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  • The Perfect Ratio

    This week I had a terrible revelation! My books are piling up at an exponential rate. I’m having a terrible time keeping up with reading the books that I’m buying.

    See, I like shopping. A lot. Call it therapy or just a way to support the economy. And as previously revealed, I especially enjoy using a good coupon–which usually requires me to buy more than one book. Before I know it, my room starts looking like this:

    too-many-books

    Piles abound, and the books–books that I really want to read–don’t get read. I just keep getting more books, and not reading them. At this moment, I think my current ratio is about 3:1. If I’m only reading 1 book of every 3 I’m buying, that’s not ideal. Mostly because I want to be reading them. But also because I’m feeling a little wasteful (even if a lot of the books I’m getting are being traded for on paperbackswap.com). I don’t want to be wasteful.

    But also, I love books. I love being surrounded by them. Someone said something amazingly creative enough to get published, and even if I don’t know the words yet, there’s something thrilling about knowing they’re there, on the printed page, covering my floor.

    But sometimes I think I need to only buy books that I’ll actually read, so I have a quality 1:1 ratio. But then … well, how will I know if I’m going to read every book that I get? And just because I haven’t read the books yet, doesn’ t mean that I don’t want to.

    Which all leads me to the all-important question. What is the ideal ratio for book buying? Is it only 1:1? Or is it 3:2, so that you have some spares for next year or the next? Or is it 5:1 so you always have more books than you could possibly read?

    Pondering the big questions until next time. -LJ

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