The No New Books Challenge
Hi everyone and thanks for stopping by my little corner of the Internet. As part of my goals for 2023, I’m going to refrain from buying new books (or at least attempt to.) Why, you may ask? Especially as someone who compulsively buys books and insists that reading books and buying books are two separate hobbies? Let me explain.
I was laid off last year, and as part of my rebranding efforts, I’m doing more freelance and teaching work. Long story short, I have an unstable income right now, and removing the book line item from my budget would be helpful. I spent 1.5 months worth of rent on books last year, and irregardless of the fact that most of that was before I got laid off, that’s still a significant amount of money that can go towards *checks notes* food and other bills.
Besides, I own enough books as it is. As of December 31st, 2022, I own 1, 020 physical books. I learned last year that a library is considered a minimum of 1,000 books, and who knows if this is even true or not, but I currently have a library worth of books in my apartment. I have not read all of them (obviously.) This is hopefully my time to be able to consume more of them.
I have lovingly branded this challenge the No New Books Year, and to hold myself accountable, I’m going to bring you along for the ride. You’re on my writing website after all, so you must have some interest in books. In the interest of transparency, here’s the rules I have codified for myself:
-As much as possible, I will avoid buying any new books in 2023. I will instead read books from one of these sources:
-my own library
-the actual library
-Scribd
-loans from friends
Both digital and physical books count here. The big thing is that I don’t buy anything new to read. My hope is that by the end of 2023 I’ll have read more of the books that I own without having to spend any money.
But, because I’m me and must examine every single nuance, here are a few caveats to my above rule. Books will not be counted if the fit into one of the following categories:
Books for work. I’m a creative writing teacher now. I may need to buy some books for my own classwork that I assign. I won’t abuse this, though. Promise.
Gifts, both ones I need to buy and ones given to me. I am at the age where many a friend is having children, and most baby showers these days ask for a book in lieu of a card. I have also become known amongst my many friends and relations as a book fiend, so I am often gifted books or gift cards. Which brings me to my last point:
Gift cards. I’m still on the fence about this one. I have been given a number of gift cards to various local bookstores that I have yet to use. Gift cards would violate the new books portion of this challenge, but not the money aspect. Do I count it as a reset if I use one? Honestly it doesn’t really matter and I’m getting way too much into the weeds over here, but I’m going to say it doesn’t count for now, and will reserve these for books I may want to buy that would help my own novel development.
As I’ve told various friends about my goal, I’ve been met with shock and derision. Just kidding, not really. Mostly just a healthy sense of skepticism. Responses have run the gamut of: “You’re not going to be able to do that,” to “I give you two months.” I give me two months, too! Science has proven that trying to go cold turkey on something is usually unsuccessful, and I doubt that I’ll make it a full 365 days without wandering into a bookstore and buying a book. Half of the battle of new habits is starting, and I will fully admit that my book buying habit has gotten out of control. So I am interested to see how long I can go before I am firmly tempted to buy one.
I’m not going to promise any sort of regular updates because I know me, the minute I promise weekly or monthly updates is the minute my brain decides it does not want to be told what to do. I’ll say that my hope is that I can include a monthly recap here of books that I read and in what format I read them in. I will say that I have two reading goals for next year, 100 books in general, and then a sub goal of at least 12 books in French. Currently, I’m reading the collected works of Audre Lorde, borrowed from my dear friends Matt and Sam (they have great cats that I’ll be sitting again at the end of January.) You could do worse than starting off a new year than with Audre Lorde. Here’s to happy reading adventures, and I’m sure I’ll see you back here in two weeks when I have my first bookstore FOMO experience.
