Collect books much?

[Zgirl]

I either borrow my friends books or buy them. (I have a lot of Barnes&Noble gift cards.) I almost never get to my library. We have pretty good books. YW a lot of stuff.

[Cinnamon Wind]

The way I collect books borders on ridiculous. As a general rule, first I read them, or the first book in the series (if it's a series, obviously) or other books by the author. Then I buy them. Online. Paperback, lots, because you get free shipping on orders of forty dollars or more. So I end up paying more than I would for just the one book I wanted to buy, even with shipping, because it makes a kind of sense in my head, if not in writing. And then when I get the books I like to HAVE them. I have never read my own copy of a lot of my favorite books, I don't have time, but taking them out of the library when I want to read them- which I can do, my library has them, hence I know I like them and I bought that- I don't think I used hence correctly, did I?- er, what was I saying? Oh, right, no, library is not good enough. They have to be MINE.
My English teacher yells a lot about my run-on sentences.

[kk]

Cinna: I know what you mean about having the books just to have them! I'm like that too, a lot of times. The very idea of having all the books you love, right at your fingertips, and in your home library, it a very tempting thought. And I love sometimes just wandering around my bookshelves, picking up and skimming through all of my favorite parts. (*cough*page 262 of W@W *cough*)

Most of the time when I buy books, I buy them at thrift stores, and I have a rule; if the book costs more than $4 at a thrift or discount store, and you know that you could get it for $.01 on amazon with $3.99 shipping, then don't buy it. In cases like that, Amazon is cheaper. Not faster, but cheaper. Thankfully, most of the thrift stores in my town have books for $.75 - $1 for hardcovers, and $.25 - $.50 for softcovers. Though they do have sales, every once in a while... Book Sale Thursdays are good..

I have about 390 books. I have my own little book catalogue with all of my books (and a few random DVDs) accounted for, and that said 392. But I have some duplicates, and it doesn't count those. I know I have two copies of SYWTBAW, and a few other books.

I have my books organized by subject, and then by author's last name within those subjects.

I collect all books... If there's a series I like, I try to get all of them. Right now, I'm trying to find all Artemis Fowl, and all Series of Unfortunate Events.

[Cinnamon Wind]

I have a weekend job and I get paid every month, so I use most of the money to buy books new. (College fund? Me? Don't make me laugh.) Seems a lot more interesting the way you do it, though. The one book I bought from a thrift shop was children of the mind, I hadn't found anything I wanted and then I spotted it just as I was leaving. It was cool. =)

[kk]

Book sales are fun too. Look for ads at libraries and such. My library had a huge book sale when it was remodeling, and that's how I got my copies of HW and DW.

My first copy of SYWTBAW was from the library, but not from a book sale. I was browsing the children's section, and I saw the book (I had read SYWTBAW for the first time a few days before), and I felt sad for it - the poor thing, it had a ripped cover, and some very bent up pages. I saw how much damage it was in, and knowing the library sold some of their more damaged books, I walked up to my favorite librarian and asked if I could buy it, and she let me - for 25 cents! I was happy. Since then, I've made sure to straighten out all the pages before I close the book, because it's such an old and loved thing.

The second copy of SYWTBAW that I got (a different printing), someone had left on a table at my church with a huge "FREE BOOKS" poster next to it. I was cheerful! Then I found out that the person whose name was in the book, was a friend of mine, and I was sad that she had gotten rid of it. But hey, I have two copies now... One to keep, and one to lend!

Sadly, nobody's wanted me to lend it to them, yet. I need to get some of my friends to read it...

Haha, my allowance is my book fund. I used to have a job at my church, and some of that money went to books, but now I have a measly $1.50 a week to spend - you can see why I shop at thrift stores.

[wizardling77]

I don't have a lot of books that are specifically "mine," because half the time the books I get for myself end up in a family member's hands before I finish. (One of the joys of growing up in a house full of bookworms - arguing over who gets to read first!) Usually I go for the first book in the series, then if it's a particularly addicting series, or one still in the making, or if the library doesn't have all the books, or there's a horribly long wait list for them, I'll buy the rest.

