I have cool parents

[aryanhwy]

I quickly maxed out the book limit in my free librarything catalog, and hadn't even gotten through most of the books at home (though everything in the office should be in here now). Since I really like the ease of use it offers, and the fact that it is possible to export the data so that I've got my own back-up, I decided I really did want a paid account. Unfortunately, at this particular moment, while we've got lots of €€, we've got very few $$, so even though I can afford a paid account I couldn't actually pay for one! So I suggested to my parents that this would be a suitable Christmas gift, and they agreed and bought me an upgrade this morning. Now I can add the rest of the books that we have here in Amsterdam, and then I'll complete the catalog when we make our next major move and get everything out of storage in Iowa -- I'll enter each book as I pull it out of a box and before I put it on the shelf. So I should be able to get a fairly complete catalog that way.

The percentage that we brought with is actually a fairly small percentage of the total we own, and even so we quickly filled the built-in bookshelves in our apartment, and when we found another set of shelves in the trash one day and salvaged it, we quickly filled that. About a year ago I had to start turning my fiction books on their side, Arabic style, in order to fit more in. Of course, this means that all of the built-in shelves are beginning to sag, because they're made out of cheap particle board. We keep meaning to put in supports in the center of the shelves, but that would mean pulling all the computers out so that they don't get filled with masonry dust. So every once in awhile it occurs to me that I have a lot of books. In Madison, we had 5 full-sized bookcases and two half-sized bookcases (not counting the full-sized case which had Joel's games on it). And there hasn't ever been any significant change in the rate at which new books come in; okay, there was a peak when our Madison advisor retired and we inherited a lot of his books, but those mostly live in the office anyway, so they don't really count. There's going to come a time someday when we're going to have so many books that it's going to make Joel frustrated, I just know it. But there's not much I can do about it -- I not going to stop buying them, and I'm not going to give any of the ones I have away. What amazes me sometimes is how other people don't have so many books. Like when I visit my sister -- each time I go there, I can't help but wonder if she's got most of her books in storage, because there's one half-size book case in Owen's bedroom, a full-size case in their bedroom, and one long shelf along a hallway, and that's it. Where are all the rest of their books? Surely I didn't accumulate so many more books than she did as a kid, or save so many more of my college text books than her. I grew up in a household of lots of books -- I'm not sure if I've surpassed my parents yet or not (I certainly have more than what they have out on shelves, but I don't know if they have more in storage either), but I'm sure it won't be more than 5 years before I have.

Someone recently commented to me that he had "far too many books". My response was that I thought "too many books" was an analytic contradiction.

Comments

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

...yeah.

I always wonder when I look through interior design articles and architecture books, that the owners don't seem to ever read anything. There might be an open cookbook in the kitchen, but I suspect those may have been put there by the photographer for decoration; and there don't ever seem to be bookshelves that contain any books. Bookshelves that contain knickknacks, yes; bookshelves that contain art, yes; bookshelves that have a lot of books, never. I wonder at the intellectual impoverishment.

I haven't surpassed my parents yet, and I have some years on you. They also started fast: my mother's parents were both dead when I was born, so she got a lot of their books. And my mother's an historian, so she has to have a large working library at home; my father likes to read; and they never ever throw anything out, either.

(well, until recently. The basement needed major refurbishment, so they got rid of 50 years' worth of professional journals, auction catalogs, and the like. They still have more books than I do. It's their main insurance policy, too; they keep reminding my sister and me that we don't dare kill them for their money, since we're the ones who'll have to deal with all those books. . . )

[thebronwen.livejournal.com]

You can never have too many books.

We, too, have a lot of books. My office shelves are most of the sewing reference and craft reference books, but we have tons more upstairs. Ben and I could open a small library witht he books we have. I might have to look at your database program- we've recently discovered we've bought a few books more than once just becuase we didn't know we already had one (darned books multiply when they're in storage!)

[ursula]

The only way I ever reduce books is by selling them to get new books.

[katerinfg.livejournal.com]

There's no such thing as too many books . . . just not enough bookshelves!

[brygyt.livejournal.com]

What bothers me more is that I have never seen a "fully furnished" apartment in London with more than 4 linear feet of shelf space. And then sometimes when I apartment-sit I find that people are using them to put knicknacks on and don't appear to have more than a dozen books!

It's so, so wrong.

I catalogued a lot of ours when we moved as I scanned them in as they went into the box, then labelled the outside of the box in a pastiche of Cold Case with a dead person's name relating to the contents. (I had recorded what books went in which box). Unfortunately I ran out of time, but what was left were the books that had never made it onto shelves, etc so we wouldn't really have known where to find them anyway.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

When we moved over here, we put most of our books in storage. Each box has taped to the outside a printout of what is inside -- for books, this is just title and author, but at least this way, if there's a book I want, all I have to do is look up what box # it is in, and send my in-laws an email and they can dig it out fairly easily for me.