and that’s a whole other post for a whole other site but seriously, stop apologizing.

Another two delivered today: and

Went to Anderson's and got Bitten and Thirteen signed by Kelley Armstrong and Dead Silence signed by Kimberly Derting and Dorothy Must Die signed by Danielle Paige and I also bought at Halfprice books a copy of Deathwish that was signed by Rob Thurman.

I had a fun shopping spree yesterday. I went to my town's park district's garage sale and picked up:

I went to a book signing and got my previously owned copies of signed and I bought and got signed

and I went shopping at Half Price and bought: which turned out to be signed.

Some more deliveries arrived:
New:
Used:

Picked up a couple used at the public library: and The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Frontier Stories: Volume Three: 3

Emily wrote: "I usually read about 10-20 pages in between other books when the book is huge. I am reading an unabridged mark twain that way right now. I will end up doing it with les miserables as well"

Good luck with "Les Miserables." I mean that sincerely. That's another long, non-British or non-American work that I just could not get into. French and Russian works are tough for me. The only long one I can think of that I did like was Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers.

Thom wrote: "I’m just curious, what exactly constitutes a respectable seller? Is there a black market in books? I am a reading and collecting addict. It is an acquired condition and I wouldn’t trade it for the ..."

I don't know if this is what Lex was referring to when she said "respectable seller" but in my mind that means a book seller that provides good service, prompt and trustworthy, that makes it worth using them for the cost of the product. I certainly would not call a seller respectable if they took my money but never produced the book I ordered, for example. And a respectable seller doesn't make you wait 6 months for a book that cost you one dollar when it should have arrived in 2 weeks.

I hate to be a pessimist Thom, but I have hard time giving Patterson credit for this flexibility considering so many of his books in recent years have been written with co-authors which makes me think more of the book was written by that co-author than they were by him. So many books come out in a year with his name on it I find it hard to believe Patterson could have the time to provide more than a skeleton for another author to add pretty much the rest of the body to.

I started the month off with a whopper from a variety of places.
At a local school booksale I got:
At a library booksale I picked up:
An order arrived:

Paulfozz wrote: "It became something of a challenge, 'I will not be beaten by this awful book, I will make it to the end'. If it really is 'the great American novel' then I really need to steer clear of American novels! ;-) ..."

I kind of know where you are coming from in that regard. I've tried and tried and tried to read works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevksy, but I just cannot get into Russian classics. I gave up long ago.

Happy May Day! Share your May book finds here.

One more preorder arrived for me yesterday:

Moby Dick is an interesting book to me, in that it really is two books in one. Half of it is chapters that tell the fictional sea story of the hunt of the great white whale and the other half is a nonfiction manual on whale hunting. You don't have to read the nonfiction chapters to enjoy the fiction ones, and vice versa. I was able to read it once, but Moby Dick is one of the heavy books I just have not been able to reread.

The last day of C2E2 today I got the autographs of:
Charlaine Harris
Jennifer Holm
Matthew Holm
Joelle Charbonneau
Demitria Lunetta
Jaleigh Johnson

I got a whole bunch of books autographed today at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo:

Between the Spark and the Burn signed by April Genevieve Tucholke
Among Thieves signed by Douglas Hulick
Daughter of the Sword signed by Steve Bein
Night Owls signed by Lauren M. Roy
Dark Currents and Autumn Bones signed by Jacqueline Carey
Hounded, Hexed, Hammered, Hunted,Trapped, Tricked all signed by Kevin Hearne
How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire signed by Kerrelyn Sparks
Wild Things signed by Chloe Neill

And even though I don't have their books, I got the autographs of these authors too:
John Scalzi
Daryl Gregory
E.C. Blake
Kendare Blake
Lydia Kang
Seth Fishman

Another fine day at C2E2. I picked up for free:
The Warded Man
The Lies of Locke Lamora
Omega Days
Pandora's Star
Scan
Proxy

and I got these for free AND autographed!
Between the Spark and the Burn signed by April Genevieve Tucholke
Among Thieves signed by Douglas Hulick
Daughter of the Sword signed by Steve Bein
Night Owls signed by Lauren M. Roy

And I got these previously owned titles autographed:
Dark Currents and Autumn Bones signed by Jacqueline Carey
Hounded, Hexed, Hammered, Hunted, Trapped, Tricked all signed by Kevin Hearne
How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire signed by Kerrelyn Sparks
Wild Things signed by Chloe Neill

And even though I don't have their books, I got the autographs of these authors too:
John Scalzi
Daryl Gregory
E.C. Blake
Kendare Blake
Lydia Kang
Seth Fishman

And there's still one more day of the convention to go! :-)