quite a few
people over the past two days have expressed various degrees of disbelief and
confusion about why i’m challenging myself to stop buying books for a six-month
period.
there are myriad
reasons why i’ve accepted this challenge, but before i get to those let me make
one thing clear: i’m not going to stop
reading for six months, i’m just going to stop paying money for books for that
time. rest assured, i will read just as
much.
reason 1: space
i don’t have any
more room for books. i’m out of
space. books are becoming furniture
already, so i need to curb their takeover for just a little bit so i can sort
through what i have and am willing to sell off.
i don’t like shedding books, so it takes me time to embrace the
decision. this challenge is a way to
postpone the inevitable and give myself time to make smart decisions about the
purge.
reason 2: practice what you preach
i fuss at my
students all the time for not using the amazing resources they have available
to them. i’m guilty of this crime,
too. i have so many literary outlets,
and, sadly, most of them go unused because it is so blasted easy to tap “buy”
on my nook or “check out” on amazon.
rather than taking the three extra steps to use a free resource, i buy
books. so part of this challenge is to
force me to start using these resources, thereby allowing me to practice what i
preach.
reason 3: playing
with form
since i got my
nook, on top of e-book purchases i’ve bought more books—actual paper and glue books. i’m probably atoning for buying an e-reader,
but it is what it is. i love that we
have so many different forms of books available to us, so i want to make better
use of all the forms. currently, i’m
really enjoying audiobooks (partly because i have a long commute, and partly
because they allow me to multi-task—you mean i can drive and “read” at the same
time?!). this challenge will allow me to
continue to play with different forms.
reason 5: the
social experiment factor
underlying all my
english and literature nerdiness is an epic love of culture and social
sciences.
this challenge is
allowing me to see what it would be like to not have the ability to purchase
books—what some might consider to be a luxury or frivolous purchase. books are such an integral part of who i am,
that i’m interested to see what happens when i remove my ability to buy them
from the equation (will i stop reading due to the hassle? will i mourn for amazon and barnes and noble?
will i count down the days until i can buy books again? will i be perfectly fine?).
another part of
the experiment side of things deals with knowledge and intellectual
property. do i have to own a book to
know it? do i need to physically hold a
book in my hands and have it on my bookshelf to have rights to the knowledge or
story it has provided me? can the
two—book and knowledge—exist separately or must they coexist?
so there are some
of the reasons i’m doing this. and here,
for the record (and so others can hold me to it), are the rules:
|
allowed
|
not allowed
|
|
|
books
i already own
|
purchases
of new books
|
|
|
library
materials
|
purchases
of used books
|
|
|
project
gutenberg
|
purchases
of e-books
|
|
|
books
borrowed from friends/family
|
using a gift card to buy books | |
|
free
e-books (b&n free book fridays)
|
|
as i move through this experiment, i will be chronicling the experience here—all its ease, difficulty,
and whatever else i encounter along the way.
