Why I don't buy books

One of my hobbies is reading. I am reading in my free time, in the public transport when going to work, in bed before going to sleep. In the beginning of 2017 I started this night routine, when I read a book just before sleep for about 30 minutes. It helps to calm down and sleep better.
I read physical books as well as ebooks. But I don't buy books, I always borrow them from the library. These are the reasons why:


1. I don't reread books. The only book I read a couple of times is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Why to read the same book, even if it was good, when you can read new stories and discover more interesting books. For that reason I don't need to own books, because after reading them, they will only be a pretty interior decoration on the shelf.

2. Saving money. Lets be honest - books are expensive. For exemple, if I read about 3 books per month, one new book costs, lets say, 15-20 euro, so I would spend about 60 euro each month. I would spend that much money to read a book one time and just put it on the shelf. And it is not guaranteed that I will even like that book! Maybe it will end up a disapointment for that much money. Don't get me wrong, I am not a materialist, but I think that you can spend that money on better purpose. Libraries gives the opportunity to read books for free, so why not to use it.

3. Selection. The selection of books in the library is huge! You can find so much books. When going there, I usually don't have a list of books that I want to borrow. I just wonder around, browse through the new arrivals. In my library sometimes you can find new books that are on tops in the bookshop at the moment. It is a chance to read even new books without buying them.
Also, sometimes in libraries you can find those books, which you can't find in bookshops anymore. For exemple, there are more classics in libraries than in shops.

4. Clutter. Books take space. More new books will take even more space. I agree, that having a shelf full of books is great and looks nice. But big amount of books can make clutter. I personaly prefer more of minimalistic look and design, so I don't like to have room full of stuff. Of course the amount of books depends on how many books you buy and how much you read. The more you read, more cluttered you are with books.


That is why choose not to buy books. What are your opinion? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below, I will be happy to read them :)

100 books everyone should read, or not

Source: http://www.theminimalists.com/reading/

One of my hobbies is reading. So a couple of days ago I've been surfing the internet for some books recommendations and came across this BBC's list "100 books you must read before you die". At first I thought: "Great, I will try to read those, make it my goal". But after revising the list a couple of times, I've changed my mind.

Here is the list (I marked what I've read): 

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

20/100. Not bad, I think.

But I don't agree with this list. In my opinion not all of these books deserve to be in the list and it is missing some excellent, "must" books (for example Uncle Tom's Cabin). Also, I felt like the list was based around some authors. But maybe I'm wrong.

So, I decided not to read everything of the list, but I will look up to it and pick some books that are worth it.

Instead, I set a goal to read 24 books in 2015 and participate in 2015 Reading Challenge on Goodreads. I participated last year, but haven't complete it.

By the way, here is my account on Goodreads. Lets be friends there and chat about books :)

Source: http://weheartit.com/entry/group/1162680

Also, I'm considering to start the Reading Challenge 2015 by Popsugar. Check the it out here. I like it, because it's not a list of specific books, but a list of criteria and themes. 

What do you think? Do you participate in any reading challenges? Let me know in the comments or leave me a message on the blog or send it on goodreads :)

Have a fantastic weekend!