
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:
- Jesus (Walter Wangerin)
- Antisemitism (Jaap Tanja)
- El pequeño libro de la superación personal 2. (Josef Ajram)
- Die Blüten Sammlerin (Petra Durst-Benning)j
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
- The Artists Way (Julia Cameron)
- Don Quijote de La Mancha (Miguel de Cervantes)
- Los asesinos del emperador (Santiago Posteguillo)
- Those Extraordinary Twins (Mark Twain)
- The Eleven Comedies. Vol. 1 and 2 (Aristophanes)
- History of Julius Caesar (Jacob Abbott)
- Selection from the Table Talk of Martin Luther (Martin Luther)
- Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand)
- The Haunted House A true ghost story. (Water Hubbell)
- Modern Mythology (Andrew Lang)
- The Mysterious Island (Jules Verne)
- Medieval Europe (H. W. C. Davis)
- The Last Man (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Charles Dickens)
- Tacitus: The Histories, Volume I and II (Caius Cornelius Tacitus)
- The Vampyre; a Tale. (John William Polidori)
- Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times (Edward Anwyl)
- Cranford (Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell)
- The Stolen White Elephant (Mark Twain)
- The New Jerusalem (G.K. Chesterton)
- An Introduction to Philosophy (George Stuart Fullerton)
- The Human Machine (Arnold Bennett)
- Allan Quatermain (Henry Rider Haggard)
- The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales (Mrs. Alfred Gatty)
- The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Allan Poe)
- Children of the Frost (Jack London)
- The Ghost Pirates (William Hope Hodgson)
- Introduction to the Old Testament (John Edgar McFadyen)
- A Tramp Abroad (Mark Twain)
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
- The Book of Household Management (Mrs. Isabella Mary Beeton)
- The Game (Jack London)
- Christmas with Grandma Elsie (Martha Finley)
- Crito (Plato)
- Secret Societies (David MacDill)
- The Babylonian Legends of Creation (Sir E.A. Wallis Budge)
- Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (Sir Walter Scott)
- Intentions (Oscar Wilde)
- The Book of Were-Wolves (Sabine Baring-Gould)
- Legends of the Gods. The Egyptian Texts (Sir E.A. Wallis Budge)
- The Divine Comedy (Dante)
- Heroes Or Greek Fairy Tales for my Children (Charles Kingsley)
- Nicholas Nickleby (Charles Dickens)
- The Wanderer´s Necklace (Henry Rider Haggard)
- The Woman's Bible (Elizabeth Cady Stanton)
- Popular Tales from the Norse (Sir George Webbe Dasent)
- Meaning of Truth (William James)
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
- The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry)
- The Rough Riders (Theodore Roosevelt)
- Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (John Bunyan)
- Cleopatra (Henry Rider Haggard)
- Concerning Christian Liberty (Martin Luther)
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (David Hume)
- The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island (Johann David Wyss)
- How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (Arnold Bennett)
- Politics: A Treatise on Government (Aristotle)
- Laws (Plato)
- The Sea Wolf (Jack London)
- Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp (N/A)
- Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
- The Man Who Would Be King (Rudyard Kipling)
- The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper)
- Life on the Mississippi (Mark Twain)
- The Critique of Practical Reason (Immanuel Kant)
- Tahn: A Novel (L. A. Kelly)
- The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux)
- White Fang (Jack London)
- A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare)
- Frankenstein (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
- The Einstein Theory of Relativity (H.A. Lorentz)
- Beauty and the Beast (Marie Le Prince de Beaumont)
- Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving)
- The Odyssey (Homer)
- The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights (Sir James Knowles)
- Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
- Grimm's Fairy Stories (Jacob Grimm)
- How to Speak and Write Correctly (Joseph Devlin)
- Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Dracula (Bram Stoker)
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
- Sons and Lovers (D. H. Lawrence)
- The Merry Wives of Windsor (William Shakespeare)
- Wives and Daughters (Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell)
- The Evil Guest (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu)
- Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks (William Elliot Griffis)
- Oedipus Trilogy (Sophocles)
- The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain)
- The Green Fairy Book (Andrew Lang)
- The Creative Process in the Individual (Thomas Troward)
- King Richard III (William Shakespeare)
- Diary of a Nobody (George Grossmith)
- Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights (E. Dixon)
- The Winter's Tale (William Shakespeare)
- The Pink Fairy Book (Andrew Lang)
- Companion to the Bible (E. P. (Elijah Porter) Barrows)
- On the Decay of the Art of Lying (Mark Twain)
- Letters of a Woman Homesteader (Elinore Pruitt Stewart)
- The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe)
- Welsh Fairy Tales (William Elliot Griffis)
- Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
- Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott)
- As You Like It (William Shakespeare)
- The Book of the Dead (Sir E. A.(Erner Alfred ) Wallis Budge)
- The Other Side of the Page (Terry Odell)
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
- The Static of the Spheres (Eric Kraft)
- The People of the Mist (Henry Rider Haggard)
- Art of Money Getting Or, Golden Rules for Making Money (P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum)
- Alcestis (Euripides)
- The Kellys and the O'Kellys (Anthony Trollope)
- Harry Heathcote of Gangoil (Anthony Trollope)
- The Duke's Children (Anthony Trollope)
- Dawn (Harriet A. Adams)
- An Eye for an Eye (Anthony Trollope)
- Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray)
- Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)
- Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes)
- Ethics (Aristotle)
- The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
- Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works (Edgar Allan Poe)
- Aesop's Fables; a new translation (Aesop)
- Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)
- Adventures of Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi)
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
- 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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