JLK just posted her most
current reading habits over at her place. I think it's interesting to know what people think about and a bookshelf in their home is often a good way to catch a glimpse.
My own personal
bookshelf library is currently scaring me though. I've got lots of fun stuff on there...and much of it unread.
You see, since starting grad school I've found that I just don't have time for leisure reading. However, I have retained the habit of purchasing books for leisure reading.
When I do have time to read I frequently have several books going at once:
- a non-fiction usually related to biology, philosophy, anthropology or world religions
- an excellent novel
- a classic philosophical work that I never was exposed to in college
- a collection of short stories or poems
With 4 different genres going at once, it's easy to just pick whatever you're in the mood for. As a college student I could easily get through 2 or 3 (of each genre) per month. Now, I'm lucky to have the time/energy for anything other than the short story collections more than 2 or 3 times a month. But my book purchasing habits have not adjusted. As a result I have probably half a dozen of each genre in various states of completion lingering on the shelves. I'm interested in all of them but when I get the itch to buy more books, I tend to jump right in leaving the rest unfinished. So I'm not going into details about what I'm currently reading because it would either be "scientific journals" or an exhaustive list of the half-done stuff on my shelves -- too long.
Now they sit there staring at me, mocking my inability to see things through.
Someday when I have more time I suppose I'll get around to them all.
*sigh*
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13 comments:
Oh my, AA. You and I must have been cut from the same cloth. I have TONS of unread books on my shelves and I can't seem to stay away from library book sales where paperbacks are $0.50 and hardcovers are $1. Barnes and Noble parts me from my money as soon as I walk in the door.
And the kicker? I work in publishing and get 50% off the cover price of any book that passes through the warehouse. Right now I'm trying to unload the books I have already read and can't justify keeping. To do this I have to actively work to overcome my need to "own" books.
Like you said, you can tell a lot about a person by the contents of their personal library, and I've largely defined myself by my book collection for a very long time.
I am the product of two bookworms and as a child I routinely had 2, 3 or even 4 books on the go at any one time. We didn't have a lot of money to throw around, so we used to get a lot of used, classic books from the Salvation Army that I would read over and over and over again. At the same time, I was also a constant fixture at the local library and was the only child on their roster that was allowed to have an adult membership card because I had read all of the kiddie books several time over.
I try to avoid buying books now because I go through them too quickly and they just pile up around the place so I make the most of the local library. That being said though, I do own a handful of my all-time favorite books that I'll re-read every year or so.
I generally have about 5 books on the go at once. And my Mount 2Be (as in "to be read")has at least 300 books...
I blame www.bookmooch.com
I've never been able to understand people who read several books in parallel (not hating!). Once I open a book it's not getting shut until it is Done. Then again I am a a Fast Reader (last Harry Potter book went down in 5 hrs). Too bad that doesn't translate to journal articles *sigh*
This is scarily close to my own reading (or rather, non-reading) habits. I can't seem to stop buying books on Amazon even when I have at least four unfinished books stacked on my nightstand. And yeah, short stories collections are the way to go--I can at least finish a short story at one sitting, if not a novel or science-y type book.
I also have a lot of unread books on my shelf - some of which I bought myself, and some of which were gifts. What happens if you get a gift book that you open and doesn't grab you? I don't know why these books were given to me, but maybe one day I should give them a real chance and read them.
Also, I have a hard time buying books because I move so much and they are so hard to move. My childhood habit was library all the way - never purchase.
What happens if you get a gift book that you open and doesn't grab you?
Don't stress about it. Give it to a charity. One of the big charities in the land far, far away helps people in dire financial straits - one of their biggest fundraising programs collects all types of books and then has a massive sale each year that fills the convention center in my home city for an entire long weekend and raises millions of $$$s.
PiT - that is a great idea. Thanks.
Count me in too. My husband can never understand how I can have multiple books on the go at the same time... over Christmas I finished up 3 books that I got part way through and abandoned earlier in the year. But I just ordered 4 new books online and they arrived yesterday....
The only good thing that came out of grad school non reading stress was my new found love of short story collections. They're so great, and my current favorite kind of read.
The library, I know...so much more eco-friendly than accumulating stuff (many of which only gets read once, many are read and re-read)...and then moving it every time I change apartments.
I just can't do it though...I love the idea of a library, but I like a book to be mine so I can fold the pages of favorite passages and write in the margins. I suppose this is a hold-over from my philosophy degree and of course I don't really find the need to do this with novels usually but I like having the option there. Plus I have a really good book exchange going on with a dear friend who lives very far away. we mail each other a box of books about once a month or so. About half of them are books I'm returning to her, and half are things I think she would like. It's a really nice and fun way for us to keep in touch. I couldn't do that with library books.
Plus there's the whole return thing -- while I am a pretty fast reader when I've go the time, but life gets busy and I may not finish whatever I've checked out in two weeks. It's the same reason I didn't rent movies until there was Netflix. Someone should come up with a Netboox and I could give up my book-buying habit.
AA, I can't do libraries anymore either - I got a library card here where I live now, and when I realized I had to pay money for not bringing them back in time, I was like, WHAT??? It was not cool.
There are actually Netflix-y book sites, but they aren't cheap:
http://www.bookswim.com
http://www.booksfree.com
Have you guys heard of bookcrossing.com? You enter the name of the book, and where you plan to leave it, and are given a code. You write the code and the website address into the book, along with an explanation of what you're doing, and then you "release your book into the wild" - i.e. leave it in a public place. The idea is that the person who finds it is supposed to log in and tell you if they liked it (you get an email when someone logs your book back into the system). You can also find locations with lots of released books - some cafes have whole shelves of them.
I've released a few books, but no-one's ever entered the code yet...
Cath - that's so cool!
I'm going to see if there are any near me.
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