I have mentioned this before on this here blargh, but I really don’t buy very many books for my own personal collection. I receive books as gifts.  I acquire galleys (from the office, friends, conferences, and reviewing). I have an Unread Library. I also work for a substantially sized library where I enjoy a reasonable amount of purchasing power – if I want to read a book, I can make it happen. It’s difficult for me to find a compelling reason to buy a book for my own, personal library.

This is all quite dandy. My apartment is so tiny that it would take a proportionally smaller amount of books to reach hoarding status. And by that I mean I have already reached hoarding status. I also like the feeling I get when I *don’t* buy things that I don’t absolutely need (underbuyer in the house). I’m totally fine with my book owning situation.

Except…

• I like not buying books, sure, but I still like *buying* them too. Especially the sublime art of the bookstore browse.

• I like spending my money on industries and businesses that I support.

• When my friends or authors I love publish books, I like supporting their quest to obtain Bestseller status by pre-ordering (or trying to convince my local indie bookstore to sell me a copy during the 1st week of publication)

So while I didn’t open the floodgates, I did allow myself the luxury of purchasing one brand new book each month in 2014, in hardback when available. Here is what what my little heart desired this year.

• January – Something Real by Heather Demetrios

• February – Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

• April – We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

• May – The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson

• July – Night Owl by M. Pierce

• September – Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

• September – The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

• October – Last Light by M. Pierce

After years of book buying austerity it was kind of a challenge to… ah… get the job done. The non-paying job of buying books that will live FOREVER in your house (or close enough to forever, anyway). You will also notice that I definitely did not buy books every month, probably because I forgot, or once I was actually at a bookstore I couldn’t find anything I wanted to drop cash on. I did an even worse job of *reading* any of the books I bought – I finished 2 out of 8. Regardless, this was a fun little mini-resolution, one I might do again in the future. In the future when I have more than 450 square feet of living space, that is.