How many of you have a real library at home?

My entire apartment is a library. I have multiple bookcases in every room except the bathroom.

I love being surrounded by books, but I hate having to dust them regularly (actually, what I hate is constantly feeling guilty that I don’t dust them more often than I do). And I hate that I don’t have more time to read what I’d like to!

Only of the dvd variety, well, blu-ray actually.

I don’t have a room just for books, but I have 5 or 6 bookshelves filled with books, and no I don’t dust them.

Does a couple of shelves of “keepers” and 6–5 3 foot stacks of “to be read”‘s count?

Oh, wait. There is a reference collection of Collector books. And the local history collection.

But no, I don’t have a single room dedicated to books.

@ibstubro All those Miller’s must require tall shelves!

I, too, don’t have a separate room, but I do have some large filled bookcases. And my kids have their own bookcases. We’re overflowing with books.

Miller’s, @glacial?

@ibstubro Now that sounds like me, I ditch the ones I’ve read to friends and family, or worst-case scenario the DAV thrift store. But my front hall coat closet has my ‘to be read’ stack at all times, it’s ridiculous…lol

Has anyone here read book2 or 3 of Mark Twain’s autobiography? I love him but they’re expensive, so I need personal reviews by fellow bookworms.

@ibstubro I just assumed you’d be using their collectibles guides. They usually have a distinctive shape – very tall.

Oh, @KNOWITALL, do not say crap like that in front of me!

# 1) I am an inveterate bargain hunter.
#2) I own ½ an auction house.
#3) The auction house is in Mark Twain land.

We just sold a large collection of books about a month ago. I’m pretty sure the MT autobi books were in there, and few brought much money. We ended up buying a couple large stacks because they were too cheap (everything at the auction sells, and we ‘set it on’ at a reasonable bargain price or we own it, like it or not). If I can locate the books, I’ll check for them, and let you know.

I suspected that, @glacial, but my primary interests are glassware and pottery. Most were issued, literally, by a company named Collector Books. The antique market is so soft, they have now gone out of business, entirely.

We probably have some of the books you speak of, it’s just that I do not use them. Everything but glassware is a buy low, sell higher prospect for me. With glass and pottery, the books let me know when to buy low, keep.

:-)

@ibstubro I’m soooo jealous!! I love antiques, have two hope chests full of cool stuff like old silver engraved hand mirror and brush set with wood back, handstitched lace and am now looking for a nice set of real silverwear in box.

I adore Mark Twain, one of the thing’s I admire most is that he marched to the beat of his own drum with no fear, even with religion and you know how it is here in Missouri, that is NOT DONE except by heathens.

I do not have the space for all the shelves (or even a single one), and I can not pirate physical books. Also I can not read.

@ragingloli Can’t read? You goose. If I lived in your area, I don’t think I could stop antiqueing for a minute!

@KNOWITALL
I can not write either. All the typing on fluther is done by my trained cat.

I have over 100 sections of Barrister’s Bookcases filled with stuff in my 6 room ranch, if that counts!

Disclaimer – Those are not mine.

@KNOWITALL Come on over, I have a nice set setting in the silverware chest about 4 foot from me that needs to go to market. $30 takes it. Plate, though, I’m not parting with any of my 4–5 sets of Sterling flatware!

@ibstubro You’re killin’ me smalls.

@KNOWITALL If you like junk, you’d be entertained in my house…for months.

Every the furniture rings the walls and every available surface is covered or filled. There might be 4 carnival glass plates stacked on a corner of Walnut Victorian sideboard. 2–3 more bowls stacked on the plates, and the top bowl is filled with something cool. Glass candy, straws or salt dips. Tokens. Wooden nickles. YOU NAME IT.

Fun, fun, fun.

Everything in my house that can hold a book, holds a book or 20. My husband built a wall between the living room and the kitchen. The bottom holds a 42” TV, the top shelf holds books.
There is an antique “low boy” under that. Has books on top and inside.
There is a small shelf (under which wild possums like to hide) in one corner of the living room that holds books.
I have an antique buffet in the living room that holds books.
There are a set of shelves in the computer room that holds books.
I have a barristers bookshelf in the kitchen that holds books.
All the dressers in my bedroom hold books.
I have at least one book in each vehicle in case I get stopped by a train.
There are books lying about randomly.

@ibstubro Heaven…Well first I’d want to clean and organize everything, I’m a little ocd about orgnanization, but that sounds LOVELY. :) You’d like my hat pin collection then I’m sure!

When we built an addition onto our house, it included a small room designated “the library.” I intended for us to build in shelving, but we ran out of money. We moved the two large bookcases from the living from in there and added a couple more, and it filled up in no time. There are still books in all the other rooms. I don’t know how many. Thousands.

