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lit bookstore with full shelves beyond a window display filled with books

One of the things I've appreciated about being more picky with my reading is that I have a little bit more self-control in purchasing books now. I'll admit that up until most recently, I was pretty indiscriminate in purchasing Christian books simply by virtue of it being Christian, even if I had never heard of the author before or had only seen a picture of the book online.

However, in the past few months, I've enjoyed getting to exercise more discernment in what books I choose to pick up. This has resulted in an unofficial book buying ban without me fully realizing it at the time. While there were a few books that I picked up a few weeks before Christmas, I've largely gone without getting additional books since then. Part of this is because I can wait a long time for sales to appear! The other part is that I'm trying to pick better books for my home library knowing how many books I might have to part ways with over time.

This had me thinking about which books I would buy now, especially as I still want to support Christian authors where I can but without getting caught up in consumeristic tendencies. It's also made me reconsider how I should purchase books and whether I'll finally cave and mostly get new books as a Kindle edition as opposed to paperbacks.

I haven't been overly stringent with this book buying ban as it's happened quite organically. In fact, I do have a running list of books in Notion that I've been keeping an eye out for, but these aren't the books that I will just find in a bookstore I'm visiting, so that's curbed my spending quite a bit. Unless I find some amazing sales or coupons, I'm content to let my list lie fallow.

I'm also at the stage where I want to read as many of my current books as I can without the pressure of accumulating more. I used to enjoy sharing more book hauls until I realized that it would probably be months or years before I got to those titles. As a result, I've stopped doing that and am now treating my home library as its own bookstore where I can "checkout" the titles that are already there.

This is quite unofficial, but this is how I'm attempting to prioritize my reading in the next several months:

  1. Honour my existing commitments to read and review ARCs. I was inspired by an author to create a list and am working on completing it as quickly as I can since I don't want to keep people waiting for long (sorry!).
  2. Go through as many books as I can on Audible before my subscription ends this spring. I don't plan to renew my membership for another year since my initial subscription was covered by my workplace; however, I am no longer there and it's a little difficult to justify for almost $200/year.
  3. Tackle my physical TBR. This one is self-explanatory as there's a lot! I need to finish series I've started, and get caught up on authors' previous releases.
  4. If I'm looking for a book on the go, I plan to read ebooks from a folder I just created on my Kindle called "to read next" so that I'm not perpetually browsing. This folder mostly consists of sequels to books I've read or authors I've connected with on Instagram, and is a handy way to separate out what I really want to read versus all of the books I've collected. I don't know why it took me so long to realize that this would be more helpful than scrolling through thousands of books 😅
  5. Whatever catches my fancy. I think I'm a mood reader (that's just someone who reads what suits their mood, right?), so I know I might come across a few titles that really grab my attention. However, I'm going to try to discipline myself in this so that the previous items don't fall by the wayside!
February will be a nice time to test out the concept of shopping at home for me. What this really shows me is just what a blessing it is to be able to readily access all types of books, whether in print, digitally, or audibly. I don't want to take this fact for granted, knowing that many Christians around the world don't get to find Christian books that easily. One of the reasons I didn't mention my local library is that it's been getting harder to find Christian books there, so I keep wondering what it must be like for those who live far from libraries or bookstores in other parts of the world.

While TBR piles can remain daunting, it is ultimately a gift and a blessing to have all of these books in the first place. My hope is that despite limiting the books that I purchase, I can still show support to Christian authors by reading their books and not letting them accumulate dust 😊

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