Believe it or not, I was working on this piece when
posted “The Curator: why I only buy books for their looks”. Her post is more about the why than mine is, but her points definitely resonated with me and she’s just a really cool reader/collector so you gotta check her out!I’m also realizing that this piece coincides with Substack’s debate on book buying, but I honestly only thought up this piece because I went to Barnes & Noble a few weeks back and I wanted to write about it. Weird how the universe works in mysterious ways!
When I was in high school, my biggest dream was to own a full-sized bookcase. My parents had found me one of those small, two-shelf ones, but I’d never had enough books (or enough shelf space) to fill more than two or three shelves at any given time.
Over the years I’d gotten all sorts of books. I had all the typical children’s books and middle grade novels that filled the shelves of millenials everywhere, and then by the time I entered middle/high school, I started picking my own weird books. I’d go to Target or Barnes & Noble or the long-deceased Borders (may she rest in peace) and beg my mom to let me pick something to bring home. A trip to the book section was never a waste, even if I didn’t get to buy anything, because it was about the thrill of holding stories in your hand.
The more I fell in love with reading and the older I got, the more books I started to collect.
By the time I was starting college, I managed to coerce someone into buying me my own full-sized bookcase, and that was just the beginning. For those who don’t know, I had a semi-successful career as a Booktuber from 2013-2019, and during those years I made it my job (literally) to accumulate as many books as possible. I bought a lot of books, but then people started giving me books for free, either as gifts or as ARCs. And let me tell you, there is nothing more fulfilling than getting free books from publishers before they’re released to the public. It became this weird addiction, not only because it was an affordable way to read new releases but also because it proved your status as an influencer. If I got this sequel before anybody else, then I was special. Therefore, as my channel grew and I started making more and more content, my room began to fill up with piles and piles of books. I went from one full-sized bookcase to two, and then eventually I moved into a house that had additional built-in shelves. I had so much room that I stopped monitoring exactly what books I needed and allowed myself to be swept away by the thrill of collecting.
But as with every season, this time of my life eventually came to an end.
After the pandemic hit, everything got weird. I stopped going out which meant no more fun bookstore jaunts. I burned out on content creation which meant I stopped making consistent book videos. I still read a little bit here and there, but I rarely picked up new releases and I didn’t have the same drive to read as I had in my early twenties. And since I stopped reading and stopped making videos, I stopped receiving ARCs from publishers, if only because I was fed up with all the stacks of books on my floor during isolation. But more than that, my relationship with books and book-collected changed because my mindset shifted.
Over the course of my twenties, one of the most fascinating things has been watching my core values change. There are many things I was adamant and passionate about at 21 that I’ve since lost interest in, and there are a lot of things I vowed I’d never do or understand that are now incredibly important to me at 29. The older I get, the more things surprise me about the world and about myself, and that means that who I am now is almost unrecognizable from who I was when I was in college.
I think one of the biggest reasons why I’ve stopped hoarding so many books is because I watched The Politician on Netflix. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Not only is that show bad, but it has nothing to do with book-collecting.
I’m not proud of this, but watching that show completely convinced me to be a more sustainable person. (I know, it’s kind of ridiculous.) I grew up in a recycling household, and I’ve always loosely tried to be kind to the earth, but it wasn’t until I watched Ben Platt wash himself in three minutes with freezing cold water in a portable shower that I decided enough was enough. The show isn’t great content, but it’s entertaining enough, and a huge part of the show is about sustainability and running on a political platform that vows to combat climate change. (I think? This was like four years ago.) For whatever reason, when I watched that show, it was the thing that finally convinced me that I could commit to small changes in my life to fight climate change and waste specifically. To tie this back to collecting, I finally acknowledged that the culture encouraged by Booktube and even influencing in general is one of extreme waste.
While waste is somewhat unavoidable in our world today, and while it may not be the biggest or the only contributor to climate change and a dying earth, it is a huge problem. It’s easy to close your eyes and throw out your plastic and live in ignorant bliss, but the more you uncover about waste and overconsumption, the harder it is to look away. And even though I could never be a zero waste person, it became clear to me that there was a lot of room for growth.
Being an influencer automatically suggests an endorsement of overconsumption, if only because the goal of influencers is usually to get the audience to buy something or consume something. And if they aren’t trying to convince people to consume, then they are consuming in their own right. Maybe your viewers didn’t buy fifty books this month, but they didn’t have to because you already did. Influencers are sent free things all the time, some of which they really will use, but a lot of it is stuff that will get thrown out or tossed in the back of their closet. They’ll get subscription boxes with key rings and filler paper and pop-sockets and branded clothing and weird unique accessories and most of it is complete crap. And yet we all held it up in front of our cameras like we’d been given a chest of gold. And sure, we got all of this in order to get free books, but the chances of you actually reading and enjoying and keeping that book were slim to none.
