My Year of Not Buying Books

2024 has been my grand year of not buying books. If you’ve read my blog or followed my bookstagram at all this year, then you’ll have already heard me talk about this ‘challenge’, but I wanted to commemorate this chapter properly somewhere, in the hopes it inspires somebody else to do the same.

As a lifelong bookworm and keen reader, I have always loved books. I love looking at them, being around them, seeing them, touching the papery edges, and especially reading them. I’m typically pretty good at not hauling books, too, and prided myself on having read every book in my home. I’d only buy books ready to read for the upcoming weeks, since I fly through novels on a regular week.

In the beginning

Somewhere along the line, I managed to amass more than 88 unread books crowding my beloved bookcases. I know exactly how this happened: I became more active on NetGalley – a site where reviewers and creators can request e-galleys to review, I ended up on a few publishers’ PR lists – lovely! – and I discovered 66 Books Ltd., which is very local to me indeed. And so came about being surrounded by inordinate amounts of books with nary a hope to plough through them all. I found I was struck by decision fatigue when it came to picking something to read, and felt completely overwhelmed by suddenly having so many unread books on my shelves. Before, I’d mosey into a bookshop, consider what was on my radar at that moment and combine it with my mood for that week or month, and come away with a few books to see me through ’til the next time.

Enter, the book-buying ban.

The book-buying ban and reading challenge

My ban was simple: I couldn’t purchase any books for myself – new, secondhand or otherwise. As a big backlist reader, I thought this would be a pretty simple yet fun challenge. Just like when I gave up coffee, it was a lifestyle change to no longer buy books. I found that I browsed books far less and had to exercise extreme self-control whenever my boyfriend and I visited bookshops. The real challenge was working out how to productively read through the books I’d amassed when I no longer felt an emotional connection or natural pull to them. To combat this, I made a TBR jar and spent a whole evening writing out each unread book on my shelves and Kindle. This meant that I could just pluck out a title and read whatever I’d chosen at random.

However, I did permit myself to continue requesting eARCs on NetGalley, which is where my challenge began to crumble. This meant that my unread books total spiralled up to over 100 books at one point! And I had to forcibly ban myself from taking on any more in June, choosing instead to get pretty serious about reading my way through my shelves.

How it went and felt

Well, first of all, I survived! I was sorely tempted at many points throughout the year to cave and ‘just’ pick up this one book so I could continue the series, or ‘just’ preorder a book, or ‘just’ treat myself as a reward. Ultimately I’m really glad and proud that I stuck to my guns and didn’t buy a single book all year. I saved so much money, since I think I was probably spending around £40 or so each month on paperbacks. Instead, I found a real love for plucking books from my own shelves, which was what I also challenged myself to do – reading what I owned. Amongst the new-to-me titles that I read, I also lost myself in rereading my favourites. After all, that’s the whole point of owning a personal library, right?

I found that I didn’t use my local library much. And I suppose that’s because I had more than 100 books to bash through all at home. I’d love to use the library more to be honest, but ours’ opening hours don’t work well with my schedule and I have a plentiful stash of books to work through at any given moment! I did spend a lot of my year reading and reviewing NetGalley ARCs, and this meant that I had a year of reading mostly average books.

Overall, I strangely enjoyed my year of not buying books. Of course my TBR list has grown magnificently over the past 12 months, but I think it’ll have made me a more discerning book-buyer for next year. There’s a small shortlist of titles that I am simply dying to get to, and I feel like this year-long reset was exactly what my brain, bookcases and bank account needed. I’ve realised that I’m not enjoying the constant NetGalley cycle, and I’d like to focus on some backlist reading in 2025.

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