Anybody read Inkheart? Mo and Meggie's house is crammed with books: on shelves, in piles on the floor, under beds, on the table... That's about the level of organization in my family's library, complete with books in boxes in the shed, so I have absolutely no idea how many books we have. I love the public/school library, though I've pretty much exhausted the local branch's supply of worthwhile YA books. I agree with the earlier posts, big chain stores are nice in small doses. I completely adore this quaint little used bookstore I discovered downtown - it used to be a house, is crammed with books, and smells wonderfully of well-loved pages. I leaf through garage-sale books when I get the chance, too. I love new books, but there's a certain magic in library or secondhand books that have been read by fellow bibliophiles, you know?

(another amusing smiley: )

[Lazy Leopard]

I don't specifically collect books for the sake of collecting, but I do accumulate books as I want to read them, and I tend to keep them after I've read them. One or two of the ones I've bought because I wanted to read them have become fairly collectable. I recently scanned a large proportion of my accumulation into LibraryThing. There are about a thousand on the shelves in my bedroom, and a few hundred elsewhere in the house.

[Priellan]

I used to, but I've been slowly selling my stash to a used-book store for monies for more books and such. I've been finding that I rarely go back and reread old books anymore, and the books I have are usually at the library or the used-book store so I just go to those places and then return/resell them.

[Wizardprincess]

i only buy books when a new series comes out and the library won't have it yet or i can't wait or the library doesn't have it i also go though it and donate the books i probably won't read again so its kinda small but i have small bookshelf so yeah

[Dragon Writer]

I don't get rid of books, but neither do i collect them - i have a hard time rereading, basically... I always recall everything that's going to happen, right before it can happen.

[NickRyan]

I just buy books that I want to read I dont even remember the last time I went to a library. I have a couple bookshelves full of books but if you add my moms which I am now working my way through we have well over a thousand.

[Arimathea]

Yes. And we are a rereading and book hoarding family.

I'm not sure how many books we have in the house, especially in the garage which has a double line of bookshelves, but my guess would be somewhere around 5,000.

Last time we moved I swore we would never, ever move again, because boxing up the books was such a horrific chore. That was in 1990.

But it is a pleasure to know that we will never run out of reading material...and that my son and daughter are now raiding the shelves and finding authors that they enjoy. DD is as much of a Diane Duane fan as I am.

Oh, and it's not just the books...how can one ever throw out National Geographic?

[Priellan]

Oh, and it's not just the books...how can one ever throw out National Geographic?

My art teacher has Nat Geos dating several decades back, which is handy for reference photos but also curious.

[seabiscuit1009]

I didn't quite realize how many books I had until this summer...my parents kicked me out of my bedroom and moved me into my brother's much smaller one while I was working in another part of the state, so they had to pack up all my books for me. Wow. I didn't count them all, but since I only have room for my favorites in the room, there are about 5 or 6 boxes absolutely stuffed with books in the attic. While I've been away at college, my sister has been stealing books I leave in my room, so I'm sure if she ever cleans her room, she'll find 30+ of my books under her bed.

My family's a little ridiculous when it comes to books, and I blame my mom. :P she's the one who'd buy me books when I was little instead of toys.

[Kathy Li]

Like Rick, I have more of an accumulation of books than a collection. I do have some signed firsts, and the fact that I call them that and wrap up my hardcover dustjackets in mylar covers probably means I am a collector. I just don't go out of my way to hunt down the OP (out of print) titles as much as I used to. Not that I wouldn't snatch up a $10 copy of Ernest Bramah's The Bravo of London if I could find one.

Most of my collecting juice, however, got sucked (or suckered) into comic book collecting, and after a while, I just realized I prefer reading the books to keeping them pristine in plastic and untouched by human hands and worrying about condition and rarity and going prices and the like. I don't mean I go about deliberately cracking the spines on my paperbacks, but I don't not read Nora Roberts books in the bathtub, either. It's relatively rare for me to hunt up an author's entire backlist all at once like I used to.

Or no. I lie. I mean, I'm currently hunting up Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series. And I'm still always on the look out for Sabatinis I don't own. And I did go ripping through every Preston & Child I could get my hands on.... Hmmm.... Dangit. I guess I still collect...