My experience with influencer culture is already dated, a history lost in the pre-pandemic world, but a lot of the marketing and consumption techniques that were around five years ago are still happening now. We as a country (as a world?) encourage overconsumption because consumption feeds the capitalistic machine, and it’s so much better to be surrounded by a bunch of stuff, isn’t it?
Eventually I decided that no, it isn’t. At least, not for me.
One day I looked around and realized that owning more than two bookcases stressed me out. Seeing so many books in my room was overwhelming, not necessarily because I had a huge TBR, but more so because the physical matter of owning books became too much. I felt claustrophobic being surrounded by books in my personal living space. My shelves towered over my bed and the initial joy I got from looking at all those spines started to spiral into something ominous. My brain kept trying to calculate the enormous number of books owned, subconsciously imagining the horrors of moving at an indeterminate date in the future. I imagined where that collection would be in five years or ten or twenty, after I’d read and collected even more books. If I think about it too hard I start to panic.
I’ve learned that the best way to manage this is by keeping most of my book collection out of my bedroom. For the most part, I keep my books because they do bring me joy. My collection is heavily curated even if it’s large (what can I say, I’ve read over 600 books, so owning only about 250 of those is a miracle), and every single title is on my shelf for a reason. Call me sentimental, but I feel like my books are little pieces of my soul, collected over years of my life, immortalizing past versions of me as I age. I haven’t gotten so overwhelmed that I need to purge everything, and I’m optimistic that will never happen, at least on a large scale. However, even my double-bookcase’s towering presence in my living room makes me feel out of sorts if I look at it for too long. That’s how it goes.
And I know some people are built for the maximalism trend, that having a huge room exclusively for your library of books is the dream that we push on all the people who loved Beauty and the Beast. There’s no shame in collecting, especially if it brings you joy, and I think there’s a difference between actively curating a collection and just blindly overconsuming. Personally I don’t know why people own seven or eight hundred books, but I understand the concept of building something. It’s the reason I buy so many Taylor Swift CDs. It’s creating a little hoard in your space that says THIS BRINGS ME JOY AND I LOVE IT, and I think collections tell you a lot about a person. I love looking at other peoples’ book collections because they collect books differently than I do, and their collections always show me something unique about the collector, even if it’s just the way they decide to display their books. I also believe that you can collect books in an eco-friendly way, and you can do it intentionally in a way that supports authors and publishing and stories. It can be a great thing!
But again, not for me. At least, not in a limitless way like I once believed. I now find my pleasure in buying books that really shape me and entertain me, books that are more meaningful than a romance book I devoured in one sitting and never thought of again. I know one day I will inevitably own too many books to fit on my current bookcase (in some ways I already do), but I remind myself that that will become unavoidable as I read more books and get older and older. My dad’s in his 50s and he has over 40 boxes of books, so I’ve got a long way to go.
However, I still am very cognizant of overconsumption. It’s difficult for me to turn off the part of my brain that ignores waste. I can do it, and I do it regularly because to exist in this world you kind of have to, but it sucks. Ignorance is bliss, but once you pull aside the curtain, you can’t ignore the Wizard of Oz.
Maybe I’m more aware of it because I was an influencer, maybe I’m more aware of it because of shows like The Politician, or maybe I’m more aware of it because I’ve educated myself and I’m older than I used to be, I’m not sure. Ten years ago it was so much easier to pretend like my actions didn’t have consequences, and that’s true of both my carbon footprint and my identity as a white US citizen. Even though it makes life a whole lot harder to be socially aware, it’s a very important step you have to take when growing up. Nobody can convince you to care about other people, to care about the earth or the animals or anything else, but eventually there comes a point where we all have to recognize our impact on things outside ourselves. I think a lot of things would be different if people not only understood how their actions affect other people, but also decided to actively live in ways that are kinder to others. Sustainability sounds big and scary, if only because it can be expensive and difficult to begin, but one of these days you too will wake up and notice that the seasons aren’t the same as when we were kids, that most of the trash you’ve produced in your lifetime is still here, that things are going to be very different for everyone in the next twenty to fifty years…and maybe not in a good way.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just thinking about the collapse of society in the wake of climate change because I’m a year out from turning thirty, who’s to say.
