Reading Books and Buying Books are Two Different Hobbies
How to Buy Less and Read More in a Time of Endless Reading Options
You have likely heard the saying that “buying books and reading books are two separate hobbies.” And this is true. The joy that comes from walking through the near-endless shelves of a bookstore and coming out of the experience with a stack of new books to read is distinct from the satisfaction of spending hours, days, weeks, etc., reading a book from cover to cover.
The act of buying books can be a rich source of dopamine — a part of an endless drive to acquire more and more, building libraries that tower from your home floors to the ceilings until you find your homespace bleeding books from every possible opening. The next thing you know, you have books not only on your shelves, but your tables and side tables. You have books next to every chair and perhaps even under chairs. You have books stacked horizontally on the shelves and vertically on the floors.
It is all too easy to buy more books. With a single tap on your phone, you can have another book on its way to your home within days or even just one day — and that’s if you’re purchasing a physical book.
But in this endless race to consume and acquire, we may find ourselves reading less and less. You may go from enjoying one book by a new favorite novelist to soon having their entire bibliography in your home before you even get to “The End.” You might be reading a work on nonfiction and then fall into the rabbithole of notes and citations that has you ordering copies of the author’s sources — and then the sources of the author’s sources.
Buying books can get out of hand fast, especially if you’re buying more books per month than you can ever read in that time frame. In my best months, I may read (and finish) as many as 5 or 10 books and buy two or three new ones. And during the worst months, I’ll finish two and purchase twelve.
Needless to say, it gets overwhelming and often difficult to afford. Thus, we’re brought back to the question that burdens all readers everywhere: how do we read more books? In this case, how do we channel the energy (and money) that we spend buying books and direct it into reading more of the books we already have?
I’m going to share with you some of my best tips for curbing your own book-buying impulses and then some techniques to read more of your current library. By the time you finish this, you should be well on your way to not only ending each month with a little more money in your pocket but also with more books knocked off of your “TBR” pile and into your “Recommended Reads” pile.
Reading More for Less: Tips for Saving Money on Books
When I’m thinking about reading a book, the first thing I ask is where I can read the opening pages before making my purchase. While you can visit bookstores and libraries in person for this, it is not a guarantee that the books that you wish to read will be on their shelves. With most modern releases, there is often an easy solution for this: book samples.
If you browse a book on Amazon or other online retailers, they may give you the option to read some of the first pages of a book on the book’s product page. If you’re an Amazon Kindle reader, you can even have these samples sent directly to your Kindle device or app. Library ebook service apps, like Libby, also provide similar services for available ebooks.
Reading book samples this way allows you to read a book and even take notes on its opening chapters, helping you determine whether or not that book is the right fit for you. The added benefit of digital samples is that you can read them easily across multiple sittings. Whereas in a physical bookstore or library, you’re limited to the business hours, you can read your digital book samples from anywhere on your own schedule.
My rule of thumb is that for every book that I want to read, I have to finish the sample for it before purchasing it. I’ve also found it helps to wait a few days after your sample read-through to make your purchase. If you still feel the strong impulse to read the full book, after letting the sample sit for a couple of days, then you’re in a good position to get the book, either through purchase or one of the following means.1
You’re not limited to using digital samples to make direct purchases. If a library near you has the book available, you can use your sample reading as a kickoff into reading the book from their shelves.
Libraries offer a wealth of options for reading in different formats. Access to a library card can not only grant you access to the books physically available on their shelves, but can also, through partnerships with services like Libby and Hoopla, grant you access to a vast library of ebooks and audiobooks as well.
Registering for a library card in most regions is simple, free, and can be done on the same day that you walk into the library. This makes it one of the easiest ways to get a hold of new books at a low cost.
The last option I would recommend — if you know someone who has the book you’d like to read — is to borrow the book. While not available to everyone, borrowing books from friends and family is not only free, but is a great way to build rapport with fellow readers.
If you need some help convincing the people in your life to lend you their books, I recently released an article listing a few easy rules to follow to help you lend your books to others and have them safely returned.
Chipping Away: Tips for Reading More Books
One of the easiest ways to get yourself in the mindset to finish more of the books in your library is to realize that you may not read all of your library. Put simply, you may just not have all of the time that you need to read your shelves upon shelves of unfinished books from cover to cover. Instead of letting that stop you, you can use it as motivation to read with more purpose.
I’ve talked before about being comfortable with dropping certain books if you’re dragging your feet through them. There’s nothing wrong with putting down a book you’re just not in the mood for. Dropping a book you don’t like sooner just gives you more time to read the books that you do enjoy.
I like to set a certain page benchmark for each book I read. If I don’t enjoy a book by a certain page number, I bench it and move on to something else. What that benchmark looks like will vary from person to person, but I find Nancy Pearl’s 100-[your age] benchmark to be more than sufficient.2
Another way to help you get through long books is to read them alongside their audiobook. If available, reading a book with an audio narration playing in the background can help maintain your focus as you read from page to page.
It can also allow you to maintain some of your reading momentum if you have to step away from the physical book and do other tasks. I’ve found that switching from physical book to audiobook when I have to make commutes for work has been integral to my finishing books that I’ve had on hold for months at a time.
Not all companions to the book you’re reading will be in audio form. If you’re reading a work of classic literature or philosophy, you may have difficulty understanding certain concepts and their meaning. In many of those cases, there may be a large treasure trove of companion texts and reading guides — whether individual articles or whole books themselves — that can help you get from start to finish.
A companion series that I’m very fond of is the Cambridge Companion series, published by Cambridge University. These literary companions are helpful when trying to gain a greater understanding of certain writers, philosophical schools, or literary periods. Some of my favorite companions are the ones for James Baldwin and Machiavelli, two authors whose works I’ve been attempting to read in full lately.3
Whether you’re trying to expand your knowledge on a certain author or looking to learn as you read, companion texts like these help you get the most out of your reading experience.
Another one of the best ways you can learn to read more books is to subscribe to our free newsletter. Here at What’s On My Mind, we regularly devote our time to teaching you the best reading tips and techniques to help you not only read more books, but to help you understand even the most difficult books more clearly. If you’d like to catch more articles to help you become a better and more effective reader, please consider subscribing for free at whatsonmymind.net.
Your mileage with many of these tips may vary. At the end of the day, the effectiveness of techniques such as these will depend on your own self-discipline to put them into practice. With some consistent practice, you’ll not only read more strategically, but you’ll save more money as you do so. That’s more money to spend on the things that really matter to you. And if that ends up being books that you’ve read part of and decided are worth your time, all the better.
Happy reading!
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And in the case of Amazon, if you decide to purchase the book digitally, your annotations will transfer directly to your new digital copy.
For more on how this rule works, you can read here: https://www.whatsonmymind.net/p/you-dont-have-to-finish-your-books
Another companion that I’ve just started reading and recently recommended is the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare.