Are we addicted to buying books?

As a psychology student I have studied psychological addiction and although addiction can bring images of drug and alcohol abuse, it is important to remember that you can be addicted to just about anything... and something I have found crossing my mind more and more over the last few months is whether we are becoming a community addicted to buying books? Lets have a closer look at addiction and see whether the patterns can be found in some of our book buying habits (as noted from the 'booktube' community and other reading related blogs- no specific people or persons).

 

Firstly many people will be wondering what I mean by addiction? Definitions alter depending where you are from, whether you are looking at medical definitions, psychological definitions or general knowledge definition...

 

 

As you can see from the definition above, there are levels to addiction and some book buying habits can easily fit these; when comparing some book buying habits in the booktube community it is clear that they are enthusiastically devoted to buying books (rooms dedicated to books... buying multiples of the same book... not being able to stop buying books).

Now some members of our growing community buy books when they need to read them, reading the books they own and then buying more; can we classify these as addicts? In comparison to those who buy books when they have hundreds left to read, we cannot; they buy with perceptive 'necessity' and not for the sake of buying books. Those who buy books when they have many left to read can be classified as hoarding, collecting and becoming emotionally attached to objects;  buying books when they have little or no room, financial supplies, because 'its a good buy' or because its an author that you have loved before.

So my question is, are the book buying habits of those we idolise online damaging our ideas  on how many books we should own? This question first crossed my mind when I wanted to post my first book haul and felt really bad and stupid for only having three books to haul; comparing that to the 20+ that those in the booktube community haul on a regular basis made my haul feel un-necessary and pointless.

 

Above is a commonly accepted breakdown of how addiction is kept 'alive' within sufferers, known as the 'cycle of addiction'. Although it is difficult to determine where the cycle begins, 'fantasizing' is often an accepted started point; each stage can be seen across the many participant of  booktube and also the book blogging world.

 

1. Fantasizing: We compare our own book buying to others and wish we had the amount they did (unhealthy comparison).
2. Obsessing: We watch constantly, know what they are buying and how often, where they are buying and as much information as possible.
3. Substance abuse: We snap and begin buying more books that we would originally.
4. Loss of control: Find yourself buying books daily, browsing for constant deals and find this becomes an automatic element of your shopping life (mainly online but less often can be within bookstores).
5. Guilt: This usually happens when the books have arrived and you look back at how much money you have spent on them.
6. Cessation of use: The well-known book buying ban, people placing themselves on harsh controls of no book buying for either a period of time or until they reach a specific goal (usually to read a certain percentage of their tbr).
7. Passage of time: During the book buying ban, attempting to avoid books, usually done buy avoiding the internet or certain websites.
8. Internal frustration: This is often found on a forced book buying ban, where you add books to wishlists and wait for the book buying ban to end.
9. And we return to fanaticising but about the end of the book buying ban...

 So its clear from the stages of addiction that many book buying habits can be seen as addicting, however, we can argue that the industry wants us to be addicted to buying books (money... money... money) and so they release ways to combat the common reasons people put themselves on book buying bans... space. Generally guilt starts to appear when a person realises that they are surrounded by unread books, so a great way to combat this is to place them all inside a small portable device which takes up less space than a single book and can hold more books that the British Library. Ask yourself, do you feel the same when you see your kindle with 300+ books and when you look at your bookshelves and see 100 unread books? No not really do you.

 

From the comparison to the library, it is clear that book buying habits can easily be associated with the demise of the library; people would prefer to buy books online and get them delivered to their house or kindle than order from the library and have to return it after. We are a materialistic society that values possession over knowledge, and that fact is becoming depressing.

 

So, should we stop buying books? Should we all get rid of our kindle-like devices and only read out of the library? No I don't believe that we should, I believe that we should break the cycle of addiction found within the book buying community, that we should invest more into our libraries but at the same time, without buyers the book industry as a whole will collapse.

 

As many betting adverts advice...

 

When it stops being fun... stop!

Running shoes

No one suspected that the bees would leave, well that’s a lie really; the really smart people noticed that they were leaving, but they were the people everyone else ignored because it wasn’t cool to listen to them. I mean since when is a high school jock going to listen to a scientist locked in a chemistry lab surrounded by books, nope they would be out drinking, partying and generally ruining their lives with horrendous one-night stands, that’s exactly what I was like… ‘was’ being the operative word.

I was dumb, you have to admit it from time to time or you just get arrogant, and trust me when I say that an arrogant jock isn’t exactly a pleasant experience for anyone. My dad once told me that I had one of two choices, work hard in class and get into an ivy league college, or be exceptional at football and get a free pass… okay it wasn’t the best advice in the world but let’s face it, I’m crap at math. So football became my life, training, pep rallies and all the cool stuff that comes from being scouted. After each great performance on the field was the after party, after the after party, well that’s when I would have my head in a toilet and coach would scream something along the lines of “Your ruining your god damn life!” or “Get yourself together or I swear you’ll never kick another football!” Excellent motivation right there…

Okay, I admit that when the world started to die I didn’t notice; I mean it was all over the T.V. but since when did I have time to sit and watch something that wasn’t football? Apparently it started with the flowers, crops started to fail and generally nature was screwed; ironic really, vegans were always preaching about one thing or another, saying they were going to save the world… and they were the first to starve. Man, I have a screwed up mind sometimes.

