This post is inspired by Laura @ Reading in Bed – the idea is to go through the last 30 books you’ve read and make a note about where you got them. Laura also calculated her stats for all the books she’s read in 2017, which I was intending to do… but it started to get a bit messy when I realized things like ‘I’ve had this lying around the house for years’ and ‘I don’t remember if I bought this or it technically belongs to my mother and I accidentally stole it’ were frequent enough that they needed their own categories. So we’re sticking to 30. Here we go:
- Philoctetes by Sophocles: available for free online
- The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor: received physical ARC from publisher
- The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater: bought from Thriftbooks
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: bought from Book Depository
- Bird Box by Josh Malerman: bought full price for Kindle
- Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie: bought from Barnes & Noble
- Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn: received from publisher via Netgalley
- The Book Collector by Alice Thompson: bought full price for Kindle
- Miss Kopp’s Midnight Confessions by Amy Stewart: received from publisher via Netgalley
- The End We Start From by Megan Hunter: received from publisher via Netgalley
- All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld: bought full price for Kindle
- The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith: bought from Thriftbooks
- Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land: received from publisher via Netgalley
- Things That Happened Before the Earthquake by Chiara Barzini: received from publisher via Netgalley
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: Book of the Month club
- All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan: bought at discounted price from local bookstore
- American War by Omar El Akkad: Book of the Month club
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward: received from publisher via Netgalley
- Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo: bought full price for Kindle
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess: my mom had a copy lying around
- The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne: Book of the Month club
- Holding by Graham Norton: received from publisher via Netgalley
- Lady Cop Makes Trouble by Amy Stewart: bought discounted for Kindle
- Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides: available for free online
- Yesterday by Felicia Yap: received from publisher via Netgalley
- Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia: lent to me by a friend
- King Lear by Shakespeare: bought at a local bookstore
- See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt: received from publisher via Netgalley
- Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen: won in a Goodreads giveaway
- Final Girls by Riley Sager: Book of the Month club
From this 30, my stats are as follows:
10 – direct from publisher/author
10 – physical copies purchased (4 from Book of the Month club; 3 bought full price; 3 bought at a discount)
5 – ebooks (4 bought at full price; 1 bought at a discount)
3 – available for free online/had a copy lying around/misc.
1 – lent to me by a friend
1 – won in a giveaway
From this 30 book sample, my books purchased:books not purchased ratio is exactly 15:15, so I don’t think that’s too bad!
Also, of the 5 (yikes) I’m currently reading, 2 were lent to me by friends (thanks Steph & Hadeer), one was a gift (thanks Chelsea), one is an ARC from the publisher, and one I grabbed from the free shelf at the library. I buy too many books, so this pleases me.
Finally, just a note about the lack of library books on this list. I do use the library… occasionally. And I think supporting libraries is very important!!! Unfortunately I live in the middle of nowhere Vermont where my library is basically one average sized room which mostly contains bestsellers, and it rarely caters to my weird niche interests in fiction. Occasionally I’m able to convince them to order a book I want or acquire it through an inter-library loan, but I guess I haven’t done that in the last couple of months. Anyway, libraries are great, I just wish mine were bigger!
If you want to do a post like this, pingback to me here so I can check it out!
So – where do your books come from? Do you mostly buy books or get ARCs from the publisher or use the library? I’m curious – let me know!
pace, amore, libri 
Being a student, I am often given books to read for free from my older friends and teachers. Though , I think my ratio of purchased books and non purchased books is around 2:3. I have sometimes even downloaded free copies from Internet. But, I don’t like reading e-books very much, my eyes are not that good actually. In my country India you can find Penguin more easily than a library, I have never been to a library (except the school library) even.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ah yeah that totally makes sense – I imagine there are a lot of countries where libraries aren’t very accessible, which is too bad! I definitely prefer reading physical books to ebooks, but the convenience of ebooks and being able to read on my phone when I don’t have anything else to do and I don’t have a book with me is great.
LikeLike
I definitely had a few books where I wasn’t 100% sure where I got it, so I took my best guess. I find each and every one of these posts fascinating! Too bad about your library. I make use of mine a LOT but it also has a lot of selection, and I can put books on hold online, and they get magically delivered to my nearest branch… it’s the best.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I find them fascinating too! It’s a great post idea, whoever started it. That’s so great that your library is such a good resource, I’m jealous! One day I’ll live somewhere more exciting than Vermont and I will find a whole new world of reading opportunities. I do use my local library occasionally, I just wish the selection were better.
LikeLike
Oooh, this looks so fun, I’m definitely going to do it! Most of mine will probably be library books. One of the best things about being in Boston is how huuuge the library selection is — and if there’s something I want that they don’t have, I can request it online and it usually comes in within a month or so.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I look forward to reading it, I find these posts so interesting for some reason!!! Omg that is amazing I definitely miss that element of living in a city.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is a cool idea! It’s interesting to see where you get your books from. Your list is pretty varied, which is good 🙂 Mine would be mainly Book depo I think
LikeLiked by 1 person
I find these posts so interesting to read!! That makes sense, I imagine BD is a popular resource for readers outside the US!
LikeLiked by 1 person
[…] out to Rachel at paceamorelibri for literally never failing me with her recommendations. I very quickly became invested in all of […]
LikeLike
I don’t know why it’s so satisfying to see where people get their books but I really enjoyed reading this list?? I need to utilize the book depository far more than I do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I KNOW SAME I find it so interesting??? You should definitely do one of these posts. For a while I tried not to use Book Depository because I didn’t want to support Amazon too much, but then I was like… whatever, I literally have a Kindle and we use Amazon/BD all the time at work so this is a really dumb thing to be super principled about.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think I’m going to….all my answers are going to be Amazon Prime because I’m Amazon trash and its cheaper than buying them full price, but they’re still new. If I was a better person I’d support actual BOOKSTORES and libraries.
LikeLiked by 1 person
tbh protesting a massive corporation like Amazon seems so futile that I fully understand just surrendering and buying everything from Prime. I’m actually surprised Amazon Prime didn’t come up on my list more often?? But if I had kept going back further it definitely would have. I find myself buying a lot from Barnes & Noble because the nearest one is like an hour from my house that going there is such a NOVELTY I can never resist buying things?? I’m ashamed that there are no library books on my list though omg….. Chelsea’s list would be like 100% library books she’d put us all to shame.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe one day when we’re fabulously wealthy we’ll be able to support our booksellers of choice by buying books at full price. Until then I’ll just keep buying the cheapest copies I can in the hopes that my house will just turn into its own library.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is an interesting idea for a post. Though I’m pretty sure all of mine would either be library or Amazon Prime, lmao! Is there a difference between buying on Book Depository versus straight from Amazon?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Not much of one! BD is free international shipping, but for those of us who live in the US, that factor’s irrelevant anyway. BD often has UK or other international editions, so I’ll occasionally use it for that… I don’t remember why I ordered W&P from BD instead of Az – I think it might have been cheaper by $1 or something like that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
[…] a fun meme, I love it! It was originally created by Laura @ Reading in Bed and I pulled it from Rachel @ Pace, Amore, Libri. You go through the last 30 books you’ve read and note where they came from. Let’s see […]
LikeLike
[…] A Love Letter to My Public Library. I came across this post by way of Rachel @ pace, amore, libri and thought that it was a really interesting way to look at my reads so far. The idea is to go […]
LikeLike
[…] Rachel wrote a very interesting post about where her books come from and she gave some great recommendations along the way (x) […]
LikeLike