Friday, April 4, 2008

My books

I've started cataloging my books on LibraryThing as you all may know. I've gotten about 720 in so far, and extrapolating to what's sitting around the house I realize we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 4500-5000 books. If anything, that's a low estimate. And we're not shy about using the library, either.
I go into some people's houses and they have one, maybe two shelves of books; others have bookcases covering every free wall of every room and every staircase. Needless to say, I feel more at home in the latter. My parents have some books, but nothing like our library. We have bookcases everywhere, every child's room has at least one, many of our shelves are double-shelved. There are books piled on my nightstand, books on Kayla's floor, books in 9 month old Adele's room.
I am spending a lot of time on BookMooch now trying to get rid of books we'll never use or never read again (nasty science fiction, lovely craft books of crafts we'll never actually take up, duplicates of mysteries I didn't realize I had already bought, and more). I'm racking up the points sending them out, and I don't want to use the points to bring in more books right now (I should just donate the points right away so I can't use them). There have been times when I have brought 5-6 grocery bags at a time to donate at the library book store and we STILL have all these books (what in the world have I already given away?!)!
I realize I have a very deep relationship with my books. I can't bring myself to give up a good book. I re-read, I treasure, I love them. I can't pass up a good read, and I am somewhat obsessed with providing good books for my children. Books the older children all hate I keep on the chance that in a few years one might change his or her mind, or one of the younger ones may have a different opinion. Books that are classics I stock around the house just in the hopes that one child or another will pick it up at some point (it's worked with Heidi, The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Little Women, Black Beauty, and more). I've started searching out books I read as a teenager to see if they pique the girls' interest the same way (Tirtze does like Nancy Springer, but rejects H. Beam Piper; she hasn't really checked out Mary Stewart yet--I have to find the werewolf one).
My name is Leesy, and I'm a bookaholic. I don't think I'm ready for recovery.

2 comments:

LoriAngela said...

My book stash may be smaller than yours, but it is definitely healthy. I donated the less loved kids books to our Elementary school and we have a Rotary book sale every year, so we can drop off unwanted books anonymously. I'm afraid to catalogue my collection. It's like actually airing the wool stash. No longer room for denial (no longer room for more books).

Leesy said...

I didn't know whether I'd really get into the cataloging or not, but now I'm at it pretty compulsively. I love the idea of using LT and BMooch to organize the home library (which takes up so much of our home!).

We won't discuss the yarn stash, however. La, la, la, la, I'm not listening...no, really, I only have one (very large) bin full.