I collect books. Lots of them. 1,098 of them, to be exact — most of them stashed on shelves in my apartment, with forty or so on my desk at work because I’ve run out of room. I’ve been collecting them pretty much all my life, ever since as a kid I realized that the local library sold books for fifty cents a pop — I was hooked.
Now, in my early years I was an indiscriminate hoarder, picking up books left and right for the mere joy of watching my collection grow. I grew with my collection, and now I’m twenty-five and no longer care about many of those books I’ve been packing around with me for the last umpteen years. (You’re probably thinking I mean children’s books. Ha! I don’t — I mean textbooks, books on petroleum, and scads of ugly books (can we say the 70s and 80s? ~shudder~). My treasured childhood books will stay with me forever.)
Fast-forward to tonight. Books I don’t care about eat up valuable shelf space that could be housing books I do care about, and so I spent a few hours tonight combing through my shelves, culling the soon-to-be-abandoned books and plopping them down into piles. At first I was clingy and hesitant — these books have been with me for years — but then I got ruthless. I’m getting rid of 192 books, all-told, and it feels great having all that extra space back. Granted, I’m back down to 906 now, so I’ve got some collecting to do to hit that magic 1,000 again. ;)
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I’ve only got 600 (and change)… and I pruned my collection a couple months back, dropping 30 books. I’ve just installed custom book shelves in my office … and an open-face closet with book storage in my bedroom. But my collection of cook books and food memoirs (just shy of 100) will have to be stowed until my new kitchen cabinets are installed (2010).
Do you use Delicious Monster’s Library app (for Mac)?
It’s the bomb.
Right now I’m in a relatively small apartment, and I’m already flooding the living room with four bookshelves plus a handful more in my bedroom, so I really can’t wait till I move into a place with more room to expand. Then my collection can grow to, like, 5,000 books. ;) (Oh, wait, there’s that whole money issue…)
No, I don’t use Delicious Monster — I know of it and have used it in the past, but I use LibraryThing (primarily because it’s online and thus accessible wherever I am, but also because of the social features). But Delicious Monster sure is beautiful. :)
Yeah … I love using my barcode scanner (or the cam-based scanner) to enter new books.
: )
Okay, you win. :)
According to my LibraryThing, I have 863 books, 265 of which I’ve marked to sell. They’re sitting in boxes stacked in the corner of my little studio apartment waiting to be posted on Amazon. They’ve been waiting for over a year. My other books are in bookshelves that are acting as walls. :)