library

This past weekend, Stephanie and I went to my company’s warehouse employee book sale. This is where they lay out all the returned stock from bookstores and let us purchase it at a steep discount, which means that it doesn’t need to get recycled or trashed. It’s one of the great perks of my job for book lovers like us, and is a really great deal, money-wise. I was able to pick up many books that have been on my “to read” pile for a long time.

On the other hand… we came home with 160 books. 57 of them were mine, 30 of them are presents for family members, and 73 of them are Stephanie’s. So… yeah. We made great strides in reducing clutter this year in our house, then frakked it all up. Heh. Actually, the sheer volume of stuff we cleared out this year is quite a bit more than the books we acquired, so we’re not at all back where we started. But we have a lot of book storage to come up with.

And I have a LOT of books. Doing the math – I acquired more books at this sale than I read this year, easily, and I did the same thing last year. And I also bought quite a few new books this year, although one of my goals was not to do that. I feel guilty that there are so many wonderful books in my library that I simply haven’t read. And many of them have been sitting there for quite some time, while I go around willy-nilly, checking out new titles from the library and buying new books from the bookstore.

So… that leads me to my 2008 new year’s resolution(s), which I’m making a bit early:

In 2008, I will read only books that I already own, and read more of them than I have in the last few years. To accomplish that, my plans are:

1. I will not buy ANY books in 2008, new or used, unless I have to for work, with one exception – next year’s year-end warehouse book sale, and that only if I accomplish my resolution, and I can only purchase as many books as I’ve read in 2008.
2. If I need a book for book club, I’ll check it out from the library, or (worst case scenario) Stephanie will buy it.
3. I will NOT check books out from the library this year, unless it’s for book club. (I know that seems strange, but the goal is not about saving money, it’s about focusing my attention on my own library.)
4. Do a massive purge of my feed reader and severely reduce the number of blogs I read regularly.
5. Carry my current read around with me everywhere, so that I focus on it, and not the magazines in the doctor’s waiting room, the internet while I’m waiting for gym class, etc.).

So there it is – my official 2008 New Year’s Resolution. Let’s see if I can stick to it.