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Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

theguardian.com

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Re: Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

#21

Post by jlg23 »

weavie wrote: post #6

I buy way more books than I ever read. In a moment of insight one day it occurred to me that when I was contemplating buying a book, it wasn't the book I was after it was the knowledge contained within, and actually just buying the book wasn't enough to give me what I needed. I then realised that I would actually have to read it. So I wasn't just paying for it with money, I was paying with time. Quite often time that…

I friend of mine, alternative spectrum publisher for 40 years, found a pretty good solution: For every book he buys, he has to get rid off another one. Literally: One book into his library, one book out.

His motivation was that he simply did not have any more space for books in his house and his SO made up this rule. When I was about 20 (already owning more than 5000 books that I had paid for with my own money) I tried to apply it. A miracle happened: After a few weeks I realized that it was not just about some arbitrary "equilibrium of books" in my bookshelf. What I did realize instead: I could not decide which book to get rid off because I could not even remember most of them! A few years later I moved out of my apartment/the country/the continent and just gave away all books I did not instantaneously decide to keep.

Ever since I stopped the compulsory book buying thing and only buy those I desperately want to read now. If I don't have time right now, it goes on a list of book to buy (compared to the list of books bought to read). Result: I read 100% of the books I buy.

EDIT: And of those I read, most go to public libraries when I am done, the few books I really, really want to keep (well, in storage in my home country/continent) fill 2 boxes. The rest of them, I can buy again when I really need them.

Re: Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

#22

Post by jsperson »

apolretom wrote: post #13

This quote from Black Swan has been very helpful in allowing me to justify my compulsive book buying: "The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have!…

Great quote. Black Swan happens to be one of my unread books. You've propted me to pick it back up.

More generally, I feel there's no reason to buy books before I need to read them. Effectively Amazon has become my library. Need a book - $10 and you can pull it off the shelf and into your Kindle.

This saves my back when moving too. I have about 650 books in my Kindle library. 90% read in entirety. Moving those would suck!

Edit - fixed an autocorrect misfire

Re: Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

#23

Post by endentru »

alesa wrote: post #19

Argh. I have this pretty bad. Currently sitting on 254 kindle books and we hard paper books. I have thought a lot about what I have spent and keep spending on books, and my conclusion/justification is: 1. I had to teach myself programming now running a company which has required quit a lot of knowledge which is spread among technical/business/people. The best way for me to gain deep knowledge is to read a book on wha…

> I had to teach myself programming now running a company which has required quit a lot of knowledge which is spread among technical/business/people.

I feel like I'm headed down a similar path myself. Do you have any recommendations for books relating to this? I'm certainly not asking for a huge curated list, but perhaps the top 5 you found most influential would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Re: Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

#24

Post by pmoriarty »

I used to have over 3,000 books. Many of them I acquired when I worked at a used book store which gave me 50% off the already really cheap books, and when they made me their book buyer, so I'd go to all sorts of book fairs, garage sales, flea markets, and estate sales to ferret out great books (this was before amazon and ebay) and also buy some for myself. The problem was that my appetite for reading books was not nearly equal to my capacity for buying them.

I wound up putting my thousands of books in to storage for years, then going to the trouble and expense of driving or mailing them all from state to state as I moved around, even across the country multiple times, and then across the Atlantic ocean back and forth.

Eventually, I bit my lip and sold all but a few hundred of the best books, as I couldn't part with those. But I still only read a tiny fraction. They were great to have as reference and for the occasional times when I would be in the mood to read them, but most of the time they sat unused.

Finally, I decided to sell the remainder, as I didn't want to move them across the country, where I was moving for a job, yet one more time. Unfortunately, by then most used book stores in the area had long since closed, and selling the books a little at a time through ebay was far more trouble than it was worth. Worse, the one serious used book store in the area bought books for 10 times less than the cheap prices they sold them for (as opposed to the 3x or 4x markup in the good old days when there were a lot of used book stores and people actually bought books). It wasn't even worth selling to them, and I wound up just donating a lot of my books to the university and unfortunately throwing out some others, and still a hundred or two left over are still in storage.

I've long since stopped trying to buy books, and get them from the library as much as possible. This worked when I lived next to some really good public libraries, but now it's harder, so I'm starting to accumulate a small collection once again.

Re: Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

#26

Post by omnibrain »

TuringNYC wrote: post #8

Major personal problem. Got much worse once I could one-click purchase straight into my kindle. I churn through a lot (~20 to 30 books a year?!) but buy even more!

Instead of straight buying a book I just send the preview to my (main) kindle. So if I really end up reading the book it's just one click to buy it when I reach the end of the preview.

Re: Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

#28

Post by MaysonL »

staked wrote: post #5

Nicholas Basbanes' A Gentle Madness ( https://www.amazon.com/Gentle-Madness-Bibliophiles-Biblioman... ) is a wonderful book on bibliophiles if anyone is inclined to read more on the subject.

Just checked out my local library for this: they have 10 books by Basbanes. Going to pick up two of them next time I'm there.

Re: Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

#29

Post by epimetheus »

pmoriarty wrote: post #24

I used to have over 3,000 books. Many of them I acquired when I worked at a used book store which gave me 50% off the already really cheap books, and when they made me their book buyer, so I'd go to all sorts of book fairs, garage sales, flea markets, and estate sales to ferret out great books (this was before amazon and ebay) and also buy some for myself. The problem was that my appetite for reading books was not ne…

Impressive! I had a little over 2,000 books years ago. I got mine in a similar way, I'd purchase lots of books on ebay for < 1.00 a book, and would go to those used book stores and trade them in (2 for 1) for books I wanted. I did this between the ages of 19 and 25 or so, at which point I went away to college and didn't want to move them with me so I donated some to a friend and some to a library.
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