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New books ban

Foto del escritor: Yulia DibrovskaYulia Dibrovska

Actualizado: 17 ago 2023



December is here. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And somehow, it's a special time to say good bye to the old and embrace the new. So, I´ve decided to stop buying books. For some time.


For many years I used my parents´ house as a base for all those already read books, but when I filled all the bookshelves in several rows, I thought it was high time for me to check all of them and keep only those I would need or want to reread.


I can't keep buying books as my list of unread is always growing bigger and bigger. I think it will be a positive change for the economy and my own feelings to read what I already have. With such a large list I already think that I´m too slow, that I cannot get anywhere and that human life is far too short :) Besides, I need to concentrate on my writing projects as well. So no free books like Amazon Prime allowed either.


Here's my list of all the unread books I have in my possession:


  1. - Jesus (Walter Wangerin)

  2. - Antisemitism (Jaap Tanja)

  3. - El pequeño libro de la superación personal 2. (Josef Ajram)

  4. - Die Blüten Sammlerin (Petra Durst-Benning)j

  5. - Dune (Frank Herbert)

  6. - The Artists Way (Julia Cameron)

  7. - Don Quijote de La Mancha (Miguel de Cervantes)

  8. - Los asesinos del emperador (Santiago Posteguillo)

  9. - Those Extraordinary Twins (Mark Twain)

  10. - The Eleven Comedies. Vol. 1 and 2 (Aristophanes)

  11. - History of Julius Caesar (Jacob Abbott)

  12. - Selection from the Table Talk of Martin Luther (Martin Luther)

  13. - Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand)

  14. - The Haunted House A true ghost story. (Water Hubbell)

  15. - Modern Mythology (Andrew Lang)

  16. - The Mysterious Island (Jules Verne)

  17. - Medieval Europe (H. W. C. Davis)

  18. - The Last Man (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

  19. - The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Charles Dickens)

  20. - Tacitus: The Histories, Volume I and II (Caius Cornelius Tacitus)

  21. - The Vampyre; a Tale. (John William Polidori)

  22. - Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times (Edward Anwyl)

  23. - Cranford (Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell)

  24. - The Stolen White Elephant (Mark Twain)

  25. - The New Jerusalem (G.K. Chesterton)

  26. - An Introduction to Philosophy (George Stuart Fullerton)

  27. - The Human Machine (Arnold Bennett)

  28. - Allan Quatermain (Henry Rider Haggard)

  29. - The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales (Mrs. Alfred Gatty)

  30. - The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Allan Poe)

  31. - Children of the Frost (Jack London)

  32. - The Ghost Pirates (William Hope Hodgson)

  33. - Introduction to the Old Testament (John Edgar McFadyen)

  34. - A Tramp Abroad (Mark Twain)

  35. - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

  36. - The Book of Household Management (Mrs. Isabella Mary Beeton)

  37. - The Game (Jack London)

  38. - Christmas with Grandma Elsie (Martha Finley)

  39. - Crito (Plato)

  40. - Secret Societies (David MacDill)

  41. - The Babylonian Legends of Creation (Sir E.A. Wallis Budge)

  42. - Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (Sir Walter Scott)

  43. - Intentions (Oscar Wilde)

  44. - The Book of Were-Wolves (Sabine Baring-Gould)

  45. - Legends of the Gods. The Egyptian Texts (Sir E.A. Wallis Budge)

  46. - The Divine Comedy (Dante)

  47. - Heroes Or Greek Fairy Tales for my Children (Charles Kingsley)

  48. - Nicholas Nickleby (Charles Dickens)

  49. - The Wanderer´s Necklace (Henry Rider Haggard)

  50. - The Woman's Bible (Elizabeth Cady Stanton)

  51. - Popular Tales from the Norse (Sir George Webbe Dasent)

  52. - Meaning of Truth (William James)

  53. - The Man Who Knew Too Much (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

  54. - The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry)

  55. - The Rough Riders (Theodore Roosevelt)

  56. - Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson)

  57. - Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (John Bunyan)

  58. - Cleopatra (Henry Rider Haggard)

  59. - Concerning Christian Liberty (Martin Luther)

  60. - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (David Hume)

