Blog 164 - Book Buying Ban Troubles

Books, Books, and more books.

The constant need to buy books to keep up with what is being read. The constant need to read what everyone else is reading. The constant need to look at the gorgeous covers as they sit on the shelves at the store.

Hello, my name is Alisha and I have a book buying ban problem. I have a book buying problem...period.

Yes you heard that right. I have a problem. This is where my problem meets reality. The reality of my problem is this. I buy more books than I can keep up with. It wasn't always this way. It wasn't always my strategy to buy all of the books.

In the beginning it was set up as a plan to buy 4 books a month to read and review, not including any ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) in the mail. I would read those books and review them for this blog and maybe even use those books to make videos for my YouTube channel. But when it comes to not buying more books before I can read what I have - I'm overwhelmed.

I have tried just about all of them book buying bans that I have seen on YouTube.
1. Read x amount of books before buying x amount of books
2. Read x amount of books before even stepping foot in a bookstore
3. Creating a TBR jar of titles to read before buying x amount of books.
4. Creating a author TBR jar (this is where you put author names in a jar and which ever one you pick you read every book you have by that author)
5. Creating a book buying ban contract to follow in order to read the books.

As you can see I have tried everything, and I just get overwhelmed in looking at the books that go unread. I feel so bad because I will read just about anything and then I find and buy the book with the intention of reading it and some times I read the book and other times I say "Oh let me finish this one before I read that one" and sometimes I never get to it.

I know that these buying bans work for some people, but they just don't work for me. I'm in the process of coming up with something creative to get though the TBR piles. I am determined to read the books to make the pile smaller, but it will take time. This I know.

Down below in the comments, let me know how you deal with book buying bans. Do they work for you? Do they not work for you? And if they don't what do you do to read through your TBR pile books?

That is all for this post, Happy reading. I'll see you in my next post.