About 6 months before the purge I stopped buying books. The caveat here is that I never stopped buying the core authors that I loved. But, after a few years on the hunt for new and exciting authors I had only found a couple that meant a lot to me (i.e. Craig Johnson and Olen Steinhauer). Dozens of authors were picked up and discarded. If I was lucky, the book was terrible, and could be forgotten quickly. If I was unlucky the book was frustratingly serviceable that somehow obliged me to string an author along until I was 3-4 books deep with no hope of reading and no compelling reason to try.
A few were causalities, notably William Kent Kruger an author I like a great deal. But circa 2010 I had only read two of his books and was down about eight. It was not gonna happen. It was disheartening that reading became an obligation that frequently was not enjoyable. First world problems yes, but they were my problems, and it was depressing
So the realization that I had to stop acquiring books was staring me in the face. And thankfully I stopped. Still left to me were the 10-12 authors, many who produce a book yearly, that I could buy and enjoy. Only recently can I say that of the core authors I read and collect I am fully up to date. Save for James Lee Burke who I stopped reading and stopping collecting for a 3 years span and have been regretting ever since.
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