The point here is not to scare you into sustainability (although better women than me have tried), but rather, to tell you that I am sick of contributing to capitalism and climate change in such a direct way. Sure, I may not be able to give up my dry shampoo spray, and I acknowledge that it isn’t the most eco-friendly option, but I can stop getting those silly subscription boxes. I can stop going to the bookstore and buying ten brand new books just because the covers look cool. I can be more intentional about where I buy my books, what I do when I want to get rid of my books, stop getting so many packages shipped to my house without consolidating shipments. It’s not like I changed overnight and decided to unhaul my entire library, it’s been a lot of little things over time. I think people assume that being sustainable means you immediately start growing your own food and sewing your own clothes and you don’t use any plastic and you get rid of everything you own, but in truth it’s a lot simpler than that. Sustainability starts with awareness. It starts with baby steps and education and making better choices when given the option. If you start buying fewer books, eventually a few years down the line you’ll realize you just don’t buy books.
I’ve reached a point in my life now where I second-guess every single book I think about buying. Not because I’m “on a book buying ban” or because I can’t afford them, but because I genuinely am less compelled to own more books. Do I really need another book for my collection? Is that book important enough to keep with me for years to come? Am I confident I will keep this book for a few decades rather than just get rid of it in a year and a half? It’s about the intentionality. And while a lot of people may not understand why this makes me happier, to them I say that living this way feels more special. A long time ago it felt thrilling to buy ten books at the same time. Now I find a thrill in picking out one really great book (or two if we’re lucky!) because it means that book really left an impact on me. I don’t buy new books I haven’t read (usually) because I mostly borrow all my books from the library. I use eBooks and audiobooks purely out of convenience, but also because it means less paper consumption on my part. And I’m not saying all of this to act superior, it took me a long time to get to this point in my life, I’m sharing it because it’s become something I’m weirdly passionate about, that I think would be beneficial for a lot of people. I don’t know, maybe I just feel guilty for all the years I made book hauls when I was in college.
The real reason I started this essay is because I went to Barnes & Noble for the first time in god knows how long. Before the pandemic I went to a bookstore two or three times a month, if not more, and even though I didn’t always buy something when I went, I felt like I was always working off a list of books I needed to buy. Either I was completing series at the used book store or looking for new releases, but no matter why, I went bookshopping because it was comforting. Barnes & Noble felt like my home away from home. And I forgot that just because my habits and tastes have changed.
Since I don’t buy many books and I rarely keep up with new releases, there’s not really a reason to go the nice bookstores. I go to the used bookstore once every few months because things are cheaper there and it’s easier to stumble on something particularly unusual, but gone are the days when I’d wander through a place like Parnassus and pick up a brand new book on a whim. Which is quite sad because before the internet and Goodreads and bookfluencers, that’s all we did. I still have vivid memories of stalking the book section in my hometown Target, picking up YA books based on the covers alone, trying to find a new book to bring home with me. Back then, I had to choose wisely because my allowance really only left me enough for a single book, and what if the book I chose was bad?
In some ways, I was more adventurous back then because I did pick up the most random things in an effort to find something I’d enjoy. I think those early experiences shaped how I pick up books now. I love choosing books based on their cover, and I do still get such a thrill from just running my hand over books at the store. Of course, now my shopping experience is a little different. I pick up books based on covers and summaries, but then I’ll pull up Goodreads to make sure I’m not picking up a total dud. I usually do a lot of window-shopping, finding books I think I’d enjoy and checking to see if they’re available at my library. I take photos of covers I like and spend time reading opening chapters. I dip my toes in dozens of books without ever actually committing to any of them. It reminds me just how many stories are out there. It reminds me that books should be cherished because they are special.
This is part of why overconsumption makes me so sad. Maybe some people still feel that specialness when they buy hundreds of books a year, but for me personally, I lost the true magic of reading and books when I was so focused on creating a bigger collection. I stopped worrying about reading the words because I just wanted to own as many as possible. Books are works of art to look at, and sure, I own a lot of my book because they’re beautiful, but the point of books has always been the words within them. We read to find ourselves, to learn things, to empathize with people who are seemingly so different from us. We collect books for a lot of different reasons, but it’s easy to be consumed by our consumption. It’s easy to forget that all of this started when I was a little girl reading about a magic treehouse.
