(Easter Egg-Right click on images, open in new tab.)
( These are a couple of nifty things I happened to have in my office and snapped a quick pic of them.)
As far as what Tom has in his "library", he has relatively few books when compared to what he did have in the past. He used to have loads of books, and used to be a voracious reader of fiction, back in the day, as it were. For various reasons that you don't need to be too imaginative to conjure, he does very little reading of fictional materials at this point. I would say he does more "technical" reading than anything else at this point. Having said that, I have quite a few ex libris copies that I acquired from Tom over the years. For example, 6 or 7 years ago he sent me all his copies of Thomas Bernhard's works, as well as all of Dino Buzzati's tomes that he owned, so I was lucky enough to get those, among others. Tom doesn't even have copies of his own books on his shelves, reprints or otherwise. In fact, I have acquired a good deal of his personal copies of those as well, as well as hand-written manuscripts, introductions that were never used, and other such things, which I am grateful for. So Tom does not have much kicking around in terms of a "library" of his own, at least when it comes to the stuff you would expect a guy like him to have. Having said that, there are few people I know of that have read as much as Tom, and he certainly has encyclopedic knowledge of literary fiction and far, far beyond that. I have never encountered another human being that knows as much as he does. In fact, I have never had a conversation with him about anything that he could not contribute to in a very deep, meaningful way. It is truly astonishing.
And to Pan Michael, I also have Tom's copy of the Lovecraft Art book, the one you mentioned above, which is signed and inscribed with a silver Sharpie. As you know, it is huge and weighs as much as a boat anchor.
As far as hoarding books is concerned, I have been collecting them since I was a kid. I still have tons of them, and have gotten rid of those which I no longer wanted over the years. I focus primarily on limited print runs of first edition hardcovers, both old and new, and have done so for a very long time. My book collection is probably the most important thing I own, generally speaking. Some day when I am no longer kicking, they will go to my daughter, and I have been trying to help her understand that it isn't
just a book collection, if you catch my drift...