Book Hoarding

gveranon said:
Not having space, and not having time to read books I already own, I've been buying fewer books recently. I tell myself to hold off purchasing this or that book until I'm living in a larger place. But rent is rising fast in the town where I live, so when will I ever be living in a larger place? Save for retirement or live in a larger place--that's a stark either/or.

In the meantime, I occasionally feel compelled to buy this or that particular book for true hoarding purpose. I spot a book that I think I might want in the future--no time to read it now, but it's out of print and used copies are scarce, so naturally I must buy a copy immediately. Or I see a new book that I might want in my future of fantasied leisure, and it's the kind of book that will likely go out of print and never be reprinted; obviously buying it now is the only sensible thing to do.

An example of the former: I really enjoyed William S. Wilson's collection Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka, and I saw that he had published one novel, long out of print, called Birthplace: Moving Into Nearness. A few used copies were still available at reasonable price. Snagged it.

An example of the latter: I was enticed by rave reviews of the recently published Questioning Minds: The Letters of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner, but I wondered if I'd ever find time to read this trove. So I was going to pass on it for now. But then I realized: this looks like the kind of thing (boxed, two-volume set) that may never be reprinted and that will shortly be unavailable except for expensive used copies. I was already half-regretting not buying Arno Schmidt's massive typescript-novel Bottom's Dream when I had the chance. So... I received the Davenport/Kenner boxed set yesterday, two oversized, 1,000-page volumes of fine print, extensively footnoted and indexed. Incredible. Where am I going to put it and when am I going to read it?

The realities of future book (un)availability make this sort of hoarding necessary, right?
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That's interesting since when I make book purchase I don't think of it in terms of future scarcity or value.
 
ToALonelyPeace said:
That's interesting since when I make book purchase I don't think of it in terms of future scarcity or value.
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I'm not considering future scarcity/price in order to buy books as an investment. I only buy books I want to read. I've just learned from experience that, with some books, waiting to buy is a mistake. Unfortunately this consideration sometimes compels me to buy books that I only might want to read in the future, and that I only might have time to read. This type of activity seems to me to be true hoarding, as opposed to the more usual experience of being over-enthusiastic when shopping for books, or seeing many enticing titles and having eyes bigger than your appetite, as the saying goes. And yet this true hoarding instinct, driven by thoughts that one might want certain books that might be scarce or expensive in the unknown future, seems like merest common sense to me. It is common sense, right?
 
gveranon said:
I'm not considering future scarcity/price in order to buy books as an investment. I only buy books I want to read. I've just learned from experience that, with some books, waiting to buy is a mistake. Unfortunately this consideration sometimes compels me to buy books that I only might want to read in the future, and that I only might have time to read. This type of activity seems to me to be true hoarding, as opposed to the more usual experience of being over-enthusiastic when shopping for books, or seeing many enticing titles and having eyes bigger than your appetite, as the saying goes. And yet this true hoarding instinct, driven by thoughts that one might want certain books that might be scarce or expensive in the unknown future, seems like merest common sense to me. It is common sense, right?
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I suppose it is though for me I regret buying a book more often than not buying one. There are so many limited editions released every month and discovery of books I might enjoy that I feel I can never catch a break with purchasing books. So I place a stricter limit on what I purchase, and if I have passed a rare book I now want to read it's too bad- others will fill its place and I'll soon forget it altogether. Sometimes it happened like that and the book's price increased from $30 to $80 and while I knew it would be $150 later, I got quite annoyed and determined to not purchase or think about it anymore. I can't remember the title but I remember being very stubborn about it. Hahaha, maybe I'm just a cheap bastard!
 
To me it does seem commonsensical to go ahead and buy any particular book I want now, rather than waiting until it becomes scarce/expensive. But several thousand books later, I realize that common sense might, just might, have gone off the rails somewhere.
 
My book buying is similar to gveranon's. I know that if I don't buy certain titles now, in six months they will be forever out of reach. I always justify my purchase by telling myself that I can sell it for a profit later. This is true, and many times over in most instances. It is also true that I never sell my books. I occasionally drop some off at Goodwill to thin the herd, but, even then, often to my regret, because somewhere down the line I'll be looking for that book that I gave away six months ago. Definitely off the rails. It is probably some form of OCD or something related to a fear of death. Broad brush there.
 
There is a bakery near my house that has a wall of shelves with books. Their policy is "take a book, leave a book". Sometimes I do exactly that with the books I've read and can part with. Then I buy a croissant and a capuchino.
 
marioneta said:
There is a bakery near my house that has a wall of shelves with books. Their policy is "take a book, leave a book". Sometimes I do exactly that with the books I've read and can part with. Then I buy a croissant and a capuchino.
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Yeah there’s a book shop type thing on the high street near me but it’s all free and these people who have bought the building just encourages people to bring in old books and you can take anything you want for free.

I’ve started dropping some of my old paperbacks in there.
 
gveranon said:
But several thousand books later, I realize that common sense might, just might, have gone off the rails somewhere.
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A trick that works for me, is that I'll read up through the TOC and forward/intro/preface of everything in my personal library. That way I have a better sense of what I still have to look forward to and I can think about that instead of thinking about what I don't have yet. That doesn't entirely stop the books from stacking up of course.
 
Metaphysical Mutant said:
A trick that works for me, is that I'll read up through the TOC and forward/intro/preface of everything in my personal library. That way I have a better sense of what I still have to look forward to and I can think about that instead of thinking about what I don't have yet. That doesn't entirely stop the books from stacking up of course.
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...And the foreword/intro/preface mentions some other title in a way that stirs strong interest in your breast and cortex, and you keep your cool and simply file that other title in your memory, and by the next day you realize that the other title, as described, is exactly what you need to read next (or, if not next, at least very soon), and you can't believe your luck as you order it and keenly await its arrival. Repeat, repeat, repeat...
 
