A tale of too many books
Turns out, it's not sustainable to check out seven books at a time. Here's what I'm doing instead.
Black Friday was a season this year, wasn’t it? I’m a bit exhausted by the whole thing, but did manage to get all of my holiday shopping finished so I can turn my attention to enjoying December. It promises to be a month filled with both ordinary things (work) and wondrous things (twinkle lights), and I’m looking forward to snuggling up on the couch to read in the glow of our Christmas tree. (I treated myself to the Ina Garten issue of Cherry Bombe and am halfway through Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan—both are delightful.)
After emerging from a shopping season that amplifies more, I wanted to share a story about embracing less, because sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. Even with books.
The library in my hometown was built in 1975, and I still remember walking through the metal turnstiles and veering right, heading past the librarians who waved at me from their perch behind the counter.
Carpeted structures in the shape of squares and hexagons were arranged in an open floor. Their centers were hollow, the ideal size for a child to wedge themselves into, which I did after wandering the stacks and carrying my books over.
This was the era of Reading Rainbow, when you could find me tucked into a bedroom fort made of sheets, deep in a Nancy Drew mystery. One Christmas I sat on the couch all afternoon reading the first Boxcar Children book in its entirety, a gift I unwrapped earlier that morning.
I used the library in college, as one does, but then for a very long stretch of time, I didn’t. Maybe the association of academic research was too strong to imagine the benefits of embracing the library for leisure reading. Maybe it was not living near a branch that felt convenient to me. Maybe it was feeling a desire to buy instead of borrow when I was able, because I became an author and learned how hard it was to sell books.
In 2016, we moved to a neighborhood in Los Angeles that was right across the street from a library. Literally, it would take me two minutes to walk there. I’m embarrassed to admit that this newfound proximity did not make me march right over for a library card. My son was an infant, and reading time was scarce. I took him to story time once and he wasn’t interested, so that was that for a while. A true missed opportunity.
When we relocated to North Carolina, getting library cards was part of my checklist of tasks to take care of, like going to the DMV and forwarding our mail. And for some reason I can’t quite pinpoint, checking out books from the library suddenly became thrilling to me.
You mean you can just walk out with a bag of books? For free?
Yes, I know this is how libraries work, but it still excites me to no end.
Plus, there’s a branch across from my son’s elementary school, so I take advantage of how easy it is so swing by before or after pick-up.
In this phase of life, I’ve started using the library more strategically. If there are books I’m thinking of buying for my personal collection, I often check them out first. If I want to keep reading, I return the book and buy my own copy. I also check out a lot of fiction since I don’t tend to reference those books after I read them.
For a while my TBR pile at home wasn’t even a pile yet. It was just a few books that fit neatly into a wicker basket in my office. It felt (and looked) manageable. But over time I kept buying books, not reading them, and putting them on a shelf. Simultaneously, I became especially interested in all the new books, keeping tabs on blog posts, Book of the Month predictions, and publications like BookPage, then adding books to my holds list so I could be first in line to read them. Why? I don’t really know. It was fun at first, and I felt like I was finally reading what everyone else was reading in the actual moment rather than two years later. Maybe there was some FOMO involved.
At the beginning of 2024, my holds list—which can have up to 30 titles at a time—was always full. Four would come in. Seven. Then a stray book would show up two days later, so I’d pick that one up too. Sometimes I’d have thirteen books at home. Thirteen!
I often reference my summer of white space, and this year it was one of the catalysts to helping me see what needed to shift. I didn’t set out to change everything all at once. The first step was simply giving myself permission to return books unread or partially read. I did this for several months and it helped, but it wasn’t enough. My holds list was still full all the time, and books kept arriving at a cadence I could not control.
Earlier this fall, I took more drastic measures.
I moved books from my holds list to my wish list. Allll of them. (Well, except for one or two I was really excited about.)
During this process, I also asked myself if I even wanted to read these books.
In my eagerness to stay relevant in my reading life, I often found myself setting aside something I actually wanted to read for something I thought I should be reading. Even when the library books were of great interest, the sheer volume at one time, combined with life’s constraints, started to feel suffocating.
I wrote about perfectionism recently when sharing about my experience with The Artist’s Way, and it doesn’t surprise me that the topic swelled up again. With my relationship to the library, perfectionism is driven by external factors—feeling the need to read the latest bestseller. For what? To prove my literary-ness? To feel relevant, or that I have something interesting to say? To finish all the books that end up in my lap because I committed to checking them out, and therefore I must complete what I start?
After this exercise in clarity, it took about a month for things to settle. My library holds are now shelved on their respective wish lists, which I can draw on when I’m ready. I feel serene knowing they’re accessible but not urgent.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear how much lighter I feel, and how much more space there seems to be.
These days I’m reading at a welcomed, slower pace that allows me to enjoy the books I’m in the middle of without feeling the need to rush to the next one. I’m also digging into books that have been on my list for research purposes, resulting in a small burst of creative inspiration after some liminal space during the summer and fall.
All this to say, keep asking questions about your reading and writing life. I find the end of the year is an especially rich time to do this.
What’s working? What needs to be refined? Where can you make space? Sit with these questions for a bit, and you might be surprised by the answers.
Until next time,
Nicole
P.S. I’d love to hear about your own relationship to reading and libraries, and how it’s changed over the years—leave a comment below!
My personal library has grown a bit out of control, even as I’ve embraced reading e-books from the library (no late fees ever again!). A few months ago, realizing I had years of reading at my fingertips, I decided that in 2025 I wouldn’t buy any books (unless I could fund them with selling books back to Powell’s). Unfortunately, this has given me a carte blanche excuse to buy books manically as this year winds down, “because next year, I’ll do it right”. So it goes… :)
I recently went on a "Blind Date with a Book" from the Walters State Community College (in East Tennessee) library. I chose categories (gothic, thriller, modern) and the library sent me a book to read that fit the category. The book was all I expected: /The Only One Left/ by Riley Sager.