On Life With a Changing Book Budget

[image description: a stack of books with the spines hidden so only the stacks of pages are facing out.]

It’s funny how things come full circle. When I first started Off the Beaten Shelf in the summer of 2014, I’d recently been laid off and was freelancing full time. Back then I had no idea what I was doing, so I was broke. Like, barely paying my bills broke.

So, of course, I couldn’t afford to buy many books and the ones I did buy were almost always from used bookstores. Good thing I didn’t read as much then as I do now because I’d have been screwed.

A few months later when I got a job and started making decent money again, the first thing I did is buy books. If there was a book I wanted and I could afford it, I bought it. My book budget steadily expanded and I stopped keeping up with it. If I had to guess, I’d say I was buying between 4 and 12 books a month.

While I don’t regret the twists and turns my life has taken since 2014 and I know waaaaayyyyy more about how to conduct myself as a freelancer, it’s interesting to find myself back in a position of having to moderate my book budget. I’m not 2014 broke, but I can’t be spending $200 a month on books these days.

I thought having a way smaller book budget would be a major downside of being self-employed, but it turns out it’s not that bad. It’s forcing me to read all these books that have been sitting on my shelves for years, perpetually pushed to the bottom of the to be read pile in favor of newer, shinier books. I’ve had a large stack of books that were pulled into the stack as “books I want to read within the next 2 years.” But I’ve had that stack sitting there for 5 years at this point.

Not buying new books is also forcing me to address the procrastination I’ve been doing for my memoir research. I’ve got a whole stack of books on Palestinian history to read but I keep putting them off because I know it’ll be difficult and 2020 has been hard enough.

My smaller book budget is also making me consider the things I have a passing interest in versus a lasting interest in. Earlier this year I special ordered an expensive academic press book about The Chicken Ranch, the Texas brothel of “La Grange” and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas fame because I got briefly obsessed with it. I haven’t read the book yet but I’m sure hoping the interest will return since the book is now on my shelf.

Furthermore, all this is making me consider the kind of lasting library I want to have. What books do I know I’m probably going to only read once before culling them from my shelves and what books do I anticipate keeping forever and reading multiple times? I decided I wanted to invest in two aspects of my library in particular: Palestinian/Palestinian-American books and Book of the Month book club editions. The former because I like the idea of having an identity-based library and the latter because I’ve continually found in my research of old books that the BOTM editions of modern classics tend to increase in value, sometimes becoming more valuable collector’s editions than the original first editions.

I’ve been a Book of the Month member since 2017, so I’ve got a number of their books now and I don’t want every single book they put out, especially if I don’t genuinely have an interest in it otherwise, but it does mean that I’m more prone to keeping the BOTM editions of the books I really like. My favorite imprint, Riverhead Books, frequently has titles appear as BOTM editions and they’re often books I was planning on buying anyway. Fortunately, Mr. Off the Beaten Shelf bought me a yearly membership for my birthday, so I don’t have to count the books I order from them in my book budget.

What I thought would be a downside has actually been a lesson in being grateful for what you have. I don’t mean that in a despondent, “ugh, I guess I better be grateful for what I have” way but in a “I’m legit grateful” kind of way. Buy fewer books and enjoy the ones you have more. A win-win!