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I’m not sure if I heard of this concept first or if I came up with it on my own. I do know that I’m not the only reader who employs this kind of device. Fated Mates, an excellent Romance podcast, featured an episode about the vault in 2022. The basic idea is that some books live in the metaphorical vault awaiting a day that will eventually come when they will be desperately needed.
I remember the day my own vault was created. I had recently come back to reading for pleasure (another story for another time), and I was gobbling down books. Seriously, I read over 360 books that year and over 370 the year after. I was starving for books at the time. I had recently discovered Talia Hibbert and the joy and delight that are her novels, and at the same time I had downloaded the kindle app onto my phone and was enjoying the instant gratification and ease that afforded me. I purchased her entire backlist and went to town. And when I came up for air a few days later I remember this sad, almost empty feeling realizing that there were no more Talia Hibbert books in the world that I had yet to read. Now, I’m grateful that Talia is still writing and publishing excellent books, and I greedily devour them every time they relase something new. But that moment stuck with me. It reminded me that there is a limited supply of books coming from my favorite authors.1 Now, I hope to always be discovering new favorite authors. It’s what I hope for whenever I pick up a book by someone I’ve never read before. But there is something special in choosing to slip back into a favorite writer’s world and creating something new with them, like slipping into the arms of a favorite dance partner and discovering a new song.
So, the vault. There is some debate in the bookish community as to when to break that glass and bring a book out of the vault. The truth is the answer is really personal, and only you can decide when is the best time to pull out that coveted book. I’ve found that moments of actual disaster are usually not the right time for me. Usually the really big, difficult, heart wrenching times in life mean a re-read for me. In the downtime between life changing moments, something worn and comfortable is necessary. A vault book, while usually written by a favorite author, is new and sparkly and requires attention. Crisis, with all its attention suck, is not a time when I can dedicate my brain to something new.
When do I bring out these magical books? There are a few planned events that warrant a vault book. One is my birthday. Every year for my birthday I choose a few books that I expect to be great and read them over my birthday week. I used to do this for both audio and visual reading, but now this is just for books I read with my eyes. There’s an audiobook I re-listen to every year on my birthday, but that’s a story for another time.
The other big event I use vault books for is the reading trip I take every year with my best friend, M. We started this tradition last year, but have since sworn to keep it every year from now on. For this trip we each bring a huge stack of books and spend all of our time reading and eating and chatting. It’s glorious. Last year I pulled the Hathaways series by Lisa Kleypas out of the vault, and had a great time.
Besides these moments of celebration I do think mild moments of crisis call for a vault book. For example, I had a week where I had to stop most of my medications for a medical test. I am chronically ill and my meds keep me as functional as possible. Being without that support for a week was miserable, and all I could do was lay in bed and read. So, I grabbed a few books out of the vault to get me through it. Got an interview coming up? Grab a vault book and use it to calm nerves leading up to it. Or use it as a treat for surviving something scary or stressful. They are indulgent moments, like a crispy, cold soda on a summer day.
A vault book to me often means that if I need a moment to breathe, if I need a moment outside of myself and my own head or circumstances, then it’s there, waiting for me like a comfortable chair to rest in for a few hours. It’s not magic. It doesn’t save me. But it can make reality a little easier to deal with.
I think it is important to actually read the books in your vault eventually. It can be easy to slip into the thinking that no moment is the right moment, like our grandmothers tended to do with the “good” china. But these authors gave us something precious, meant to be enjoyed. So, finding that balance of feeling like you have something exciting waiting for you while still ensuring you actually do get to them is important. For that reason I try to cycle through books and add new books regularly.
What about you? Do you squirrel something away for a rainy day? Check out a few of the books currently living in my vault at the links below.
- If you bring up AI as a way of instantly creating new books by a favorite author I will be mean to you. Please don’t make me be mean to you. It makes my tummy hurt. ↩︎