Laughs in research library
“Throw out stuff so you can buy more” – Maria Kondo
Miss me with that braindead shit.
She doesn’t even follow her own system anymore because she had kids and her system doesn’t work well for families she admits.
You can pry the books I never read out my cold dead hands!
(Feel free to suggest me some public domain books I can get from Gutenberg, maybe I will read them)
Two copies of “Heading home with your newborn”?
They must have had twins.
Bang ! BOOM! CRASH!!
Dog jumps out of bed and runs into the other room
Me: sorry doggo I was trying to get a drink of water, get back in bed
Doggo: why you do all that noises you fool
How do I actually read more? Like how do force myself to read a book. I have some cool books I’d like to read but it’s hard to choose it over say a video game. I also have ADHD.
I got a kindle for Christmas and have read more in the last few months than in the last decade. I think it being a screen kinda helps, and also being able to download books instantly instead of having to go to the library or a bookstore.
My apartment is 60% books. I don’t have enough bookshelves, I have most loaded to the point where they are bending and there are piles of books stacked on top. Stacks and stacks and stacks.
I think my library is almost an art project at this point. I thrift a lot, check out library discard sales and have a bunch of things I bought when you could get books on Amazon for a penny + shipping. I often pick up 5-10 a week, because at the thrift shop that’s maybe $10 at most. (Goodwill is getting precious, but the really ratty ones are often prime spots.)
Very little fiction. Mostly textbooks and history and language and arcane computer things and strange religious literature and philosophy and paranormal arcana. Obscure things - I mostly collect things that I wouldn’t normally be able to find in a library.
My ex hated my books and wanted to work out a deal where I’d have to give up two for every one I took in. Now I am free to live in a pile of stacks. I don’t care if it looks “messy” or “cluttered.” It represents my mind.
A buddy called me to fix some plumbing in a house he baught , he said the previous owners were hoarders. So I went over and the whole fucking basement was wall to wall book shelves with fucking isles!
He said the lady that owned the house was some eccentric type that hung out in NY back in the 50’s around artists and writers, traveling the world etc. her husband was some sort of critic and they liked books.
I asked what he was doing with it all and he said he sold the contents of the house sight unseen to some guy that wanted it all and was going to be arriving any minute but if I wanted anything to take it now. My brain was scrambling, I didn’t want to be a dick so I just grabbed two books; Tropic of Cancer and Future Shock ( and a bunch of lab equipment that was in a secretive back room lol). They were both first edition books and had newspaper clippings about Miller and Toffler among other reviews that were stuffed in the pages.
It was crazy because they had so much bad ass shit , old leather bound stuff etc. It was just too much to process and I hope it didn’t all wind up in a dumpster. I wish I could have spent a few days pillaging those shelves.
If you should keep one thing in life it’s books.
When we moved in, the neighbors daughter was curious about the “new ones”, and asked if she could help.
I told her that I would be putting the books on the shelves the next day, and she promised to come over.
I don’t know what she expected (when we visited them, I never saw a book in their place), but she was shocked when she saw a large pile of boxes. I had just finished installing the first wall of shelves, and told her that we would have to sort the boxes out, only about 10k books were for the living room, the other would go up into the studio…
Anyone else have a redneck family that started dropping off endless truckloads of random used books from various flea markets at your home the very moment they found out that you like to read?
My parents sort of did this to me for a while… I did get some books I ended up really liking this way but we also lived way out in the country so getting to a library was difficult. Didn’t have much choice but to try them.
But then they realized I was well beyond kids/young adult books and started giving me books they liked when I was in 5th grade, like sphere and the third pandemic… my teachers thought it was super weird, and I got a lot of negative comments about age appropriate-ness, but I had a dictionary and undiagnosed autism (diagnosed adhd, though), it was fine.
I was so excited when we moved and I was walking distance from a library. I ended up getting 2 library cards so I could reserve a bunch of stuff and still check out 5 at a time (I was there usually twice a week, and would just burn through books at around 1,000 pages a day, because it was all I ever did)
It’s not that I’m not appreciative, it’s just that a 40+ year old man like myself can handle only so many Julia Quinn, Emma Chase, and Tessa Dare books
No but that sounds fucked up. A book collection should be a carefully curated catalog full of things that you personally love or find great use for, not some sad eclectic mix that looks like a hoarder’s pile.
But… Stephen King alone has written 65 novels…
This shit seems weirdly disposal/consumerism focused.
Fuck all of this.
Godamn, I feel bad about the one book I’m reading on top of the next book “I may or may not read.”
