2022 ... Another year, another temptation

From The Home and the World, page 108: "We think that we are our own masters when we get in our hands the object of our desire - but we are really our own masters only when we are able to cast out our desires from our minds."

I would have got through the first two months without adding to my TBR pile, except that I had $75 in gift certificate money, and as much as I tried to tell myself buying anything with it would be frivolous at the moment, I eventually had to succumb when I came up with a four book combination that added to $74.56 which was like the fates telling me this is meant to be purchased, you now have no choice. Fine. Not a week later I find out Moon Witch, Spider King has been published, a title I was waiting for but not quite long enough, and how do I say no to that. So now I'm five books into a 2022 pile already.

Worse thing you can do, buy a bunch of books. In my experience, it pretty much guarantees that within days—if not hours—you'll come upon some expensive book you really MUST have.

>1 Cecrow:

except that I had $75 in gift certificate money, and as much as I tried to tell myself buying anything with it would be frivolous at the moment, I eventually had to succumb

I took several bags of books to Powell's: https://www.librarything.com/venue/354/Powells-Hyde-Park the other day, and got $200 in credit (always take the credit, you get 20% more). I did not walk out with $200 credit, though, as I naturally spent some of it before I left.

>2 alaudacorax:, this must be why I haven't triggered George Martin into publishing The Winds of Winter. I haven't bought enough books all at once.

>3 lilithcat:, yes! Because you're right there, how can you not have a look around?

I emerged from today's library book-sale (resumed at last after a three year hiatus) with only four books. That counts as "virtually unscathed", I think.

Oh, that's very good!

The last library book sale I attended was in July, and I managed to keep my buying down to just two books, one of which I have already read (The Age of Reason), and the other of which I have read in and used for reference (The Gnostic Bible). It seems almost unnatural.

>7 paradoxosalpha:, I'm getting more conscious now, as I pick something up: exactly how am I going to use this, or realistically how soon will I ever get around to reading this? Sometimes that actually works! And sometimes the other voice says "but you will never never never see a good edition this cheap again, ever ever ever." I really hate how convincing that voice sounds.

>8 Cecrow: resisting that voice is futile. If I don’t listen to it I regret it. If I do listen to it, I regret it. So, might as well pick up the book so I have something to make me feel better about my regret.

At least that’s how my thinking goes…

>9 Neil_Luvs_Books:, and I don't have to read it, right? I'm not obliging myself. I could just let the copy go later, if I don't want to read it after all. It doesn't need to settle into the bottom of my TBR pile for umpteen years like they usually do.

The ultimate decider is, "If I walk away, will this be one of those times where I can't stop thinking about what I passed up and make the second trip back to get it?"

My discards for the year amount to 208 items. I'm barely managing the piles of what I want to get to. But that AbeBooks tab is way too easy to find.
And I've started taking a class a term at the local college. It has certainly helped to discipline my calendar a bit, with retirement a wide open space for doing whatever I please. It gets me out into community and makes me read texts I wouldn't have gotten to otherwise.

>11 2wonderY:, a literature class? I've thought of it, the idea of studying and discussing a text together, but I can't bear anyone else directing me what to read and when to read it by, lol. Same reason I don't join a book club.

>12 Cecrow: Not this year. Religion and Agriculture. I did take a literature class on Science Fiction a while ago. We all had so much fun that the bulk of the class, including the professor, continued to meet regularly for almost two years after.

>10 Cecrow: - ... "If I walk away, will this be one of those times where I can't stop thinking about what I passed up and make the second trip back to get it?"

The worst is when, after a while, you decide you really want it anyway and discover that remaining copies are now more than you can afford ... and, of course, there's the fear of that happening ...

>14 alaudacorax: "... and discover that remaining copies are now more than you can afford ..." That has happened to me too many times.