If it's a discipline problem, it's not a problem like, say, "one more potato chip." Books are unique, and the next one might be just the aesthetic experience you wanted (or close to it, anyway), or it might contain just the information or idea or conceptual framework you've been looking for. So you need that next book in a way that you don't need the next potato chip (or whatever).

Seriously.
 
I was a real mess before I read this passage from Roland Topor's The Tenant.


The bookstalls were as repulsive to him as an endless row of garbage cans. Intellectual ragpickers probed unconcernedly through all the refuse on display, searching for some morsel of spiritual nourishment. When they found it, an expression of animal-like cupidity crossed their faces, and they snatched it up as if some enemy were lying in wait to steal it from them.


It cracked me up. Now I enjoy buying books, but I no longer need to. Ironically, I needed that book.
 
bendk said:
I was a real mess before I read this passage from Roland Topor's The Tenant....
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Occasionally I have been repulsed by the sight of fellow book shoppers. This has happened most often at library book sales (which I have learned to avoid). Thousands of books and a swarm of people acting like it's Black Friday at Walmart. (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.)

But when I desire and acquire books, I don't look at myself from the outside. It's an inward experience of thought and perception, and my main outward focus is on the books and their contents. No, I'm too immersed in this for the Topor passage to cure me of my fascination.
 
I don't have enough room for many more books, so I try and limit my physical purchases to books I can't get for my Kindle... apart from when it comes to pretty Tartarus editions.
 
On a tangential note, I am curious to know if book hunting features prominently in anyone else's dreams? I ask as they have become increasingly common for me in recent years, occurring at a rate of at least a couple times per month, and are likely my most frequent type of 'happy' dream, edging out even the more emotionally resonant 'encountering one's soulmate' sort of dream. These dreams invariably revolve around my browsing at a used bookshop/thrift store/library sale (something I do constantly) and happening upon a number of titles from my wishlist; usually these are books that exist in reality or are near-analogues, but there is a specific kind of disappointment, bordering at times on heartbreak, that results from waking up after one of these dreams realizing the book you were overjoyed at finding is an oneiric invention, a hybrid that has no basis in reality. As I said before, I have such dreams on an almost weekly basis - earlier this year I found myself looking for books in the same dream location so often that it obtained a strange kind of familiarity, able to be recognized both while asleep and in memory upon waking, and I can still recall the place's basic layout even now.

(Upon further reflection, just realized that this situation pretty much absolutely confirms Ligotti's statement that "the less you do, the less you dream about - but the more often, and more intensely, you dream". . .)
 
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@ChildofOldLeech: That's a nice recurrent dream. Talk about book hunting and dream reminds me of "Vastarien" or "The Medusa", especially the scene at an old bookshop's basement:
"The bookstore at street-level was no more than a messy little closet in comparison to the expansive disorder down below: a cavern of clutter, all heaps and mounds, with bulging tiers of bookshelves laid out according to no easily observable scheme. It was a universe constructed solely of the softly jagged brickwork of books. But if the Medusa was a book, how would he ever find it in this chaos?"

Unfortunately I haven't remembered my dreams for a while, and I buy almost all my books online. Most used bookstores around my area only carry high school literary books.
 
Others may relate.
My burg no longer has bookshops.
The majors are gone, though their stock seldom tempted me.
There are no Used bookshops, aside from a chain which shelves dreck.
Remainders, publishers overstock, cookbooks, crafty things.
Options at the public library are equally dismal.
Indeed, the library, which was a wonderful place for decades, strikes me as a sadly fading ghost every time I enter - and I visit twice a week.

My other great obsession, music, gradually ebbed as new trends no longer resonated with me and I ceased buying altogether.
I tell myself that buying books, protecting them, I am doing something akin to stewardship, safe guarding titles that may otherwise be lost.
The real trick, of course, is wisely dispersing the collection before I die.
Fail there, and the books' fate will be entrusted to the ignorant.
 
ChildofOldLeech- Strangely I haven't had book shopping dreams yet because I've had many many recurring dreams about finding amazing grotesque plastic toys, finding amazing unknown obscurities in a variety of comic shops across a town of and dreams of online porn hunting. But in each of these I'm usually stalled by obstacles or the objects elude me somehow, I rarely seem to actually get my hands on the prize.


Some of my reading goals, possibly impossible...

- All the Gollancz Masterworks books (even if it's not the actual Gollancz edition) and most of the Gollancz Gateway Omnibus books.
- All the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line and all the books/stories even considered for the line (as with the Gollancz line, I don't mind if it's an edition by a different publisher).
- All Snuggly books and maybe all Chomu?
- All modern Tartarus authors.
- Most of Blackcoat's translations of French books.
- A good lot of Dedalus, but all the anthologies.
- A good lot of Haikasoru and Kurodahan.
- Try a book by each author published by Hippocampus.
- A good chunk of Valancourt's horror/speculative reprints.
- Try a collection by each Word Horde author.
- A good lot of Undertow's books.
- Read every diversity/social group anthology or magazine I can find.
- Get everything I can by Egaeus.
- A ton of small press magazines.

For the fancy hardcover publishers I wont pay that much over the cover price. Most of the Zagava, Ex Occidente and Raphus stuff is out of my price range so I dont have much plans for them.
 
This thread has changed my book purchasing habit somewhat. I used to sit around until the books I wanted run out, but I guess the anxiety is getting to me.

Every year I promise myself to read than buy anymore books, yet this year I'm reading less compared to last year and buying even more books! At this point I need to put in red capital letters "THINK OF THE BUDGET!" whenever I go online.
 
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