The book you like most discussion
How do you stop yourself from buying more books when you know you already have unread books in your library?
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Kabir
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Feb 15, 2024 08:46AM

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Each day I put an x on the day I didn’t buy books ! So far so good ! The reason I say till July is because July is a huge used book sale in my town ! Plus I have a huge pile of books to read on my room . Hope I don’t fall off the wagon ! 🤣

As for not buying, I know it won’t happen. Before the internet and ebooks I seldom had an unread book unless it was brand new or a just taken out library book but … I would rather buy books than food.




As it is, I have no self-restraint whatsoever. It's wonderful to have a Kindle so I no longer need even more multiple bookcases in every room--the downside is the immediate gratification of the one click download. I'm a fallen woman.






We no longer have any temptation here in Worcester, MA, because our only Barnes & Noble closed for good during the first pandemic summer, unfortunately there is no other bookstore in the city (and Worcester has 206.000 population!).
It was the same in Washington, D. C.. No independent bookstores, just a Barnes & Noble at Georgetown University. A very unfortunate trend.

I've donated hundreds of books to our local library over the years.

But I've already broken it.
I got an alert on Amazon recently that "quantity is low" for some books I've had my eye and decided to go ahead and purchase. Notably because I think people are hoarding historical reads nowadays. Like out of print, historical reads because others I did not purchase when I had the chance I can no longer find and when I do, the price is now hundreds of dollars.
So I'm still keeping my no-buy but went ahead on a few I know I probably could not get anymore. But that is it. No more. "I'm a disciplined person."
And for classics, I'm really prioritizing ones I already own and comparing to those available at my library and checking the inventory on the Project Gutenberg and Libro.fm website for out of print books that are no longer under copyright.
Because I do feel like for some reason that certain classics I really want to own a physical copy of, but I'm telling myself "no." I can't own everything, that's what a library is for and it's getting ridiculously expensive for books and I got to finish what I already own. This is what I'm telling myself.



I moved from Germany to the US some 22 years ago with 127 move boxes, most of them filled with my 1.500 books. I'm so glad I did, because I was worried that at some point no good novels would be published any longer (and unfortunately I was right).


use the library - pass along every book you are unlikely to read twice. Be merciless. Save the planet.

