If you’re a hoarder, the keep points will all apply, no matter what the book.
[quote=“KutulhuMythos, post:37, topic:49751”]
You do mean “borrow and never return”, correct?[/quote]
Well, that too - but not exclusively. My copies of Jim Butcher alone have done the rounds of more than a dozen people…
(Indeed, if everyone were to return the books they had borrowed at once, I would run out of shelf space. It nearly happened to me once, when a friend moved house and returned all of my books in one day… fortunately, some were wanted by my sister.)
translation:
Ha-ha, NERDS! I have a life!
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!!! Where I grew up, that was the walk to the mailbox.
My father was a college librarian. If you think that made him a fan of book ownership, you are wrong. He never understood why I wouldn’t just read things from the library.
BTW, this is precisely the sort of discussion on BB that I enjoy. No death threats, no cries of “sockpuppet”, just various sides to a story…
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I’m still in my early 20s and I’m a poor student, so I guess I have time. I buy books from flea markets and such, you can find some real gems there. I also get a lot of books as gifts, because people know I love to read. So I think I’ll get there, in maybe 10 years time.
As far as libraries go… when I was child, in my hometown, the library was only 200 meters from our house, so I was there all the time. It was like my second home. I used to loan like 20 books at a time, all kinds of books. As they also had computers and magazines, I could’ve spend there all day. And I actually did, at one point - when the bulluying that had been going on for years finally got enough for me, I’d go to the library instead of school. It was my sanctuary.
After we moved, the main library was now far away and I had to take a bus to get there, but I still went regularly. There was also a smaller branch library maybe 1km away from us, so I could walk there and loan things easily still. Right now where I live, the library is god damn amazing and about 1km from our apartment. I love the place and go there all the time.
The Finnish libraries are great. They are everywhere, you have the main libraries and many smaller branches around towns and university libraries and even a library bus that goes in the places that are more far away from actual libraries. So while I really want a personal library, I just love actual, big, helpful libraries. They are the basis of our society, in my opinion, a place of free information and help.
I nearly spilled my cup of tea because of that. 
I wish I could boast about my wonderful success in the “real life”, but sadly, I’m as a pathetic nerd as they go. I somehow have managed to obtain a partner who I live with - I still have a hard time believing it and I keep excepting him to go “Just kidding! Like I would actually want to be with you!!”
Ah, yes, this feels so amazing. I’m always participating in the most terrible fights (that they call conversations), usually involving feminist issues. Though I think those are really important, this is the sort of BoingBoinging
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Nearly seven years of marriage (admittedly, to a woman who views by bookshelves with disdain) and I feel the same way.
We lucked out (well, except for the book thing, in my case)!
I was being slightly facetious, of course, but only slightly. To me, a shelf full of books is as important a fixture as a restroom. I would no sooner live in a house containing no books I haven’t read yet than I would move into a place where the nearest crapper was a five-minute walk away.
In high school, my nearest public library was (according to Google Maps) 2.6 miles away. It was on my way to school if I walked, but since school was 3.3 miles away, I took the bus, except for one summer when I took Driver’s Ed and a health class during summer school. During those weeks, I stopped in to the library every single day on my way home. That was the summer I read Stephen King’s The Stand and Different Seasons thanks to that library.
Even now I’m only eight-tenths of a mile away from my local library branch, and there’s no reason at all why I couldn’t pop in there while taking a morning constitutional (if I had time for that), but making a special trip to the library seems superfluous to me, since I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to buy all the books I want. And I like having them. I’ll buy maybe one or two pairs of jeans, three shirts, and a pair of sneakers a year and that will be the extent of my wardrobe acquisitions, but I do so love to hoard and share m’books.