Well you can imagine the uproar when supermarkets couldn’t get stock because… well the stock was dead. People were panic buying left right and centre; even the church… that reminds me… no maybe another time… right now I’m being chased… why can I not focus today?

I had to get out of the high street, I should know better than to gather here anyway; too many hunters, too dangerous and the others needed me. There were a few shops left and then I could take a sharp right and scale the alley to higher ground, they couldn’t scale like I could.

Their footsteps were a few paces behind me, stumbling left and right carelessly as they tried to keep up. The sound of bare feet hitting the floor wasn’t the nicest sound, the rough pavement ate at the feet worse than the hunters do.

That reminds me, I need new shoes; if the gang expect me to run for the last scraps of food they need to provide better gear. Oh maybe now is a good time to mention the problem? Your probably wondering what they hell is chasing me bare-foot through this ghost town. Yeah sounds about good right here, I’ll scale this, and you catch up with what happened to this god-forsaken world.

See people change when they are hungry, a friend becomes an enemy and a loved one becomes your next meal. Everyone was talking about it at school, we all knew that cannibals existed but there were like four across the whole of the United States, right? But somewhere in Texas a farmer killed his wife; apparently he went a bit crazy and ate her because the last of his cattle died. The teachers said he was a one off, but then more people started doing it; people were too weak to fight them off and soon they were hunting each other. Wonderful.

Well, then everyone started getting the idea, but the hunters were changing; they were like wild animals. One came into the school on the last day they let us in; he went from room to room tearing people to pieces. Running came in useful that day, I climbed out of the window as he came crashing through our classroom door; I managed to get four more people out of the room. I only looked at him once that day, the colour of his eyes were weird; like they had leaked into the white.

From the roof of Maccies I recognised all of the eyes staring up at me, swirls of green and blue blurring in with the white; their mouths frothing and snapping at me, wild dogs had a more pleasant appearance. None of them could climb, I had ran into these twats before; they’ve been hunters’ for a while now and each time they got a little slower, their eyes lost a little more white… they lost a little bit of human each day… and we get a little bit closer to being able to kill em.

Judging a book by the movie cover...

As you flick through the movie listings of the last few years, more and more book to movie adaptations are being created... of course these are bound to happen as some of the best movies ever created were adaptation!

 

But when I talk to the people in my life, comparing the movie to the book I am often met with stares of confusion and annoyance; often coupled with 'why would I read the book when I've already seen the movie?'... and this is beginning to annoy me... a lot!

 

Now its clear that it is easier for a person to sit and watch a one and a half hour movie compared to sitting for several (if not more) hours reading the intricate details of the novel, but there is only so much information they can fit into those precious minutes... whereas a book, the possibilities are endless. A scene that lasts an entire chapter in a novel may only get a two minute (or less) slot in the novel; how could they do that scene justice?

 

Okay, book to movie adaptations are often done after great success of a book; so clearly producers are listening to the demands of the public in the books they are reading and what they want to see in the movie. Buying a book is like voting for what you want to be made into a movie... and that's how a book like 'fifty shades' makes a quick (and may I say shoddily made) movie, whereas books that took longer to create the needed hype (such as Maze Runner) took much longer to grab the attention of the producers, which leads me to another problem....

 

Hypes, movie production follows them as well as readers; following trends in book sales and fandoms. But when the hype gets so great that the movie doesn't do the hype justice problems happen for both the film and the book, pre-readers complain about the movie which makes the non-readers think the movie is rubbish... which lead them to believe that the book is rubbish and they steer clear... nobody wins.

 

A great example of this is the 'Insurgent Movie' (Second Instalment of The Divergent Trilogy), due to the deviation from the original storyline the book-lovers hated it (majority thereof) which made other not want to go near either the book or the movie.

 

So I guess my problem is that they are not giving the books a chance any more, watching a movie before reading the book and literally judging the book by the movie cover.

Should we take time to read low star books?

Since starting this blog, one consistent element of how I review the books I have read is by using a star rating system; ranking books on a five point scale, with 5 stars representing the best possible books and one star representing books that don't hold my attention... but does this help or hinder the book market?

Now, of course, everyone is open to their own view of books on the market; and once you have these opinions you can express them how you like (legally of course), but is rating a book badly in your opinion stopping other people from reading them... even if they may in fact like them?

I am starting to think that rating books the way majority of reviewers do is beginning to make a cliché, where readers are only buying the books rated highly by their favourite reviewers without considering what they may find in the book that the reviewer did not. This all came about from a recent comment on my most recent review; Sofia (Bookish Wanderess9) said how the book 'sounded incredible' but that she  was 'sorry it didn't turn out to be as good'; making me think that giving the book three stars had somehow tainted its chances of being read. Even though many of the reasons I lowered the star rating was because of personal preferences in a book?

