Buying Books and Reading Books Are Two Different Things…

Wednesday is about books. And reading. And writing. Today, more books I haven’t read, but a commitment to fiction for at least the next few months…

I’ve riffed on this before. And you’ve read about it before elsewhere, or shared a meme (or two) or at least laughed in acknowledgment at the meme that tells you there’s a difference between reading books and buying them. We buy the books we want to read, we buy the books we think look good on our shelves, we buy the books we hope to one day get to…It all amounts to the fact I’ve seen best put succinctly: We believe when we buy a book that we’re also buying the time to read it.

Or something like that.

I am now buying Stephen King books in Dutch, German and Spanish — and will find them in other languages when and if I can. I do not speak other languages, and if it’s too late at night, too early in the morning, or somewhere murkily in the middle (often when I’m writing these), I barely speak English…

But it’s safe to say I’m no longer even thinking about buying the time to one day read the book — though I guess, optimistically, you could say there’s “always time” and “one day” I’ll start that Spanish course, or master German, or attempt Dutch, or pick up where my high school French lessons left me, which is arguably somewhere just north of Bonjour and Au revoir.

Buying books is both a comfort and an absolute privilege — and issues of space and domestic sanity continue to clog pipes. It never feels like a waste of money to buy a book (if you’re lucky enough to have the income to place in that direction). But it sometimes is close to an untenable situation if the shelves have no more room on them.

We are running not one, but two Stephen King collections in our house. Both me and my son have more than one copy of some of the books. I think, between us, we have 10 copies of Misery, and at least five copies of It.

And outside of that, I had a dark tower of music biographies, until I farmed out many of the ones I’d read, keeping only a few favourites, and of course the many that I’ve yet to get to.

I’m currently trying to engage more with fiction than non-fiction, and I’m doing that, primarily, through a university Honours course in Contemporary Fiction.

Last week we read The White Girl by Tony Birch — wonderful book. I so thoroughly recommend it. Curious, gentle, interesting tone. And a nice bait/switch around the way the ending plays out.

This week it’s The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay. And then, shortly after, Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing. We’ll also read TAUHOU by Kotuku Titihuia Nuttall, Pip Adam’s Audition, and Backwaters by Emma Sidnam.

There’s a strong focus on Australian and New Zealand authors, on non-male authors, and on fiction (duh, obviously). And this is good for me. I read plenty of female authors and I have read a lot of fiction, but over the last few years it has been very easy to bank up the biographies, buy them and shelve them and be sure that, one day, I’ll get to them. I’ve mostly been reading poetry, graphic novels and non-fiction across the last decade. A few novels in there too of course.

But the assignment of having to read a new book a week (or every other week) and then the actual assignments is very good for me. Forced reading — in the very best way.

But I’m still buying books on the side, and borrowing books from the library. I’m currently obsessed with reading about The Grateful Dead (again). And there are more music bios that I need to get, and then of course get to.

But I’m also really pumped to be reading more contemporary fiction. So far so good. Books are like friends. They’re there for you when you need them. I’m planning a big winter of reading. And that means it’ll soon be time to sell and trade and part with a few books too, to move them on. To give them away, swap them, donate them. All of that is part of it too.

My other goal this year is to start one of those “Little Libraries” — a little community letterbox or rabbit hutch with some books I’ll line it with to start. Then hopefully people will help themselves, and add (as they subtract). Placing some of their own former must-reads in there too.