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So, this thread, and especially your and @jerwin’s pictures of your shelves made me want to showcase my own pathetic collection, and in order to do that, I had to organize it a little. And then I just couldn’t do that (mentally - it was perfectly possible physically) without organizing my whole room and all my files and papers and craft supplies and the millionsof notebooks and all the little things I’ve collected for art projects. So that took at least 3 hours. I think, I wasn’t looking at the time. After I was done, I started scrubbing the kitchen. I’m a bit obsessive like that - when I start, I can’t stop. And I did this all while in withdrawals from opioid recovery!
So, I guess I should thank you and this thread for getting me started on something productive.
Now here’s my bookshelf:
Here’s a closer look so you can actually see the titles (and the Illuminatus! Trilogy - must be mentioned so I can get those important Internet points).
I’ve got a bunch of books I’ve gotten as a gift and never read, but there are also some real gems there that I love to death. I tried to put all my favorite books on the right side in the highest shelf, and at the bottom there’s mostly non-fiction stuff, but mostly it’s not that well organized.
I have my little stack of manga there at the bottom, which is actually just Ginga Nagareboshi Gin (3 volumes in Japanese and the rest in Finnish), and one volume of Trigun. I also have a huge stack of Geo magazines there, as well as Science and National Geographic.
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We’re nearly at 90 posts and no one has yet included
(Tom Gauld, Guardian Review, May 2014)
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My rule is I’ll keep a book if I think I might want to read it again, or if I might want to refer to it again, or if I want to keep it in sight so if somebody asks, “Any books where … X” I can look over my covers and potentially spot it because it’s easier to digging out examples when I have a visual reference.
I also sort of have a rule where I’d “loan” (and never expect back) a book to anyone who asked if they were really interested in it, and if it’s a kid (like a teen niece or nephew or something), just outright give it upon asking or interest, with the suggestion that if they don’t like it just give it to somebody else, and buy myself a new (or new-to-me-but-used copy), but in practice this happens so rarely that it ranks up there with my zombie contingency plans (in which case I take a few favorites and if I need any more I’ll just loot houses/bookstores). (I do have younger relatives who read actual books, I’m happy to say, they’ve just never asked me for one of mine).
I only have one proper shelf, though.
On the other hand, I do have other means for storing my books…
It’s hard to see cause of the stuff in the way, but those milk crates are 4 high, 5 across. I also have about 20 more scattered around other rooms but those are mostly comics, RPG game books, college books and a couple assorted junk boxes, with a few reading books thrown in or on top of them (as well as random books on top of other random parts of my home).
Unfortunately, not everyplace is built to support a full wall-load of books, and if they aren’t built into the walls, the shelves start to lean away from the walls.
I actually have a fair selection triaged for sale, but nothing to do with them, since I can’t use a phone to call used book stores [phones aren’t accessible] and I can’t use public transportation to bring them to used book stores [public transportation isn’t accessible].
I imagine that even if a particular used bookstore has a web presence and an email address where you could send them an inventory and ask if they’re interested, it’s probably unlikely that any used bookstores have the resources to go out to your home and pick up a consignment. In any event, since the used book market is so terribly soft these days, the best one could probably hope for is unloading them at a yard sale or flea market for pennies on the dollar (unless you have rare or desirable books to unload), and that’s probably more than you’re willing or able to deal with.
If we are posting pictures of our libraries I want to get in on this. My wife built this library for my books, she is wonderful. We call it the “Hhype Science Fiction Reading Room” (because we were also creating cult religions at the time, compare to Christian Science Reading Room"). I like your mini free library idea, and she might too because I have “too many” books. We are off the beaten path so I am not sure it would be visited much.
My other problem echos the issues of many here, the library is already full. We are discussing other rooms that “need” libraries in them. Perhaps a library annex. Here’s a panorama.
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That is AMAZING. I think I have a bookshelf fetish.
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Books are good as thermal insulation for the walls. Just a hint… 
Full? You still have that useless window that you can board up. Seriously all I can say, and say repeatedly is “I am not worthy”. But of course the real props go to your wife.
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That is absolutely beautiful! Thanks for letting us see it.
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Try this. A friend’s work. A 40-gigapixel panorama of a large monastery library.
Description here:
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