 

Of course, star ratings can be important; when your deciding which book to buy or what book to pick up next, referring to a star rating may in fact, make the decision an easier one. But, saying that; I would definitely recommend looking at several reviews, some by reviewers that you know and regularly visit, but also reviewers that may not have crossed your path before... you never know whether your tastes are different from the reviewers you always turn to... and you never knew that your tastes are different because you have always relied on their opinions.

 

Okay, I obviously still want readers to value the reviews I post but I also want to encourage people to read books to form their own opinions... even if I find a book slow or confusing, you may not.  Now we may think 'why waste our time on 1 star books?' Clearly someone would like it or it wouldn't make it into the bookstores or published for that matter... so please give it a chance.

REVIEW: Branded by Abi Ketner (minor spoilers)

Branded

(The Sinners Series 1)

Abi Ketner

Star rating: 3 stars

One word review: Predictable

Fifty years ago The Commander came into power and murdered all who opposed him. In his warped mind, the seven deadly sins were the downfall of society.

To punish the guilty, he created the Hole, a place where sinners are branded according to their sins. Sinners are forced to live a less than human existence in deplorable conditions, under the watchful eye of guards who are ready to kill anyone who steps out of line.

Now, LUST wraps around my neck like thick, blue fingers, threatening to choke the life out of me. I’ve been accused of a crime I didn’t commit, and the Hole is my new home.

Constant darkness.

Brutal and savage violence.

Excruciating pain.

Every day is a fight for survival.

But I won’t let them win. I will not die in the Hole.

I am more than my brand. I’m a fighter. My name is Lexi Hamilton, and this is my story.

So this book had so much potential, I mean come on... you have sins and branding... but not everything hit the target.

Okay, so when the book starts its really fast paced... I mean you have gun fights, arrests and some of the best character introductions of all time; the first 100 pages get your heart pumping... like really. But then something happens and the book looses its mogo, goes from being a fast paced page turner to being a bedtime read used to lull yourself into a sleep. Now I don't know whether this was from knowing how predictable some of the turns would be but nothing seemed to be catching.

First thing, the love scenario... more predictable than anything; I mean a girl gets arrested and branded as being a 'slut' forced to live in a hole with the rest of the condemned but then she falls in love with guard sent to watch her and they start a secret love affair that puts them both in mortal danger.

The we have the people in command... from the get go you can almost predict who it will be, they introduce the bad guy too early and its pretty clear from the nightmares and hints that this will be the guy, however they do manage to throw a little surprise in there which was nice.

Now the ending of this book is that similar to the ending of Divergant that its hard not to comment, the start of a revolution... someone special on the run with the person she wasn't meant to love but does anyway... cliché is an understatement.

There were several elements of the book that I really did like, the main one being the nature of the dog; a guard dog that enjoys playing in rubbish and getting tangled in all things sticky. I love how he's portrayed and how he is worked into the storyline. Beautiful, just a shame the same attention wasn't placed with the human characters, whom I found wanting in specific elements of 3d'ness'.

Now there are trigger warnings on this book as it contains some disturbing scenes, so if rape, child illness, terminal illness and abuse are triggers for you, I would suggest giving this book a bit of a wide berth as these are found throughout.  

Overall, the book was okay... mediocre... would have been brilliant if they had kept the pace of the first half of the book and made things less cliché but sometimes you need a little predictability in your life I suppose.

I'm back... again (booktubeathon)

Guys I've been away, and I'm not sure how many of you have noticed but hey-ho...

So what have you been doing I hear you cry... finishing my Degree in Psychology is the basic answer, but then there is a lot more to it than that! Writing essays, applying for different post grad courses (of which I got my first choice... yey!) and generally not reading for fun. *boo!*

However on youtube I discovered that this week was #BookTubeAThon and well I haven't missed a BookTubeAThon for a few years so I frantically picked up a book and began to read... oh how I have missed reading.

Well today marks the 5th day of BookTubeAThon and frankly I am appalled at how much I have complete... 2.5 books! However when you consider that I didn't start until Tuesday evening and yesterday was spent preparing my bedroom for a post-grad course (hello textbooks) I'm not surprised its so little... but here's what I have been reading so far this week:

• The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins (To read someone elses favourite book)
• The Novice by Taran Matharu (To read a book with blue on the cover and to read a book by an author who shares the first letter of their last name with you)

Books I have started:

• Magyk by Sage (To read your most recently acquired book)
• The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan (To read what you really want to read)
• Frozen by Mellissa De La Cruz (To read a book with blue on the cover)

Other books I plan on tackling (or at least trying to):

• Looking for Alaska by John Green (To read a book in one sitting)
• The Young Elites by Marie Lu (To read 7 books)

So my challenge for this BookTubeAThon is totally unrealistic and frankly I know that I am not going to complete it... but I'm going to try. I am over half way complete with 'Magyk' and both 'Frozen' and 'The Lost Hero' are both in the 'early stages'... lets say.

Happy BookTubeAThon and my the odds be ever in your favour!