  61. - The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island (Johann David Wyss)

  62. - How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (Arnold Bennett)

  63. - Politics: A Treatise on Government (Aristotle)

  64. - Laws (Plato)

  65. - The Sea Wolf (Jack London)

  66. - Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp (N/A)

  67. - Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

  68. - The Man Who Would Be King (Rudyard Kipling)

  69. - The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper)

  70. - Life on the Mississippi (Mark Twain)

  71. - The Critique of Practical Reason (Immanuel Kant)

  72. - Tahn: A Novel (L. A. Kelly)

  73. - The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux)

  74. - White Fang (Jack London)

  75. - A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare)

  76. - Frankenstein (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

  77. - The Einstein Theory of Relativity (H.A. Lorentz)

  78. - Beauty and the Beast (Marie Le Prince de Beaumont)

  79. - Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)

  80. - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving)

  81. - The Odyssey (Homer)

  82. - The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights (Sir James Knowles)

  83. - Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

  84. - Grimm's Fairy Stories (Jacob Grimm)

  85. - How to Speak and Write Correctly (Joseph Devlin)

  86. - Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)

  87. - Dracula (Bram Stoker)

  88. - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

  89. - Sons and Lovers (D. H. Lawrence)

  90. - The Merry Wives of Windsor (William Shakespeare)

  91. - Wives and Daughters (Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell)

  92. - The Evil Guest (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu)

  93. - Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks (William Elliot Griffis)

  94. - Oedipus Trilogy (Sophocles)

  95. - The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain)

  96. - The Green Fairy Book (Andrew Lang)

  97. - The Creative Process in the Individual (Thomas Troward)

  98. - King Richard III (William Shakespeare)

  99. - Diary of a Nobody (George Grossmith)

  100. - Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights (E. Dixon)

  101. - The Winter's Tale (William Shakespeare)

  102. - The Pink Fairy Book (Andrew Lang)

  103. - Companion to the Bible (E. P. (Elijah Porter) Barrows)

  104. - On the Decay of the Art of Lying (Mark Twain)

  105. - Letters of a Woman Homesteader (Elinore Pruitt Stewart)

  106. - The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe)

  107. - Welsh Fairy Tales (William Elliot Griffis)

  108. - Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

  109. - Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott)

  110. - As You Like It (William Shakespeare)

  111. - The Book of the Dead (Sir E. A.(Erner Alfred ) Wallis Budge)

  112. - The Other Side of the Page (Terry Odell)

  113. - Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)

  114. - The Static of the Spheres (Eric Kraft)

  115. - The People of the Mist (Henry Rider Haggard)

  116. - Art of Money Getting Or, Golden Rules for Making Money (P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum)

  117. - Alcestis (Euripides)

  118. - The Kellys and the O'Kellys (Anthony Trollope)

  119. - Harry Heathcote of Gangoil (Anthony Trollope)

  120. - The Duke's Children (Anthony Trollope)

  121. - Dawn (Harriet A. Adams)

  122. - An Eye for an Eye (Anthony Trollope)

  123. - Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray)

  124. - Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)

  125. - Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes)

  126. - Ethics (Aristotle)

  127. - The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

  128. - Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works (Edgar Allan Poe)

  129. - Aesop's Fables; a new translation (Aesop)

  130. - Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)

  131. - Adventures of Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi)

  132. - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)

  133. - Rework (David Heinemeier Hansson y Jason Fried)

A lot of classics, aren't there? :) Give me your opinion on what you´ve already run through.


If we take into account that I read on average 20 books per year, here I have books for the next 7 years. But all the rules have some exceptions, so here are mine:


- I can buy books in Ukrainian since I need to keep reading in my mother tongue to preserve its richness as I cannot practice all I would like. But only one every six months. No limits on topics.

- Books in Spanish, if I don't have any to read except in English. So I can keep reading in several languages at the same time.

- I can buy books about children and maternity if I need them, any language, preferable e-books, only one every six months. As a first-time mom, I need to study some topics more deeply than what you can find online.

- I can buy any textbooks, any language and topic for any course I start (who knows?).

- And of course, children books or gifts. No limits ever.


Let's make this experiment during 2021 and see if there's any valuable result after all. Are you in?


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