Thursday Thoughts || Book Buying Bans

Why, hello there! Welcome to yet another week of Thursday Thoughts! If you don't know by now, this is an original, interactive, weekly feature here on my blog. Anyone with an opinion is invited to make their own post, link up and join the conversation! I've been a little MIA from the bookish world for the last week or so, but that wasn't going to stop me from posting Thursday Thoughts! This week's topic is once again an idea from the lovely Emily at Oh, Magic Hour. (Shameless Plug: We're getting close to running out of conversation topics. I'm sure I could try really hard and think of some more, but you all could come up with much better ideas than I ever could. If you'd like to contribute a topic for Thursday Thoughts, you can tweet me @okletsread or leave your idea in the comments!) Anyways, the topic of the week is Book Buying Bans. This is something that I notice a lot of people-- especially on BookTube-- talking about. It seems like almost everyone has considered putting themselves on a book buying ban, so hopefully this will be a topic we all have opinions on! So, let's get started.

As far as I can remember, I don't think I've ever officially went on a book buying ban. The reason for that isn't because I don't buy way too many books, because I totally do. But, I've only been really involved in the online bookish community for a few months now. I have obtained a LOT of books, sure. But, I never really had the chance to be like "Whoa.. We need to slow down." However, in the future, I can definitely see myself getting to this point. I've done this thing for the last month or two where I've been in and out of slumps and I've been going through little phases where I don't buy many books, if any. Now, as much as that sucks, it's actually a great thing because if I were constantly buying books and not constantly reading books.. well, then we would really have a problem.

I think that when people start a book buying ban/put themselves on one, the intentions are good. They decide it's time to cut back and that cutting out buying books for a while is the best way to do so. However, there are clearly flaws with the idea of book buying bans. If you put yourself on a ban and then say ".. but, I can buy new releases or pre-order books. Also, I need to buy the rest of this series.." things have a tendency to add up in the long run. Something I think I've mentioned before in a Thursday Thoughts post was the mentality of a little kid. You tell a little kid not to do something and what happens? They only want to do it even more. That's a similar phenomenon to book buying bans. As far as I'm concerned, stating that you won't be buying any books for a week/month/whatever is only going to trick your mind into finding loopholes and instead buying more books!

As I said, I've never personally been on a book buying ban, but I think the amount of books I own would have to be much higher than it is now for me to go on one. I think the indicator that it might be time to cut back would be the size of your TBR (to be read) pile. If you have more TBR books on your shelves than you do books that you've actually read.. it might be time to slow down. And, I think that's a great rule to live by. Because someone who owns 75 books is probably going to be in a different mindset than someone who owns 300 books. I think it's all very specific to you. Whatever you think the limit should be for you, is what it should be. And, just because someone else says you have too many books, doesn't mean they're right. You do you, girlfriend!

I hope you enjoyed this week's Thursday Thoughts! The link up will be below, but I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Have you ever been on a book buying ban? When do you personally think it's time to go on one? Let me know and we can start a conversation here or on Twitter. Thanks for stopping by! I'll see you next week when we discuss a topic I'm really excited to talk about; Book Hype.