Is it possible to have too many books?

[spookyevilone]

I read.
I read a lot.

My library currently has something along the lines of 3000 books, mostly paperback. In a three bedroom house with a basement, one and a half bedrooms are dedicated to bookshelves. I'm thinking about opening the basement to my friends as a bookswap/project area to potentially get rid of some of the second and third copies of books I own.

I'm an addict. I freely admit it. I loathe it when I'm overcome with the desire to read Random Book A at 2am and do not own it. My state no longer has 24 hour bookstores and if I ordered online, I wouldn't have it immediately. So I never get rid of books, because I might, someday, want to read the book again and woe betide me if I can't get my grubby little hands on it right then. Conniptions are not unheard of. Foaming at the mouth. Incoherencies. Twitching.

The exception to the rule are books that are so horrible or badly written that I'm afraid they might somehow infect the other books on my shelves and contagion the other authors with suck by some sort of primordial literary osmosis. Anne Rice, Anne Bishop and Stephen R. Donaldson have been banished as authors from my library. Don't get me started on Stephen King's later novels. Just don't. We'll be here all day. They've been relegated to airport Bookstores of the Damned, and that's right where they belong. Michael Crichton is getting close - several books have been banished because really, dude needs to get over his human/ape hybrid fetish, but Jurassic Park, Lost World and The Great Train Robbery were decent. Mercedes Lackey is also getting close because as much as I love her early series, her later series are nothing worth reading. She has good characters, but the stories.. what stories? Person meets person. Person spends 300 pages angsting about their feelings for person. Person and person hook up. Oh yah, and something bad happens but everything is hunkydory at the end and all go home for tea, snuggles and scones yay. Blech. It's called 'conflict' and I like some of it with my heaving bosoms and glowing looks, thanks.

mmm.. heaving bosoms. (Otto Chriek: "Zer heaving of zer bosoms.." Thank you, Mr. Pratchett)

Sorry, where was I again? Books. Right. Many of them. When does it cross the line from whimsical collection to hoarding? Should I worry? Will I eventually become the little old lady whose house is stacked to the rafters with haphazardly piled books, only a small path threading through them leading from room to room?

The bigger question is..Does this bother me?
Answer: Not really, no.

Comments

Obligatory Otto icon post.

[sgrimm.livejournal.com]

Heh... So I got a brand-new, 5-tier bookshelf for Christmas. It was full by the time I went back to school, 2 weeks after New Year's. Granted, some of those had been shifted from an older, smaller bookshelf, but most were poor books that had no proper home simply because there wasn't space for them.

I've got at least two shelves worth of books in the dorm right now, 75% acquired this semester, which means I'll have to look into co-opting a third stack when I move back home.

Is there a group for this sort of thing? Not that I really want to be cured, but... I bet they'd have great reading suggestions!

Re: Obligatory Otto icon post.

[spookyevilone.livejournal.com]

Yay, Otto!
All of the 8' bookshelves? Full. The six 4' bookshelves? Full. Books stacked along wall next to bed? Check. Books still in boxes in garage cuz.. y'know.. bookshelves full? Check.

So really, I have no justification whining, "I have nothing to reeeead!" I just currently have nothing in my house that I haven't read yet.

Secondary tangent - is it wrong to grab a random book off a shelf based on who the cover artist is? I've noticed lately that the last few "new" books I bought were done that way. Walk by shelf, catch spine thumbnail out of corner of eye, stop, look at cover to check that it is indeed Arteeeste, purchase book.

Also, I am amused that someday, I'm going to walk by a book, stop, yoink it off the shelf giggling, "It's one of Steph's!"

Re: Obligatory Otto icon post.

[sgrimm.livejournal.com]

Mom just told me she managed to snag two 8', double-sided bookshelves on wheels from a department store that was closing and selling its fixtures. She seems to think I won't manage to weasel one away from her and put it in my room. HAH!

It sounds like you need to find someone who's a good hand with machinery to just... oh, install floor-ceiling bookshelves in one of your spare rooms. Maybe locking glass doors over one, to keep rarer editions in (*cough* Or dictionaries.) And a pedestal stand with a glass case on it for displaying.

Wrong? Heck no! At least that way, even if the book turns out to be utter crap, you've got a pretty piece of art to make up for it. (Conversely, I have refrained from buying certain books because the cover art is so abysmally horrid- see, for example, all the 'new' releases of old books using crappy movie posters.)

Hee! Well, I can only hope... I do that now though, when I see anything by one of my teachers or peers. It's fun.

Re: Obligatory Otto icon post.

[spookyevilone.livejournal.com]

Pedestal stands scare me. It's been a joke between That Guy and I that someday I'm going to make him build me built-ins that have a padded fold-down bench seat so I can curl up with my books.

He votes no to this because he claims he'd never see me again. Pish, I say - SOMEONE has to bring me my tea! :D

And S? If you ever do a cover for Anne Bishop, I shall disown you. :P

Re: Obligatory Otto icon post.

[sgrimm.livejournal.com]

...okay, how about a glass display case attached to the wall? Or a case with a base wide enough that itcan't really be knocked over? (think coffee-table size- the kind my library at home has to display their Book of Kells.)

I second the padded bench idea. Barring that: ultra-plush carpeting, soft and cushy enough to sleep on. (The ideal, of course, is dark, inlaid hard-wood flooring, but that might just a personal preference.)

I've never read anything by Bishop, but I've heard enough from those who have to know that it'd take nothing short of destitution and extreme desperation and a solid blow to the head to even consider that. And I'd use a fake name.

Re: Obligatory Otto icon post.

[spookyevilone.livejournal.com]

It'd have to be lexan or I'd shatter it.

Floors are too unforgiving. Bench is my happy idea, also so I can flip it up out of the way if I need the floor space for something else. Murphy benches, belike.


... ..... ......... You know you've read too much fiction with colloquialisms in it when you type one and then stop, blink, stare at the word, and giggle like a five year old.

ahem.

Shiny distraction.