Saturday, February 21, 2015

Bookish Rants and Rambles: Do You Ever Stress About Books?

Bookish Rants and Rambles is basically where I either rant or ramble about something dealing with books.

This might just be a me problem, but I have been really stressing over books lately. I stress easily in general. I don't quite know why. I just feel like I have so many things to do (school, work, do homework, write books, write reviews, read books, check email, be somewhat social, etc.). Some of these may not seem time-consumingg, but they are and I feel the need to DO ALL THE THINGS! But I can't do ALL THE THINGS because time is very limited, even though I feel like I have to do ALL OF THE THINGS!!!

What does this have to do with books? Well, my friends, this is my life:

I have a HORRIBLE addiction to buying books! I know every booknerd has this problem, but it's becoming worse and worse. I love cheap books, (who wouldn't?) so I am constantly going to used bookstores, used booksales, and finding deals online. The problem? While I'm not spending much money, I buy a ton of books at one time. I go to a used booksale at least once every month and I always find 10,15, or MORE books! Oftentimes they're books that weren't even on my TBR list in the first place! 

Already this year, I have...
  • Checked 31 books out from the library
  • Bought 15 books from used booksales
  • Bought 32 books from used bookstores
  • 22 books bought via internet (Book Outlet, Amazon, B&N, etc.)
  • 14 review copies
This is actually very scary considering that it's only the second month of the year. 


This blog is titled The Psychotic Nerd for a reason. I am crazy. If you ever seen a Stacking the Shelves post from me, you would know that I read more than most people. Again, common for a nerd, but I try to read a book a day. I get a lot of stress from that. If I don't read a book a day, I feel like I just missed the chance to read some book from my TBR list sometime in the future. It's crazy, I know, and so much of my stress comes from this. I HAVE to read a book a day and also do other things like, oh, homework, write reviews (made worse by my New Year's Resolution to REVIEW EVERY BOOK I READ!), talk to friends, go to work & school, check email (which I get over 100 each day thanks to Goodreads and numerous blog follows), and other various things I have to do within a day.

But lately my book stress has been made worse because I feel like the books I NEED to read are piling up on top of my head, forcing me to collapse. Every time I look at my bookshelf of unread books, my stress overwhelms me. I have 119 books I own but haven't read. I also have 12 books currently checked out from the library and 8 books for review.

So, I am trying to prevent myself from checking out any books and requesting books for review. Those numbers are not extremely high right now, but both library books and review books have set times to read them. I do not need that. I need to focus on those 119 books I own and stay away from libraries & review sites. Also, NO MORE BUYING BOOKS! For now. I really need to make a dent in that stressful pile.


Anyway, do you ever stress about books?

4 comments :

  1. I stress because I know that I have to review some books but at the same time, I want to read the books that I want to read. Is that the kind of problem you have as well? Where sometimes you can't find the perfect book to read and then you just try a bunch of things but it never satisfies and then you get into a reading slump.. Like I'm in. It's ok, all bloggers understand this lol xD! Fantastic post :D

    Alex @ The Book's Buzz

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  2. Yes, I do! More about ARCs lately, but when I used to buy free books from Amazon there came a point where I had 200+, and I felt so stressed about reading ALL of those. I ended up deleting a few, reading a lot, and now I only have 8 and have sworn NEVER to go that high again. It was not worth the stress I felt. And most of those books weren't even above three stars when I ended up reading them.

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  3. One book a day is CRAZY. I'm a slow reader anyway, so I'm more likely to read 2-3 books a week. I completely understand what you mean about being stressed, though. Lately I'm trying to get rid of stress -- I'm hardly requesting review books and am trying not to have a set list of things I "need" to read right away. Reading and blogging are hobbies and shouldn't be stressful, but I think we all end up putting too much pressure on ourselves at times.

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  4. Yeah I have 2 bookshelves for my TBR right now and it's KILLING ME >.< AND ALL THE REVIEW BOOKS TOOOOO GAHHHHHHHH

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