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Interesting article. I have hundreds of books I haven't read completely through. That's my retirement project - read them all.
Posts: 172 | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:The bibliophile, not unlike a stealthy alcoholic, starts sneaking books into the house and stashing them away, sometimes wrapping them up as Christmas gifts with a card indicating they are from some other random member of the household.
Oof. I think I've reached this stage. I started hiding my Amazon.com boxes in shame so my husband wouldn't discover I'd ordered new books!
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I'm afraid someday they'll find me, crushed to death under a pile of unread books, or maybe trapped and unable to get out of my house because the books block the door. (Anybody ever hear of the Collier brothers?)
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I was nearly crushed just the other day, when I was digging for some Tolkien books that were behind a big pile of boxes, and the boxes fell over. Only I wasn't.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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You know, I read the Wikipedia article on the Collyer brothers and became frightened... I, too, collect all sorts of things, including machines that I think I'll be able to fix someday (in my kitchen is a washing machine that has been broken for, oh, three years!) Maybe it's time to purge. I hate throwing stuff out, though, not just because I might be throwing out something useful, but because I hate thinking I might contribute to the clogging landfill problem.
The thing about books is I like to keep them. I have friends who give them away once they've read them, but I hoard my books. The ones I've read I think I'll read again, or want to reference. It's a false notion, since I've only referred back to, or reread, some 5% of all the books I have. Still, I suppose it's a comfort thing. On the positive side, I'm getting a better feel for the kinds of books I might want to keep, and those which are one-time only reads.
And bless the public library! I can sort of trick my book fetish by thinking I have a store house of all these books, get all my impulse acquisitions out of the way, and focus on buying only the books that might be keepers.
[This message has been edited by annepin (edited December 12, 2007).]
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Every so often I clean up and rearrange, but I'm just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I do have a problem. I admit it. I love books. I used to have every book I'd ever read! I never went to the library growing up. But I did read paperback novels. They take less room to store. But some years ago I took the plunge. I boxed up boxes of novels I didn't think I'd ever want to read again (GARBAGE WORLD, about this asteroid and all the planets send their garbage there. Or, FOUR DAY WEEKEND, where the cars take over the country. Things like those. -- they ARE real published novels from the sixties!).
It's amazing how many I regret now. One I sold to Half-Price Books, then two days later went and bought it off the shelf!
Libraries are unreliable. They do get rid of books. How can I trust them to keep available the MAMUR ZAPT novels? They tossed their copy of MOGUL BUFFET. I KNOW because I bought it at the book sale. Yes, your own collection is the only one you can depend on when you really, really need to find that scene you want to look at again.
I still have boxes of old ANALOGs and GALAXYs. Regretfully, not my old AMAZINGS or IFs.
Sigh. I've only thrown in the garbage two books in my whole life. They were that bad. I didn't want to inflict them on anyone else.
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Pffft. I HAVE no unread books. I am manic when I have a new book and MUST read it. Nothing gets between me and an unread book.
Edit: I used to not hoard my books. (I have thrown a few away. You don't want even want to KNOW the fate of Covenant the Unbeliever. The blaze was warming but I did feel a bit like a nazi.) But mostly I'd give them away to friends I thought might enjoy them. Then I'd have to go out and buy them again, so now I hoard them.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited December 14, 2007).]
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Buying a book for me is a dangerous thing since I almost certainly won't sleep until it's read. Posts: 1588 | Registered: Jul 2007
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I can layer my progress. In that room with the falling-over boxes I mentioned are several layers. First on the shelves are my SF magazines, covering (with a few scattershot plunges into further back) the early seventies through the mid-nineties, all chronologically arranged. Next, in front of them, are my paperback SF books, in alphabetical order. In front of those on the floor are some non-fiction paperbacks, also alphabetized.
Over in one corner are my SF hardcovers, also arranged alphabetically. In front of them are unalphabetical stacks, spilling out onto the floor in front. In the middle, under the window, is a low shelf with a collection of old almanacs (nothing fancy, just what I've used and hung onto through the years.)
In front of all that (and the room's only window) are the aforementioned boxes. They're full of (1) SF paperbacks in no particular order, (2) assorted non-SF paperbacks, also in no particular order, (3) old magazines, mostly the, whatchamacallit, eight-by-twelve size (there might be some SF mags in with them), (4) some old mail that I have yet to go through and dispose of, and (5) old junk. There are a few other containers of this and that scattered about here and there.
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