The March Tally

Mismanagement of my fantasy baseball team and a seventeen-month-old with an ear infection have kept my hands full of late, but I will get back into the swing of things as I have several observations and items to share about not buying books.

After three months I am surprised at how easy it has been to acclimate to what I thought would be a major shift in my spending and reading habits. Maybe it is the ease with which I can reserve books online, or that the library is so close to my work. Three months into this thing I have not had a major urge to buy a book.

I will be curious to see if that trend continues as the days get longer and, more importantly, hotter. Not being a native, I find Colorado summers rather unpleasant. Many people hole up and read during winter, perhaps I will reverse that trend and increase my reading – and perhaps my desire for books – in the summer.

More on that later, let’s take a look at the March tally:

I checked out 12 books this month. One of these books I acquired via Prospector. I am proud to report I actually finished a few of them, including Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear.

Of these 12 books, I determined that I would definitely have bought 7 of them. These books would have cost roughly $95.25.

When I plug these numbers into the Denver Public Library's "Library Value Calculator," for my 12 books (1 of which was an inter library loan):

My individual return on investment for March was $45.69. This means for every dollar in taxes I spend on the library, I received $45.69 value in return for the month.

In addition, the Library Value Calculator reports that for the month of March I received a monthly value of $190.00.

More soon!