Some events with my car in January precipitated a long, hard look at my monthly budget. While I've always had a budget, it's come to my attention that having a nicely categorized excel sheet is not so much the same as actually monitoring how much you spend in each of those categories. So my long, hard look is kind of more of an "actually stick to the budget you made" type thing.
One of the revelations of this exercise (other than the fact that aggressively paying off car debt is addictive) is that I definitely didn't realize how much money I'd been spending on books. I LOVE reading and if it's a book I enjoy, then I love to own so that I can share it with others. Also seeing a lot of books lying around just makes me really happy.
Anyway, $25 per month seemed like a reasonable amount for books. I usually don't buy books if they're more than $6-7, so that was enough to buy a few new books each month. Oh my gosh. This has been so hard. Every book gets looked at and evaluated and re-looked at and then the food budget and the gas budget get looked at to see if there's any give there. I think books were definitely a blindside in my previous spending habits. This little kindle sale here and that $2 on paperbackswap.com there add up quickly. And the whole instantaneous thing. It's really hard to have to WAIT for a book when I just would really like to have it now and start reading it immediately.
So here are some of my strategies for getting the most out of my book budget.
1. Overlooked books on Kindle - I previously mentioned the kindle habit, so that my Kindle is well-stocked even when I'm on purchasing freeze shouldn't be a surprise. It's been interesting to go back and discover some gems that were overlooked. Over a year ago I downloaded a book called Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I'd started it a couple of times and maybe gotten a total of 10 pages into it. Almost out of new book funds for the month, I decided to try it again. I started reading, and kept reading, and kept reading, and crawled out of the chair and onto the bed and then back again because the suspense and anticipation - I just couldn't sit still. It was soooo good.
So what genre is this book? Well, ummm, I kept referring to it as my robot book, but really more accurately it's probably YA-sci-fi-re-imagined-fairy-tale with maybe a dash of steampunk. Not my typical cup of tea, but I think it might be my new 2nd fave YA series (Harry Potter #1, of course, but this might displace Hunger Games to #3). The series is called the Lunar Chronicles (did I mention there are also moon princesses?) and the first is Cinder and hopefully it's obvious which fairy tale it's based on.
2. Library - When I finished Cinder, I went straight to Amazon to download the second book in the series called Scarlet (Red Riding Hood), but it was $10. Nooo!!!! I didn't have that much left in the book budget, although I did totally go ahead and buy the third book in the series Cress (based on Rapunzel) since it was only $3. And in my fixation with instant kindle downloads, I'd allowed my library membership to lapse. The next day I trudged off to the library first thing to get that set up again. However, my branch didn't have the book in stock, so I had to request it via interlibrary loan which means I would have to wait entire DAYS to get it. Ugh. And then there was that whole "snow" debacle and the library was closed and I couldn't go get my book when it came in. Sadness.
While I was waiting for the book to be transferred to my library, I did jump on my library's digital collection site to see if Scarlet was available there by any chance (checked out) and to see if there was anything else that might be interesting. I scrolled through my Goodreads "to read" list to see if there is anything I might be able to instantly download. I've found that YA is a really good option with my country's digital collection, they tend to have more of those books available digitally then a lot of the adult literature. I've read Princess of the Midnight Ball and a Georgette Heyer novel (my first) called The Grand Sophy via digital books from the library. The first was Ok, and the Heyer book was pretty entertaining.
Sidenote: During the whole snow incident when I realized if I was going to potentially be stuck inside for a few days (wishful thinking maybe, but it could have happened), I asked myself what I thought would be a really hard question: If I could only have access to either books or chocolate (but not both) for the rest of my life which would it be? The answer of books came surprisingly quickly and adamantly. I mean I knew I loved books, but I didn't even have to think about the answer which is a big deal when it's up against chocolate.
3. The final source I've found of reading material is the stack(s) of books on my bedside table. Not including the four different Bibles present, there are 29 books that I've started reading or set aside to read on that table. That's a lot. Even for me. So I'm committing to finishing some of those. Not necessarily all of them, because while I used to be wholeheartedly committed to finishing a book eventually, now I don't care so much. If it's not good, then I don't care if I read the whole thing. However, if I stopped reading it even though it was actually good because something flashier came along, then those are great books to pick up again and rediscover. Just last night I finally finished Carry On, Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton which I feel like I need to go back and start again so that I'll remember how to keep trying to be kind and brave and strong.
A final note on book recommendations: my two most adamant recommendations recently have been The Martian (sooooo super good) and the Lunar Chronicles both of which are fairly sci fi which is not a genre I've explored much previously. I'm much more of a historical time period with some adventure and romance and maybe a hint of mystery type girl. But these have been really engrossing books. I will warn you so that you will not be deceived like I was - there are more than 3 books in The Lunar Chronicles series. Despite thorough research on Amazon (and even the author's own webpage for crying out loud), I really thought this was a three book serious which was great, I'm always glad to come across a series when it's already finished. However, there is a sneaky fourth book (and I don't even know if that's the last) lurking out there waiting for publication later this year. I have to say that it's the book I checked out from the library that made me aware of this fact since it was mentioned on the book flap. Without the physical book from the library informing me of a 4th book, I would have been majorly frustrated at the lack of resolution at the end of book 3. The 4th book is called Winter and I think it's going to be based on Snow White.
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