It’s been a slow year for reading for me, slower than last year even. I’ve only read 4 books so far this year. Two of those were comedy related, and one of them was an audio book.

According to Goodreads, I read 12 books last year, 14 the year before, and 29 the year before that. So yeah, I’ve slowly been losing steam. I definitely won’t even make it to 10 this year.

This year I also purged quite a bit from my book shelves. I donated several boxes of books, and even gave up some to the recycling bin. I know that sounds horrible, and it’s definitely something I would have never dreamed of doing years before now. I still love books. There’s no mistake about that. I just don’t feel that physical connection or need to being surrounded by them anymore.

Our bookcase was overflowing and I got tired of it looking messy. So any unread books I knew I was never going to read, or finished books I knew I was never going to read again had to go.

I used to always be quick to buy a new book, even if I had no plans to read it right away. Not anymore. I’ve added more books to my Amazon wish list this year than ever before so that I can review them and decide to purchase them later when I’m ready to read them.

And the same goes for my Kindle. I’d let books pile up on the Kindle. I still have books on there that I’ve had for years and haven’t read yet. I’ve added those to the wish list too instead of buying them right away. So, yep, I’ve probably saved a ton of money this year from not buying books.

There’s no to-be-read list for me to check off either. I’m kind of enjoying just reading one book really slowly, and then I’ll decide what to read next when I get there. I start and stop several books at a time anyway because sometimes I’m just not into it so I’ll put it down and move on to something else. And I’m okay with that. I don’t want reading to feel like a chore.