One of the toughest giveaways I’ve done was to let go of our 2000 Encyclopedia Britannica. The kids were out of school, and by then we had the Internet. The space it had occupied on the bookcase was immediately filled just from the literal stacks standing around.

Come on over, @KNOWITALL. MY house will break you of that OCD right quick.

:-D

@ibstubro Either that or I’ll organize the snot out of you and catalog everything in Excel – lol

Better come prepared to be here a while, then!

Good move on the Britannica, @Jeruba. They’re about as popular on the resale market as day old skunk roadkill!

I’d like to have a library but I don’t. I have two bookcases and need a third.

@ibstubro, the elementary school I gave it to was delighted to have it. The third grade teachers said they would share it because that’s when they start teaching how to look things up. This was just two or three years ago. I was happy to learn that that is not yet regarded as an obsolete skill.

As a child I loved the feel of a gold-stamped leather-bound encyclopedia volume, with information about all the people, places, and things I could possibly think of, and much more that I couldn’t, and amazing pictures. I could pick any volume at random and just sit in the big chair with it for hours. Nothing on a computer screen can touch it.

P.S. Remember, you can add to your posts within ten minutes and combine responses instead of lengthening the thread with separate posts.

I’d love to have Encyclopedia Brittanica, just to look it.

Oh, I hear you, @Jeruba. I think Encyclopedia Brittanica was my favorite toy. It was the You Tube of my youth…one fascinating topic leading to another. I literally still remember the smell of them. Not musty, but unique.

The sad truth at the auction is that they take up so much room in the dumpster that we finally started taking then the 12 miles to donate them to recycling.

Oh, doesn’t everyone? Along with the butler and pool boy!

People who read tend to actually have a library of some kind. I hate walking into houses where there are no books.

@Dutchess_III I know, I must be the weirdo of the bunch. I only have a few antiques like Lassie hardcovers and maybe a valuable one or two, then my faves, other than that I ditch them. Okay not a weirdo just a minimalist…lol

I’ve ditched hundreds and hundreds of books over the years. Some I can’t because I really want my kids to read them! I hate the internet that way…..I don’t read nearly as much as I used to. My kids don’t borrow books like they used to. :(

@KNOWITALL Lurve for Lassie hardcovers. :)

I don’t have a separate room as library, but I have one entire end of our living room with floor to ceiling shelves with hundreds of books, all arranged in Dewey Decimal order. There is a wonderful wool rug in front, and a reading chair with it’s own lamp.

@glacial I actually have several from an aunt who passed. I have Elsa the Lion books, too. Too bad we had a major housefire, I lost many precious things in that debacle. :)

I have about eight large bookshelves now, several overflowing, but they are spread out between three rooms. And I am determined to never get rid of another book again (unless it’s a duplicate) because every time I do, I end up wanting to read it again years later.

We have several hundred books here, but I would feel pretentious calling it a library since there is not much organization to it. I can usually find what I’m looking for though if it’s one of mine (i.e. not my wife’s).

I have basically three. One is science fiction, second is comic books, and the third is science and math books.

@KNOWITALL Oh, that’s tragic. I’ve been slowly trying to recover all the kids’ books I had when I was young. My parents didn’t keep anything. :(

I live in a fairly small 2 bedroom mobile home. We have sacrificed any hope of a neat-looking home in order to keep greedily hoarding reading and listening material. I’m completely out of room, but we just can’t stay away from the used bookstores. ^_^

This is the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror shelf, and mostly my husband’s books. Top shelf is all Tolkien – nearly everything he’s written apart from technical works and the last seven volumes of The Histories of Middle-Earth. Second shelf is mostly Piers Anthony. Third shelf is your Robert E. Howard, Stephen R. Donaldson, nearly every word written about the Dune universe, and some Asimov hardcovers. Fourth shelf is the horror section – H.P. Lovecraft, everything Poe ever published, Dexter novels, Hitchcock, Clive Barker, and a bunch of short story compilations from the last 100 years or so. Bottom shelf is mostly pulp sci-fi and fantasy novels from the 70s and 80s, three high and three deep. You’ll also see the Stephen King softcovers and paperbacks.

This is the Alyson’s Collections bookcase. Most of the Star Trek novels (the rest overflow onto the Science and Reference bookcase), all of my Marion Zimmer Bradley novels, and any other historical fantasy or Arthurian-Mythos related books. The bottom shelf, mostly obscured by the boxes of records, includes a collection of books on fantasy creatures, the D&D rulebooks, the Star Trek Technical Manual, and books full of notation and guitar tablature.

