My Super Huge Book Haul

Buying books is a new addiction for me; as a kid I always borrowed books off friends or from libraries so never got into the habit and nowadays, as I work in publishing, one of the perks is that I get a lot of free books (yay!).

But there are a lot of books in the world, and I want to read all of them… or most of them… OK so as many as I can fit into my lifetime. This means that I need to start buying books, and fast.

I started off well and only bought a few books a month, and by few I mean one or two, if that. But then people started recommending books and I started watching BookTube, which added about 40 books to my TBR; and I got a little excited…

…OK so I got a lot excited. The books I bought/borrowed in September make 4 pretty tall piles.  Oops.

The books I bought/obtained/won in September are:

1. Geek Girl – Holly Smale
2. Stuart – Alexander Masters
3. Dissolution – C.J. Sansom
4. The Bell Jar – Silvia Plath
5. Ghostwritten – David Mitchell
6. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
7. The Graduate – Charles Webb
8. The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern
9. Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut
10. The English – Matt Rudd
11. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
12. Communion Town – Sam Thompson
13. Apache – Tanya Landman
14. The Plague – Albert Camus
15. The Book Thief – Markus Zsak
16. The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climed out of the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson
17. Divergent – Veronica Roth
18. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – Rachel Joyce
19. The Book of Murder – Guillermo Martinez
20. May We Be Forgiven – A.M. Homes

Since, I have been banned from buying books, which I think is fair. The worst thing is that I’m in a major reading slump and have only read two books in September, and one book so far this month. I can literally feel the piles books staring at me longingly whispering ‘read me… read me!’.

To make matters worse, I’ve also borrowed a ridiculous number of books from my best friend, who has upped and left me to work as a journalist in Scotland (lucky for some!). In full knowledge that I have bought way too many books, she’s lent me enough books to last me a year… these are also glaring at me and begging me to read them. Adding this to the list, we have:

1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
2. 1984 – George Orwell
3. The White Queen – Philippa Gregory
4. Lad Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
5. The Daylight Gate – Jeanette Winerson
6. Quiet – Susan Cain
7. The Psychopath Test – Jon Ronson
8. The Men who Stare at Goats – Jon Ronson
9. Muckraker – W. Sydney Robinson
10. The Painted Lady – Maeve Haran
11. Moon over Soho – Ben Aaronovitch
12. Whispers Underground – Ben Aaronovitch
13. The Winter Palace – Eva Stachniak
14. Leviathan or, The Whale – Philip Hoare
15. Women who Run with the Wolves – Clarissa Pinkola Estés
16. Where’d You Go, Bernadette – Maria Semple
17. The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England – Ian Mortimer

Making a total of 37 books… 37 BOOKS! I have bought/borrowed more books in one month than I have read so far this year; even I am seeing a problem here. I know I should stop, and I try, I really do – it just doesn’t work so well. So, to stop myself from getting more overloaded with books than I already am; I’ve made three rules:

• Read faster
• Buy less
• Buy another bookshelf

However much I hate to accept the second rule, I think it’s necessary both for my purse and my conscience. I don’t think I can take many more books whispering at me to read them. I only hope my October book haul is drastically smaller.

If you know and love any of the books mentioned above, comment and I’ll push them up to the top of my TBR.