Tsundoku

[reidharriscooper]

I gather books in a ways that aren't exactly the average style. While most folks build their library through book stores or in the modern era Amazon, my amassed collection of 5000+ plus novels, graphic stories, cook books, memoirs, art retrospectives are more were acquired through different means. These various means have meant getting more than I can ever read in a life time. It has allowed for me to actually discover writers though and books I never even knew existed.

Here is a not very short list of places I have gotten books:
Library sales with Fill a Bag option (for $10, whatever you fit in a bag is yours)
Fill a Bag sales at The Strand
Fill a Bag sales at various thrift shops
10 cent sales at Webster Library
Swap Meets
random Boxes on the street
ARCS from Book Expos
ARCS from Comic Conventions
Books sent to me for review via publisher
Contest wins
Direct from the writer/artist/author/creator
CostCo
Going out of Business Sales from Virgin Megastore & Tower Records
and even one I never returned to a college library (it's completely out of print and had only ever been taken out once in 25 years...)

Now this isn't to say I've never bought a book full price at Barnes & Nobles. I have had no choice. I have particular holes in collections that I need filled sometimes and that was the only choice. That doesn't mean I've read them. I just wanted to know the book was in my collection so one day I would read it. This could be considered pack ratting but it really isn't. Public libraries are great and all, but there's some supremely satisfying over having a private library that has some version of essentially all the most important books of the last 200 years.

Using a site such as https://thegreatestbooks.org/ I can inexplicably state I have everyone of these books. Now some I may have as a graphic novel, others in an annotated edition, or possibly a modernization. Maybe I only have the film version in some cases as many of these sales included CDs and DVDs. Go through any year on there, even go through the non fiction, my rate of success of owner ship is 75%. My rate of actually reading said books? Maybe 15%.

That's simply because I've done the same thing with films, with music, and even with video games at least on PC. I have at current count 351 games in my Steam Library, I have played 110 of them tops and some of those only a little. Does it count if it was a little? Does that count with a book, if you read a chapter or two but got distracted, so by the time you ever pick up the book again you'd need to re-read those chapters anyways? I don't know. I don't have the answers, but what I do have our a lot of books with theories, queries, mysteries, solutions, and mishmosh... but they also won't have answers. Well, one book has an answer. It's one of the few books in this ridiculous collection I have read more than once, watched versions of multiple times and even listened to radio plays about. That answer is 42. Now the only problem is... what was the question?

written for therealljidol LJ Idol presents Literary Prize Fight Week 3

Comments

[murielle]

Wow! You have me well and truly beaten. I might have three to five hundred books.

I love that you shared your sources and I am sure you've inspired your readers. You certainly inspired me.

Starting books and losing interest, or in a few cases discovering I've brought home a dud, or just found something I wanted to read more than what I was reading are all perfectly sound reasons for abandoning a book.

Here's to the unread books in the universe!

Well done!

[reidharriscooper]

I have many duds from the free resources. Books I grabbed cause of the cover, or it was shoved in my face, or I just wasn't as discreet in taking stuff in a desire to want it all. I've done pieces before on just learning that lesson to create the best experience for yourself, but man it took years of failing or at least experimenting to get to where I am now. Even then, sometimes I'm not as discreet as I should be. "Oh this stuff is free? Okay"...

[bsgsix]

We are similar creatures, we are - from things in our collections to how they were acquired, to basically everything in your final paragraph.

I love the thrill of finding a good read in an unexpected place or by an unexpected person. Definitely my favorite way to go about it, even if I often forget how I came about a book in my collection. Amnesia is a beast. :)

This was intriguing and something I can relate to very much.

[reidharriscooper]

It's always nice to have a fellow "hunter" per se.

There are plenty of books in my collection which I can't remember if it was a thrift store, book sale, swap meet or book expo cause 2012 sounds not so long ago but it also was so long ago.

[adoptedwriter]

My hub is the extreme keeper of games, movies, and books. I save more n more on my iPad which helps w space.

[reidharriscooper]

Even with a tablet I'd prefer paper.

A tablet would just give access to things I can't get physically and also help me read my growing pile of unread digitals. Which is in the hundreds by now. Sitting safely on my PC.

[tjoel2]

This was great! And thanks for the link to that site.....I could spend quite awhile there. :)

Great nod to Douglas Adams at the end! I have those books in my collection as well.

[reidharriscooper]

Appreciate the Douglas Adams appreciation.

That site is lots to go through even if I don't fully agree with it.

Now do you have ALL those books in your collection? Do you have the Radio plays? Both Dirk Gently's? Mostly Liff? And even the estate approved Eoin Colfer? How about the post-humous incomplete Mostly Harmless... or the adaptation of the video game Starship Titanic? Yeah... I might be an Adams freak.

[tjoel2]

I don't collect Douglas Adams to that extent, but Stephen King is another matter! I have some of his more hard to find writings and am still collecting. :)

[the_eternal_overthinker]

A big YES! To all of this..I too tend to pick up books from random places and yep I have abandoned books after a chapter or two and would have to re-read those chapters all over again to actually finish them. A very relate- able post and love how you ended it :) Cheers!

[reidharriscooper]

Kudos and appreciation. Love the big YES!

[bewize]

I used to collect books like this. I had to stop when my asthma became problematic. It was just too much.

[reidharriscooper]

I am sorry to hear a real physical affliction had to end the joy, but health first... books will be there for you somehow, but if you can't breath, there's no fun in them!

[tonithegreat]

Okay, I am jealous of your library! One day when I am less space-limited, I will get back to work on mine. For now, I’m just happy that my daughters, sources of space-limitation though they be, are starting to really enjoy the volumes Rog and I have collected.

[reidharriscooper]

Part of the reason I ever started a serious collection was to one day give to the kids I sadly don't have yet, for a variety of reasons. Glad your kids appreciate what you have though. I couldn't imagine if they turned books down.

[rayaso]

5-friggin-thousand books???? You are your own library! How do you store them? Floor to ceiling bookcases in all rooms, down the hall and into the bathroom?

[reidharriscooper]

Right now it's a mish-mosh of different kinds of shelves of different sizes, sometimes double stacked, some books in drawers, others in piles, some on the coffee table. They're wherever a book can go. I wish it was a floor to floor. That's the one day dream home.

[halfshellvenus]

/0\

You scare me!

But only because this was the kind of library my dad always wanted and had, and I keep being afraid my husband will head in that direction. 1000 books! Though at least most of yours were inexpensively acquired, and not the "unique leather-bound release" of classics my dad favored (i.e., somebody's book club).

But one thing is clear. You can never move. :O

[reidharriscooper]

Oh I can move. I want to move one day. To a place where all the books can be seen and gotten too without issues. Where they can be truly organized the way a library should be.

There are actually some expensive first editions here, but I got them as first editions... at bargain prices. I know how to do stuff.

[nayanawrites]

Really !!!! 5k books !!!!

I bow down to you in reverance !!!

I have to see pics of your home and how u store those acquisitions of yours !!!

[alycewilson]

My question is how many of them have you actually read?