Now that I have video game mania, books are piling up at an even faster rate than normal. Therefore it’s time for some “Compulsive Vowing”:
It’s gonna be five-out-one-in until I have read twelve physical books. I.e. I can only get two more physical books until I have read twelve; and the first of those two has to wait until I have read at least five and the second has to wait until I have read at least ten. Once I’ve read twelve books I’m released from the vow. I’m gonna try to make some sort of page in my Techo that I can fill in with stamps or something to track my progress towards the vow with those three milestones at five, ten, and twelve.
My FOMO around books (most of my ways to get books are time-limited, for example in the freeshop there’s only one of each of a handful of books and the first person who gets it gets it) is usually stronger than my ability to keep vows so I’m really going to have to put effort into keeping the vow.
I have no buffer at all for them right now and as soon as one is finished I usually have to scramble like mad to find a new one. And they don’t clutter the apartment since they are digital.
My apartment has dozens and dozens and dozens of books with bookmarks in them that I have started and not finished. I love starting new books because my dream of how awesome the book is gonna be is usually better than how the book is while reading it. So if I find a book at home that has like 600 pages read and only thirty pages left to read, then reading those last few pages is 100% legit and encouraged in counting towards the twelve books I’ve got to finish to end the vow. It’s not a “get literate” kind of vow, it’s an “unclutter the apartment” kind of vow.
I just said I love starting new books. The vow concerns getting new books. I have plenty of books at home where I haven’t read a single page and if I, in spite of my overwhelming amount of ongoing books, get in the mood to start reading one of these unread ones that’s okay. That doesn’t void the vow. It’s at the risk of being a little bit counterproductive towards getting to twelve, unless the book I just started is so awesome that I finish it pretty soon.
I can get new e-books, no limit at all there, as long as I don’t start reading them. Reading already started e-books is allowed (I wanna finish Queen Mab’s Palace and I have about half a dozen other ones going) but does not progress towards the goal. Starting reading any new e-books is strongly discouraged. I decided that that is going to count as one fourth of getting a new physical book. I.e. until I have finished reading five physical books, I can not start reading any new e-books, and if I do start one then, that is in lieu of getting one physical book but I am then allowed to start three more new ones. In other words, the two slots that open up during the vow (one after I’ve finished five books, and one after ten), can either be two physical books, eight e-books, or one physical and four e-book. I don’t have to use slots right away, they don’t expire, I can save them, but I can not use them in advance. So it’s okay if I use the first slot for two e-books, then once the second slot arrives I use it for a physical book, and then I still have two more e-books I’m allowed to start before the vow is over.
And, repeating myself: for physical books the prohibition is against acquiring them (while starting reading already acquired books is 100% unlimited), while for digital books the prohibiiton is against starting reading them (while acquiring them is 100% unlimited).
All in service of simultaneously decluttering my home and making it more digital so I don’t trip over stacks of books when cleaning, while in the short term rewarding paper time over screentime.
Finishing e-books don’t count towards the vow at all.
Most of the books will go into my storage library after I finish them and others will go away entirely (sold or gifted). But some books are bound to stay on the shelf here in my home because I like having them around so much as decoration, self-expression, and to be able to look things up in them. I am acknowledging that this is counter-productive to the decluttering spirit of the vow but deciding that that’s gonna have to be okay this time around. I won’t make any special rules for this but I’ll try to track it. Then if I ever do finish the vow I can evaluate how many books actually left this room and maybe make changes for future iterations of similar vows.
This is hard to explain so I’m gonna give two examples and extrapolate from that:
I needed to make rules around gifts because we have such a great freeshop for books here and I’m gonna have to just not even look at it until I’ve finished five books.
Ouch, I didn’t think of this! I had this essay all written and ready to publish until I realized that I hadn’t thought about comics. I read lots and lots and lots of comics both digital and paper.
Okay so off the top of my head I’m gonna have to come up with some rules for comics:
Digital comics don’t count at all. Starting new ones is fine. It’s going to have to be “it’s own thing” akin to choosing to watch TV or playing video games or playing guitar or something instead of working on the book goal. It’s not really because it does compete more directly with reading books than other hobbies do but this compromise is the only version of the vow I could actually live with.
Getting single issues is okay. Reluctantly. I have maybe 10% room left in my longboxes. My pull list is down to Monstress, Saga, and Knights of the Dinner Table.
Acquiring TPBs and OGNs do count and take up one slot each. They’d count as half a slot for how quickly I read them but two slots for how big they are (on average) so let’s just say that twice half is one and call it a day.
Finishing comics whether physical or digital doesn’t count at all towards finishing the vow. It’d be too easy to read twelve tankōbons in a day and call it done. So comics only count going in, not going out.
Borrowing books count just as acquiring them. They’re not free passes at all. My “to-read” stack already contains plenty of borrowed books.
I’m going to make two exceptions, both comics-related: This winter I read a lot of Terry and the Pirates and I’m planning to borrow the last three volumes so I can finish reading the run. Those three books specifically, as long as I only borrow them and not buy my own copies, do not interfere with the vow at all no matter how long I take to read them.
Second, I can borrow other comics too as long as I:
In other words, if I fail to read them within one week that’s okay, as long as I really tried, but then I only have three more weeks to actually read it.
In the book reader world, to DNF a book means to decide to not finish it. I’m way more prone to not actually cut ties with the book and just leave them in the pile. Twice now I’ve decided to stop reading the book and put it into storage, keeping the bookmark in juuust in case I later can muster the will to finish the book. So for DNF the rule is gonna be based on actually getting rid of the book. If I do, it counts. If I only put it in storage, it doesn’t count. This rule isn’t great because I don’t really like getting rid of unfinished books so hopefully I’m not gonna do it. So note to self: it’s better to do the “storage pseudo-DNF” than the actual real getting rid of the book DNF even though the latter counts toward the vom and the first doesn’t. I don’t really wanna finish the vow just by giving away a bunch of unfinished books, I’m just stating the rule this way as a way to prevent impossible states. (E.g. what if I lose all my books through accident? I could never read a new book again if it weren’t for this DNF clause.)
There’s no time limit on this. If I were to quit video games and working, in order to only read paper books, I could be done in a week (especially if I take advantage of the shortcut that finishing a few of the half-read books around here counts. Like, for Dune Messiah I’ve only got 65 pages left). I could also take it easy with the vow and stick to the games and writing and maybe this vow will linger for several years.
Either way or anything in between is completely fine. With ten books gone I will a least made a dent big enough for me to end the now and start piling them up again until it’s time for a new vow with similar or different rules.
Vow started: 2026-04-17 08:19:09+02:00