bookshelves, part 2

[adrian_turtle]

This past winter, I realized I could gradually get rid of books I really didn't like anymore, and it still would not leave me with a collection that fit into an apartment I could afford. Especially when I started looking at apartments with Vicki and Andy and thinking beyond all our accumulated books. Where can we put 3 desks? Yes, we COULD put a bookcase in the hall closet, but then where would we put our coats?

So the next step was to get rid of books I like, but would rather read online versions than the versions in my apartment. Why do I, why does ANYONE, have all of Shakespeare in one unwieldy hardcover in tiny little print with hardly any margins? Why do I have that particular translation of Oedipus, which is nothing special? Why do I have anything in my apartment that's already on Project Gutenberg? I don't even like Emily that much, and Dean Priest is a total creep...but you still kind of get attached after so long. The last time I looked at Goethe's Faustus, I actually looked at the library's ebook. (I waited for the library's ebook, rather than reading my own little paperback. If I had remembered Project Gutenberg I wouldn't have had to wait.) So out went the little paperback. *sigh*

Comments

[pameladean]

I hear you about the Shakespeare. We have four Complete Works from different publishers, and I have repeatedly been prevented from acquiring more, despite my cries of, "But the editing is different! The critical apparatus is different! The illustrations! Augh!"

I'm not sure any of them are on bookcases, though; rather they serve as decorations on side tables or on those shelves under coffee tables where ordinary people put, what, magazines? I don't know.

We desperately need to cull our books because we are actually out of space. But while it is hard enough for one person to do, it is really a problem with four.

P.

[mrissa]

Really a problem with three as well. The result of which is that I have managed to cull some things that were much closer calls than some of the things that are still on the shelves, because they were closer calls that I knew were mine alone to make, whereas some of the stuff that's still on the shelves is a joint decision and therefore nigh-on impossible.

[adrian_turtle]

We said explicitly, as part of the negotiations, that we were not going to combine book collections. We aren't "moving in together" moving in together. We're just moving in together. We said explicitly, as part of the negotiations, that we were not going to combine book collections. There are books I read once every 15 years or so, that I could perfectly well get from the library, and if it's in another room of the apartment that feels like a safety net in case the library stops having it.

One sad thing about this move is that I will be losing a library network. The Minuteman Library Network includes libraries in every Middlesex village and town. (They won't take my card away when I move across the river, but I'll feel guilty about using it until it breaks.) The Boston Public Library is for everyone who lives, works, or goes to school in Massachusetts. It's nice to have both.

[pameladean]

The need for a safety net for a great many books is a major reason we have not gotten very far with culling.

When David and I moved in together, we said that we were not doing so in order to cut down on the number of copies of Tolkien's works that we had. Shakespeare got in under the same statement, and a startling number of other writers too.

Also there's the need to have two sets of somethings lest, in lending one out, it suddenly becomes essential to reread the books. Dorothy Sayers, Dorothy Dunnett, and Patrick O'Brian are particularly prone to this difficulty.

I am sorry about the diminishment in your available library networks.

P.

[adrian_turtle]

I think it really makes a difference that we are making this move after ebooks have become so generally available. That should probably be another post, but it really does change the calculation. It makes it a lot easier to give up hard copies, especially when the alternative would be picking up and moving to a different city.

[pameladean]

I started to do that, but all that I did in the end was to remove to my office a bunch of series that I knew nobody else would read, or if they suddenly took a notion, they'd ask me where the books were. This freed up space on shared shelves, but that space was filled within the week.

P.

[hobbitbabe]

I don't even like Emily that much, and Dean Priest is a total creep...but you still kind of get attached after so long.

Yes, I'm pretty sure I could grab my own copy of this in 2 minutes, the copy I got for a birthday after I was outgrowing Anne. I don't own the earlier two of this trilogy.

And yay to sharing space but not merging book collections, a wise choice for grownups.