Book sale euphoria

I was writing this piece when the book sale party is still all over the place. So in the past few months—during this pandemic thing—almost all of the book stores selling their stuff online. What makes my poor wallet worse is that they are racing to make the cheapest price one to another, and like, never stops throw discounts to us, book hoarders (no offence, guys, I feel it too).

And to this day, I was waiting for 5 book packages to come. Yeah, I have made 5 books purchases this month! This might be the highest amount I’ve spent on books.

From those 5 purchases, only 2 of them that belongs to me. So three purchases which contain total of eight books are aimed for my kids: one encyclopedia about the shark, three books that arranged by The Natural History Museum, London, and the latest four are about Charlotte Mason education and autism theme which all written in Bahasa Indonesia.

To be honest, I feel relieved when I bought those books. I’ve been wanted to buy books on my own, whatever books I’ve been craving for. I have worked my ass off with some freelance projects after fired from my former job due to employees cut back. I can tell you that was quite unpleasant Ramadhan I’ve ever experienced.

I barely enjoyed the fasting days back then. I barely focus to pray let alone preparing for iftar or shaum. All I did was working, working, working. But in the end, all was paid off. I could buy my kids some good books. :)

During the craziness to sweep all the cheap books from my favorite book stores, I did some consideration before choose which is which and make a check out later. I have quite the amount of money to buy some books at that time is a fact. But it doesn’t mean I have to be a book hoarder.  I think it’s wise enough to put some budget so I’ll never overspent in the name of (((knowledge))) or (((curiosity))).

I often feel that I bought those books in the name of the urge of knowledge while sometimes I understand it’s just about my impulsiveness. So this is what I did as a consideration during book shopping sale euphoria:

Check upon what books my kids already have (so I don’t have to make any repetitions), what books they love to read and what books they didn’t have yet. Stick with it.

No board books. No matter how cheap it is.

Because my toddler didn’t need those. He also didn’t need any “my first alphabet” book or any “my first” in English because his first language isn’t English. So, no.

Think again about what suit you best.

I am talking about parenting books or those (insert country’s name) way of life self-help books or anything that quite tempting to buy but... I didn’t need it in the first place. Like, what should I have to buy a book about “Wakanda’s way of life” while me myself aren’t lived there?

Stick with your wish lists.

But first, stick with what you need.

Stick with what you really want to read.

Stick with your budget.

Just. Stick. With. It.

Last one, that mostly works with me: pretend that you are truly broke AF.

I guess I kind of succeed because I “only” bought less than 10 on each book stores. Really, when you want to buy all of them so bad and ended up with only a few of them, you’ll feel relieved that you saved some of the money for something else.

Not having ALL of the books we want doesn’t mean hell. Or apocalypse. Or doomed. Or whatever. I usually unfollow or muted or just casually stop peeking to my favorite book stores account to prevented any impulsive buying—which rarely happened to me.

Having a lot of books is good which is a sign that we do love to read. But buying “too much” books is never a good thing. It’s just a glorification of bibliophile that leads to tsundoku: book hoarding.

And what if we already owned too many books at home while we’re still craving for more new books to come?

Decrease them by giving them away or sell some. Before you buy more.

There are so many preloved books accounts on Instagram which has a lot of followers that could help us sell our preloved books. I haven’t tried them yet so you have to make sure first that they are qualified as a seller. Or maybe we can try to sell on our own.

So, I am still waiting for my new books to come. Waiting to open the package and show them to the kids and read along with them.

What’s your story with your latest book purchase?