lunababymoonchild Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 I 'only' have 673 books. My favourite sentence is : “Sometimes your acquisitive self is ahead of conscious thought.“ https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/06/lucy-mangan-creating-my-library-brought-order-in-a-world-of-chaos?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other What's your opinion? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hayley Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 2 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said: What's your opinion? I now really, really want a garden library. It was a lovely thing to read though, thanks for sharing that . It's funny how being surrounded by your books, organising them or just looking at them and thinking about what to read next, can be so therapeutic. I suppose they are objects that either bought us joy (having read and decided to keep them) or for which we have the expectation that they will bring us joy (when we, eventually, get around to reading them). Either way they make us think and feel good things, even when we're not actually reading. 2 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said: I 'only' have 673 books. I have absolutely no idea how many books I have. Do you keep a track of which ones you own, or did you count out of interest after reading the article?? I am going to organise some books now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lunababymoonchild Posted November 21, 2021 Author Share Posted November 21, 2021 1 hour ago, Hayley said: I now really, really want a garden library. It was a lovely thing to read though, thanks for sharing that . Me too. You're welcome 1 hour ago, Hayley said: It's funny how being surrounded by your books, organising them or just looking at them and thinking about what to read next, can be so therapeutic. I suppose they are objects that either bought us joy (having read and decided to keep them) or for which we have the expectation that they will bring us joy (when we, eventually, get around to reading them). Either way they make us think and feel good things, even when we're not actually reading. It does for me so I was surprised to find out that it does for other people too 1 hour ago, Hayley said: I have absolutely no idea how many books I have. Do you keep a track of which ones you own, or did you count out of interest after reading the article?? Some years ago (2016) I got fed up buying a book I already owned so bought an app and scanned in all of my books. It was exhausting! I now scan in what I buy and the app tells me how many books I have. They are not in any order on my shelves so I have the pleasure of looking through my books when I'm deciding what it is I want to read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 What a lovely article, thank you Luna for posting it ! I love being surrounded by my books, and yes good memories of the ones I read, and books unread that will hopefully bring joy. I have a lot of books. I had a list in a database file at first (which I printed every time I went out book shopping, so I wouldn't buy double copies as much), then in 2013 I found out about Book Collector (a program on the computer) and the mobile app CLZ Books so I purchased them and switched to that (they also include my Kindle books, so if I want to know the exact amount of physical books, I'd have to go and tell it to deselect any ebooks). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timebug Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 My late Father in law once looked at my bookcases, and (as a non reader) gave me a sad smirk and asked 'When will you ever get around to reading all those?' I had to burst his balloon, by pointing out that the books on my shelves, were already read, and kept with the intention of re-reading at some future date. And of the books I read, only about a quarter of them actually made it onto those shelves; the rest were quietly 'retired' to the local Charity shop, or given to friends and family! I have always been, if not surrounded by books, at least within easy reach of a few hundred! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeleine Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 Yes it's like being surrounded by friends. Not sure how many I have, Library Thing says 2,065 but I haven't entered all my books, however some that are on LT have gone to a charity shop, but 2,000 is probably about right! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lunababymoonchild Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 Yes, it is like being surrounded by friends. I'm so glad that the article was of interest. I couldn 't be without my books and have read around 80% of them. Doesn't stop me buying new books though. My app does let me include my e-books but I don't bother with that because I don't rate them at all, maybe I should I do read them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
France Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 Our house is overflowing with books but then I don't have access to an English language library (that's my excuse anyway). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hayley Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 20 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said: I now scan in what I buy and the app tells me how many books I have. They are not in any order on my shelves so I have the pleasure of looking through my books when I'm deciding what it is I want to read. That is actually a very good idea. I keep all of my unread books together (because I also enjoy just looking at them when I'm deciding what to read next!) but others do have a bit more of a system (books I might need for teaching go together, non-fiction go together and any special edition or signed books go together). 3 hours ago, Athena said: (they also include my Kindle books, so if I want to know the exact amount of physical books, I'd have to go and tell it to deselect any ebooks) I am very bad at remembering what I have on Kindle (not only because I managed to misplace the charger for about 6 months... ). I think I would find this useful! 2 hours ago, timebug said: 'When will you ever get around to reading all those?' This feels similar to my personal pet peeve - which is when someone sees all of your books and says 'Ah, I wish I had time to read', as though you only read because you have too much time on your hands and not because it's actually your first choice of entertainment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lunababymoonchild Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 1 hour ago, Hayley said: This feels similar to my personal pet peeve - which is when someone sees all of your books and says 'Ah, I wish I had time to read', as though you only read because you have too much time on your hands and not because it's actually your first choice of entertainment. The answer to this is to sigh and say “Yes, there are a lot of soap operas, aren't there? It's nearly impossible to keep up, or so I'm told” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muggle not Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 (edited) 4 hours ago, Hayley said: I am very bad at remembering what I have on Kindle (not only because I managed to misplace the charger for about 6 months... ). I think I would find this useful! One of the benefits of having a kindle is that it tracks and lists all the books for you that you have read. Luna, yes it was an interesting article. I currently only have about 200 - 300 physical books as I gave most all the others away, most of them to the library, when we moved from Charlottesville, VA to North Carolina. I really gave away some great books. I haven't counted how many are on my kindle, does that also count? Edited November 22, 2021 by muggle not Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lunababymoonchild Posted November 22, 2021 Author Share Posted November 22, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, muggle not said: One of the benefits of having a kindle is that it tracks and lists all the books for you that you have read. Luna, yes it was an interesting article. I currently only have about 200 - 300 physical books as I gave most all the others away, most of them to the library, when we moved from Charlottesville, VA to North Carolina. I really gave away some great books. I haven't counted how many are on my kindle, does that also count? Absolutely e-books in general count. I just haven't noted them in my library (it's called Book Crawler) app because a) I'm lazy b) Kindle keeps count and c) I find it hard enough to keep track of the physical books. I'm glad you found the article interesting. Edited November 22, 2021 by lunababymoonchild Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian. Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 I'm a bit conflicted about the fact that the author of the article has 8000 books. On the one hand as a book lover it looks amazing, but the minimalist side of my personality would probably find it a bit too much. I know that I would never get round to reading 8000 books and I would feel guilty about having a lot of them effectively for show. MY TBR is huge but luckily for me a lot of them are ebooks so don't take up any space physically. About 10 years ago I had thousands of books in my flat but over the years I have donated loads to charity and feel much more comfortable with the 2 or 3 bookcases I have at the moment. All that said, when I have more space I could see myself expanding my collection in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
France Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 2 hours ago, Brian. said: I'm a bit conflicted about the fact that the author of the article has 8000 books. She's an author and a journalist so she probably has a lot of books for research as well as the old favourites, books she knows she wants to read and the not-now-but-I-might-feel-like-reading-this-one-day section. My books on naval life during the Napoleonic wars (research for a novel) must amount to about 30 books by now and i can't afford to get rid of any of them because though I could make notes it's actually quicker to look up something about Admiral Collingwood in the biography of him than to search through piles of notebooks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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