Mindful Practices of Book Buying
Part 2 in our series: "How to Read Voraciously and Build a Personal Library Without Breaking the Bank" (Paid Subscribers only)
Last month, in our series “How to Read Voraciously and Build a Personal Library Without Breaking the Bank,” I recommended a practice that could help save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars every year on book purchases. Today, I continue this series by offering two more practices that, in conjunction with last month’s practice, can further assist you with acquiring books that you really want to read for bargain prices.
The forces of acceleration thrive upon our mindlessness, our tendency to act out of impulse instead of careful deliberation. Part of the toll that these forces exact from us is literal dollars and cents in the form of buying things that we often don’t need to buy and paying too much for them.
These three practices, taken together, help us to slow down our book-buying habits, and to be significantly more intentional and thoughtful about the books we decide to purchase. In the current series of free posts that I am doing here, I wrote recently about the acceleration we experience amidst the forces of late modern capitalism and the violence that it wreaks upon our lives. The forces of acceleration thrive upon our mindlessness, our tendency to act out of impulse instead of careful deliberation. Part of the toll that these forces exact from us is literal dollars and cents in the form of buying things that we often don’t need to buy and paying too much for them. Practices, like the ones I offer in this present series, help us think through and be mindful of titles that we really would like to own and to cultivate the patience that will allow us to purchase them at deeply discounted prices. These practices therefore are an act of resistance against the accelerating forces of capitalism, and a small, but crucial step toward a more humane world.
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