Here is the aforementioned Science and Reference case, including the overflow of Trek novels in paperback. Behind the Trek novels are paperback classics.

Here are the Stephen King hardcovers.

This is hardcover classics, History, archaeology, and religion/mythology/folklore.

this is the other half of that shelf, which includes more history and folklore, as well as grammar books, writing books, and kind of a catch-all shelf with general fiction and whatever we couldn’t squeeze in anywhere else.

This does not include the books that are stacked in boxes in the shed, waiting to be sold.

I have about three feet of programming books so far…more to follow.

My bedroom serves a lot of purposes: a bedroom (obviously), a study, a dressing room, an entertainment center, and a library.
That’s right, I have a big bookshelf fixed on the wall of my bedroom. Unfortunately I don’t organize my books as carefully as some people here.

For anyone counting, yes, that is a stack of six Bibles. There’s a Strong’s Concordance in there, too.

@Seek_Kolinahr I used to have the Oxford Bible Commentary. That kicked ass.

I don’t, but I grew up with a dad who loved books. The living room had a whole wall of books and the basement had 30 linear feet of books floor to celing and now there is much much more. He sells book on Amazon now, he has about 5,000 listed online.

I almost never read a book, to my dad’s dismay. My husband hates books in the house in any great quantity. At my house with my husband we have about 20 linear feet of books, let’s say 8 feet high, total total, which seems like very little to me compared to what I grew up with.

I do love the look of a formal library in a house. I never had anything like that, even growing up, it was a small townhouse with books crowding everything, and now they are overflowing and most people would say it looks like a hoarders house. The books are organized though, they have to be to find them for the buyers on Amazon.

The Born Free books, @KNOWITALL?

@Itsboro Yes they’re cool. I can’t believe you know them!

Oh, heck YES. I loved those books as a kid! I couldn’t believe no one had chimed in with the name! :-)

I have been slowly but systematically shrinking my library. I am keeping only treasured books, rare books, autographed ones, French and English poets, and a few beloved textbooks. I actually had to look up something in my college Intro to Physics text several days ago to help a friend with the NYT crossword. (I was able to verify that an erg and a joule were units of work, even though I could easily have found the info online.)

The novels are going, each September, to our local Fine and Performing Arts Academy for their book sale and fund raiser. I have to be careful not to buy more than I donate, however.

With the wonderful interlibrary loan system we have, I always have a supply of reading material on hand but I no longer have to dust them. So I am down to four bookcases c. 6’ tall.

I do have boxes of my children’s childhood books that I cannot bear to part with, either.

@YARNLADY Lurve for Dewey.

We had a big purge when we moved. That included about 11–12 boxes of books (between the two of us). That was hard.

We’re trying to cut down on the stuff that’s coming into the house. Books are the only exception. My four-year-old’s books are already more than three times her height.

Our little house is gonna overflow. But every time I see her curled up with a book, it’s totally worth it.

@Seek_Kolinahr that’s impressive! Really.
I collect John Grisham’s stuff. I have all but one of his books. Issac Asimov books take up the spaces that are reserved for future Grisham books.
I found a hard back of Alex Haley’s book “Queen” at Goodwill, so I picked it up. I don’t really know why. I’ve never read it and have a feeling it wouldn’t compare to “Roots,” but now I have it.

(I changed my avatar in deference to this question. :)

What are you missing? I Have some Grisham in my “to sell” section. I don’t care for him, personally.

I have to take stock. Not sure exactly what I’m missing. I have two of his books lying around the house that I got recently and haven’t had “time” to read because I’m here talking about how much I love to read instead of reading.

Oh, Scott Turow beats the socks off Grisham, I’m sorry, @Dutchess_III.

I’ll have to check him out then!

Also, if anyone is into Michael Crichton or Sue Grafton, or Dean Koontz, let me know what books you’re looking for. I might have them.

@Seek Have you read any of Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son) books? He’s pretty good, a little out there, but good.

Nuh uh. Never heard of him until now. I’ll have to look him up.

I would love to have a room full of books! I have some paperback books that I keep in a cabinet but most of them are stored on my kindle.

There is something about the feel of a book in your hands, turning the page, touching the paper. A Kindle just doesn’t do it for me. My husband got me one two years ago. I down loaded “Just So Stories” on it, then never looked at it again. I think my daughter has it now. MA NEMANEM!

@Dutchess_III Grisham writes books that make good movies. When Turow writes a book it could be TV series.

I’m a HUGE fan of Janet Evanovich, too. She cleanses my mental palette after a heavy book. As does Robert B. Parker.