Reading By My Values: A 2-Part Journey
I love my library. I want to support my library so I check out a lot of library books. The problem is... I don't read them. Well, I mean, sometimes I do. But I prioritize reading books I've bought because I've spent money on them, you know? I want to get my money's worth! Which is dumb because I would ALWAYS get my money's worth reading from the library... So, yeah, that's kind of the whole point of this journey - taking advantage of how cost-effective the library is.
I like to buy books - pretty books, books I'm excited about, an interesting book to try, a book I want to share. I'm weird about ~collecting~ books. I think I want them forever, but then I end up giving them away. I live in a small house. I don't want to have a big collection. But I do want to be surrounded by books that bring me joy. Listen, I am complex. Let me get to the point. This past year, I tried to read mostly ebooks. This coming year, I'm going to try to read mostly borrowed books. Because I'm tired of buying books and having them pile up before I get to reading them. Then they turn into a no-fun to-do list. And I want to save money. Why buy a book that I can read for free?
The stats for 2025 so far (as of early November) are: 70 books read, only 11 of which were borrowed from my library. That's slightly less than 16%. I've read 11 library books this year and yet I've probably borrowed 100. And that means I've spent money on [at least] 59 books. I usually only buy 1 to 3 books at a time so the price is always reasonable, but when that adds up over a year, or over several years, that can be quite a pile of money that I don't notice because it's so spread out.
My library does that cool thing on the receipt when you check out. If you borrow a new paperback, it will say something like "You saved $15.99 this visit. You've saved $843.96 so far this year." And I really want my receipts to be an accurate depiction of money I'm reading. I don't want a receipt that says "You saved $67.43 today!" and I don't actually read any of those books but spend my time reading books I've spent $80.27 on or whatever some other time.
I want to take it even further in a few other ways:
1. Browse my local library branch and just read things that interest me that I find on the shelves. No browsing for recommendations first. No being influenced by internet personalities. No holds-list-turned-to-do-list. No requesting things in from other branches. I want to limit my options so as to limit my decision fatigue. I want to prove that I can be entertained by what's available instead of always looking out for something "better". I want to pick up and read what I'm in the mood for that very moment instead of trying to guess what I might enjoy someday.
2. 1-in-1-out. I only want to check out 1 book at a time. Give my attention to that 1 book. Give it a fair shot. Don't let myself be distracted by other little shiny things when I already have something to read. (NOTE: I am not going to make myself finish every book I borrow if I'm not enjoying it. I plan to keep a tab of the cost of books I abandon for another interesting tidbit of data.) I always envy the people I see coming in to the library to return 1 book and borrow 1 other. The finesse!
3. And you know what, if I'm not enjoying a book and can't get to the library very soon to switch it out, ah well. I can take a break from reading! I can read a book I already have at home. I can read 1 of my many ebooks I have filling up my ereader.
But all that is actually going to be Part 2 of this journey. Before I can read mostly borrowed books, I do want to read through as many already-owned books I can before the new year. So I have the rest of November and December to read the books I own. I don't have many paper books so I think I can check those off before 2026, but I'm not so hopeful about the ebooks. It's so easy to buy ebooks on sale so those have piled up on me. I'll do my best, but no pressure.
Reading By My Values - Part 1 will be reading as many books that I already own before midnight on December 31, 2025. Reading By My Values - Part 2 will start January 1, 2026 wherein I will try to read mostly* borrowed library books for the entire year. I will use my check-out receipts to track how much money I save by actually READING library books.
*I don't want to limit myself so much as to ONLY read library books next year, but I do want it to be more library books than anything else. In this case, it's either a library book or not, so >50% borrowed is my goal.
(In 2025 when I tried to read "mostly" ebooks, I forgot about audiobooks. I got a new job with a commute so they really look over my format stats. I didn't want to give up audiobooks on my drives, so I then focused on reading more ebooks than paper books. So far I'm at:
audio 46%
ebook 29%
paper 26%
Not all that impressive, huh? My book club always read paper books, which was tough for a challenge like this. And I ended up missing reading paper books. Surprise!)