Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

I have a lot of bookshelves along a wall of my house. People say "wow, how many of those books have you read?" and I say "almost none of them".

If I read a book, I usually get rid of it by selling it to a used bookstore, or handing it to somebody else. I buy books that look interesting when I see them, then take them home and shelve them, and promptly forget about them. When I want to read a new book, I browse my shelves the same way I'd browse at a bookstore, except every single book is interesting, or was at once time.

Sure, it's insane, but it's what I like to do.

A side effect is that I occasionally buy the same books several times, either because I want to reread it, or just because I forget that I've bought it already. That doesn't bother me, they all come from used bookstores I want to support anyway.

I have separate shelves for books I don't want to get rid of, like nice editions and heirlooms. But for the most part, almost all the books I own are unread, despite reading being one of the things I do the most.

Your whole comment is exactly me to a “t”.

However I’ve also given myself permission to just read parts of books. Especially nonfiction: pull it down, read a specific chapter, eventually back to the shelf.

another cool thing is if you’re looking for something specific, rather than google it, you prob have a few books on your shelf. An example for me recently was something like “growing herbs”.

Anyway, nice to see someone else with the same strain of bibliophilia, hope you have a good week!

Same thing, except that my collection is digital (due to shipping issue). Any subject that interests me, I collect some recommendations and get all the books in my library. And just like the parent comment, I usually do a quick browse (1 or 2 minutes). That to have some kind of metadata in memory, that I have a book that talk about this specific thing.

The nicest thing is that I have enough books to read for years now, so if I'm bored and don't feel like reading, that usually means that I should either sleep or go for a walk.

"Not having something ready to read" used to happen - many years ago. Yeah, that problem has been solved for sure. That's progress right there.

I think people need to forgive themselves in the way you describe.

I am wasteful with books I physically purchase. I am wasteful with movies I physically purchase.

There is a used DVD store nearby. There are used bookstores.

Sometimes I buy a series of kindle books, and quit part way through the series.

Sometimes I start a project, then leave it unfinished.

forgive yourself for the mess.

because somewhere in all this mess is true happiness.

I like to guess the "timeless-ness" factor of a book. If a book seems to have it, I'm likely to shelve it to build a library for my kids. Filter question: will this book have any value in 10 or 20 years from today?

A late theologian from my country, truly wonderful and witty academic, used to say something like: it would be insulting for a book if you grab it from a store and start reading right away. A well-mannered, civil reader will first let the book mature in the shelf for a good ten years or so. :)

This was said tongue-in-cheek, obviously, but it's a good line. She was a classical philologist, translated works by Platon, Hieronymus, Martin Luther etc. So I suppose she lived in a somewhat different time zone as compared to the rest of us -- as in, if your mental horizon expands to some 2000 years, a decade of waiting for a book to "mature in the shelf" is, indeed, nothing. :)

Sounds like fun with a lot of bookshelves. I have a crazy long "to read" note file. It's not possible that I'm going to ever read all that. And that file grows of course. So that a better procedure is for me to poke around the list when I have incoming time availability and get one or two that interest me NOW. After that, public and university libraries around me are very good - instead of a pre-filled bookshelf.

For reference books, I have started keeping around textbooks. When I want a discussion of X, between the web and the textbooks, it usually works out. (And my public libraries mostly don't stock textbooks - never understood that - so I keep some paper there.)

I behave this way with videogames, but here the result is called pile of shame

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