I’m a packrat about most of my stuff, but especially with books. I never know when I might need something again! When my wife and I bought our house, we discovered that we each had a great many boxes of books, both read and unread, and not a whole lot of shelf space. I was inspired to build a bookcase in our foyer. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in, and sure, it occurred to me that we should put all the impressive and respectable volumes there. As it turned out, we simply had too many boxes to sort through. I filled up the bookshelves with less than half the books we had in boxes, and realized I’d have to find wallspace to make more shelves before we could hope to sort properly.
Here’s what it looked like the day after I finished building it.
It’s obvious that I just shoved books in at random, sorting only by size (taller ones near the bottom). For heaven’s sake, if you zoom in the middle of the picture, you’ll see the novelization of Revenge of the Sith! In hardcover! Why in the world woud I want to show that off?
So anyway, the situation hasn’t improved too much yet. I built those shelves four years ago, and I still need to build more. But in the summer of 2012, this very community turned me on to the Little Free Library movement. Right away I went ahead and built one in my front yard.
So I now have a handy way to unload books that I no longer need. Of course, I have to keep the LFL’s stock respectable. One of the first “outside donations” to my LFL was Paris Hilton’s Autobiography, of all things, so initially I despaired of my LFL becoming a self-sustaining and reputable establishment. But it’s been doing great so far. And neighbors and passing strangers alike have told me countless times how much they love it, so it turned out to be a good project after all.
I had to give most of my books (and DVDs, and CDs) away to charidee when I moved across the pond permanent like. Just couldn’t afford to ship them on my own dollar (when it was the company dollar it was a different matter).
Still got a stack of them at the parentals’ and they’re building back up again over here, although I’m trying to be more selective in what I buy and sticking to electronic and library (and electronic library) books as much as possible as we only have a small townhouse for the 2 1/2 of us (the 1/2 has the biggest book collection, to be honest, he’s building up a big Mr Men collection courtesy of his grandparents).
My bookshelf has been pared way down after multiple moves. after the last one, a bunch of stuff got the axe since I knew stuff like my complete Sherlock Holmes would, from that point onward, exist online forever. So, some reference volumes, including my first “grown folks” dictionary, a grip of zines (likely the rarest stuff in my collection at this point) and maybe 3 feet in length of esoteric stuff that’s either sentimental (Wimsatt’s B#mb the Suburbs first national-release); art (first ed Friedman’s Fuck You Heroes, both editions of Subway Art, catalog to the Sensation exhibit [Saatchi collection]); frequent re-reads, even if readily available online (Autobio of Malcolm X, Please Kill Me, both copies are sentimental to me now anyway); uncommon, esoteric interest (Ulf Poschardt’s exhaustively researched DJ Culture); and a few randos that I’ve accumulated since moving in. But compared to the entire shelf I used to schlep around, it’s basically down to nothing now. Of the reading I’ve done over the last decade, it’s been almost exclusively library books. Much, much better.
Growing up schlepping my librarian mother’s giant collection eight or nine times instilled the wisdom of “don’t let your possessions possess you” pretty quick. I’m a bit hard-headed when it comes to my records, though, but they all used to actually get played all the time when I was a working DJ.
@Ignatius, that Elder Edda sounds cool af. It’s an English translation or the ancient Norsk or what?
Yep. That picture of my bookcase predates my kids having much in the way of books. Now, four of the six bottom shelves are stuffed with their books, and they each have 4’x3’ bookcases in their bedrooms, literally overflowing. Owning lots of books is a first-world luxury I can’t bring myself to give up.
You forgot to mention Bukowski, Kerouac, and Burroughs.
My lending policy is pragmatic: would I be OK with thinking of this lend as a gift? That way, if it comes back, it’s more like a bonus. I’m gonna have to buy another copy of Borges’ Collected Non-Fiction if I ever want to read it again. but I can’t be too mad, it went to a good home, and she’ll always remember me when she reads it : )
Wow. I’ve given the most likes ever in one post here. Because, books. We heart books. I remember when my mom found out I had my first girlfriend at 14 and was trying to figure out how we met: “Did she have books in her arms when you saw her?”
Excellent philosophy. I’ve bought more copies than I can remember of several frequently-lent books (The River Why and The Phantom Tollbooth being two examples).
For some reason I am compelled to mention that I am currently on my seventh copy of Deep Purple’s Perfect Strangers album. Out of all the media I’ve ever owned, that is the one I’ve replaced the most for myself (rather than as a result of gifting/lending), and the only one I can remember exactly how many times.
Second is probably Star Wars. From my first bootleg Beta copy, to a legit VHS copy, to the THX remaster (also on VHS), to the 2004 DVD release, to the DVD release containing the “theatrical” laserdisc transfers, to the “original trilogy” Blu-Ray, I think I’ve had six of those.
I’ve always been a book packrat. By the time I was 25 I had finally (one box at a time) moved them all out of my parents house (and a 7 hr drive away). I then packed then all up for an interstate move, and realized I had about 2000. The apartment had built-in bookshelves everywhere, and they still didn’t all fit. So I started getting rid of some of the books I new I’d never look at again (starting with Animorphs and some duplicates). Next time I moved I had no built in bookshelves and they all sat in boxes in a closet for over a year. Then I moved to a house and donated about two thirds of them - I decided, not that they were clutter, but that someone else could enjoy them more. I kept the cookbooks, my favorite scifi and fantasy, some textbooks and science and philosophy books, some classics, and the 50 or so I haven’t read yet.
My wife and I did purge when our son was born, lost a dedicated “study” JUST so he could have a nursery. 8) Two bibliophiles with three college degrees each (meaning in school you buy lots of books, not oh look how smart we are) and the wife is a librarian and was a book buyer for Powells for a while, yeah, jackpot for the local used book store…
Library reason sounds good, unless you got Attila the Librarian like we got, which means library copy of your donated book was pulped 10 minutes ago, sorry, we have no room for, like, books! C’Mon.
The community library that serves our area used to have a nearly complete collection of auto repair manuals (Haynes, Chilton, Clymer, etc.) for older model cars. Exploded diagrams. Steps to disassemble, in order. Those of us who work on our own funky funky cars, mostly without a ton of electronics, would come into the clean, quiet library on a cold bad day and sit, warm and dry, in a comfy library chair to plot our next batch of repairs.
Then, one day, the entire set was gone. Poof. Maybe they needed more shelf space. And now I have to hunt down the repair manuals online, if at all, for a price.
Good luck working on current cars. Computers have only multiplied in the newer models. Maybe now’s the time for me to start thinking about a conversion project… but I don’t know much about electric cars. Maybe I should take a good look at the Haynes Repair Manual for the Toyota Prius. I bet those wiring diagrams are enough to make a sane greasemonkey crazy.