It’s curious to see which areas of the bookstore you gravitate towards as you grow up. When I was young, we’d spend hours in the children’s section, looking through middle grade novels and chapter books in the back of the brand new Barnes & Noble in my hometown. Then eventually I moved on to YA. Then I found the fantasy section. And now, as I finish the final years of my twenties, I’ve moved on to non-fiction.
One of my favorite sections at Barnes & Noble is the cookbook section. Mostly because it feels like an adult picture book area. Sure, in a perfect world I’d bring home a few of these and start cooking these beautiful recipes, but today all I can do is wistfully stare at the branding and food photography and pretend like I’m about to eat the most delicious food in the world. I don’t use cookbooks as much as I should, but when I forced myself to start enjoying cooking in 2019, I found a lot of joy and comfort from cookbooks. I own a few that I keep in my kitchen and they’re some of my favorite books that I own because they’re not only works of art, but they’re actually helpful and useful. Not all cookbooks are created equally, but I think there’s so much value in them, and I love getting to flip through them at the bookstore. And sure, I can get inspiration from a book I don’t buy, I’m not ashamed to admit that!
I’ve been going to this Barnes & Noble since I was in college - I went to my first ever YA book signing here for Tahereh Mafi and Veronica Rossi in 2014 - and I’ve seen its insides change so many times. Every time I revisit, I feel like they’ve moved things around. This time as I wandered, I discovered that they have a dedicated non-fiction section specifically for LGBTQIA+ books as well as other social awareness topics like race and class and gender. Did they always have that? Or did I only just start noticing it?
My goal for 2024 was to read more non-fiction in hopes of learning about some topics I’m sorely behind on, and this section was so inspiring because it reminded me that there’s so much I don’t know! I always thought non-fiction books were boring because they were about economics or the 1950s or Napoleon and it never really occurred to me that I could read about sociology and the human experience in such an accessible way. (Okay, maybe this is because I didn’t get interested in sociology until I was in college…) I think the biggest change I’ve noticed in my twenties is that I’m much more interested in learning about (and for) other people, and I’m tooting my own horn because sixteen year old me did not give a shit about politics or social issues.
There were some really cool books that I almost picked up from this section, but I found a lot of them at my library, and I discovered upon choosing one book to buy that I left my wallet in my car…I was not about to become laughingstock by going to get it. Perhaps another day! Don’t wanna overconsume!
I don’t have anything productive to end this on, just kind of sitting in a space of reflective gratitude for my former selves, nostalgic joy for getting to live in a world where bookstores still exist, and optimistic excitement for all the stories and books I have yet to discover. Every few years I loose sight of reading, and it falls by the wayside as I focus on other parts of my life, but now I’m back in action (I’ve read 47 books and counting this year), and I’m more in love than I have been in years. Right now I’m on the hunt for the next big hyperfixation — I’m hoping The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White hits the spot — and I’m trying to remind myself that I cannot continue to read the same six books over and over again even if they bring me joy. (I’m still mourning my All for the Game reread, and I can’t bring myself to return to non-fiction just yet, contrary to what I’ve saying for the past few paragraphs.) The TBR just keeps growing year after year, and my collection has grown bigger than I ever could have imagined when I was fifteen. I still feel like I own too many books, but at least I’ve read 90% of the books I do own. Baby steps.
Anyway, I’d love to hear about all your book collections and book buying habits! Or what you’ve loved reading recently! Or what books you reread over and over again because you cannot escape them! Let me know. Thanks in advance.
As someone who is very new to the online book community (I joined bookstagram last year), I find this post relatable on several levels. I try not to buy many books but sometimes I'm like but this is literally the only indulgence I enjoy, is it really so bad? Recently I've been trying to buy more used books because that's at least better.
I loved this post so so much! Last summer, I moved across the county from a house to an apartment. I didn’t have a massive collection of books at my old house, but it was enough to fill one bookcase. A few years ago, I joined the bookstagram community and was immediately influenced by the color coded shelves and book hauls I was constantly seeing on my feed. Because I was a minor with no job, I couldn’t buy all the books I wanted and I felt bad asking my parents for multiple books a week (in hindsight it was for the better because I would have had to donate them anyway for my move). As school has gotten busier over the last two years, I’ve unfortunately had less and less time to read. When I look back at the times I would read 10 books a month, I always compare it to the amount of books I can read now (which is significantly less). It’s really made me think about if I truly wanted to read all of those books so quickly or if I was influenced by what I saw online. Now, I try not to worry so much about how many books I read in a year or the amount of books I’ve added to my shelves. I also want to be intentional about the books I’m reading/buying and create a more enjoyable experience for myself.