|
When I started working at the library in high school, I kept checking out books that I thought I wanted to read without considering whether I had time to read them. At one point I think I had 20 books at home that I had checked out! After I renewed some of them a couple of times, I decided that I really didn't need to keep so many books at once and dropped down to about three or four at a time.
Now that I buy books, instead of borrowing them, I still like to get about three or four books at once. Even before buying my reader, I'd go to the bookstore to buy one $15 paperback that I knew they would have and spend another $40 on three more books that I didn't know I wanted before I got there. With ebooks, I seem to not count the free ones and I end up with seven or eight books in my cart, although only four of them cost me money.
For 2010 I am trying to limit myself to "just in time" book purchases -- buying the one book I want to read. However, it is so difficult for me to do that I have found it easier to not buy any books at all.
I only regret one ebook purchase -- His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik -- and only because the price on it dropped before I took the time to read it. (If I had read it before it became a free book, it wouldn't have bothered me at all. It's just the idea that since I hadn't bothered to read it, there was no benefit to buying it as early as I had!)
|