Your Personal Library Policies

[Era Might]

I'm curious how everyone determines what books you keep, what books you buy, what books you can do without, etc.

I've greatly reduced my library. It's become an obsession with me to only keep the books that I absolutely need or want. Here are a few of my guidelines:

-If it's an author that I consider to be essential to my thinking, then he stays. Depending on how essential he is, I will build up the collection over the years.

-If it's a book that I really like, then it may be able to stay. But it's not enough that I just "like" it. It has to be a significant book or a significant author (at least, significant to me).

-No anthologies. I hate them. If it's not a full work, then it can't stay...unless the author is so significant that I want to keep the anthology for the time being, with an eye toward eventually buying the complete works. If I wouldn't buy their complete works, then the anthology probably won't be allowed to stay.

-If it's a book that I can easily obtain from the library, then it probably won't be allowed to stay. There are some exceptions (usually for literature). If it's a rare book, then it will probably be allowed to stay, even if it doesn't meet some of the other guidelines (though, of course, that depends on how significant the author/book is to me). For example, I have an old edition of William Bradford's history of Plymouth Plantation. It's a sort of collectible, and it would be a good find for someone with a particular interest in early American history...but I'm not particularly interested in the book, so I don't want it in my library (someone gave it to me for free).

-As far as buying books, I hate buying new books from a bookstore. I would rather buy used books (and you can sometimes get interesting older editions this way). I absolutely refuse to buy books randomly from the bookstore. If I'm going to buy a book, it has to meet all the guidelines for my library. I certainly would not go to the bookstore and buy a book just because it looks interesting. If I buy a book, I do so deliberately. I would certainly not buy a "current events" book...I can use the library to read those books.

Edited June 14, 2010 by Era Might

[goldenchild17]

If it's a book that I think I can get enough cash to make it worthwhile to sell, then I consider it. Otherwise I never get rid of any books if I can help it.

[IgnatiusofLoyola]

I have a library of roughly 2,000 books, mostly mysteries. One (small) room in my house has bookshelves on all four walls. The cats enjoy going around the perimeter of the room without touching the floor.

--I only buy mystery authors that I like. So, it isn't unusual that I don't buy a book until I have read it, and decided I liked it, or found that I liked the author.

--I mostly buy used paperbacks. My library is for reading, not to collect first editions.

--If I like a book, I read it over and over. So, I find it frustrating not to own a book that I like when I feel like reading it, which is why I depend less and less on the public library for mysteries.

--I like a lot of the "Golden Age" mystery authors, and most public libraries no longer carry all of these author's books (and many have gone out of print). So, over the years, I have collected full sets of authors such as Agatha Christie (whom I enjoy, but who is not my favorite mystery author). There are probably 15-20 authors whom I like enough to have "full sets."

--I do have my library cataloged, but sometimes I'll accidentally buy a duplicate. I give the duplicates to my sister, who enjoys mysteries, too.

--I don't lend out my books, because I found I often didn't get them back. The exception is the Sisters across the street--they ALWAYS return my books eventually. But, sometimes it's awhile, because if one Sister likes a book, she'll pass it around to other Sisters. The Sisters particularly like Golden Age mysteries--like me, they prefer mysteries with as little sex and violence as possible, known in the trade as "cozies." I prefer books set in the UK to those set in the US, with a few exceptions. (The Sisters are all retired, which is why they have the time to read mysteries. But, obviously, they still pray at set times of the day, and do work around the convent, to the extent their health allows.)

--Because of the Sisters, I have quite a large collection of "nun" mysteries, and Catholic mysteries in general, because the Sisters particularly enjoy those. (But, I enjoy them, too.)

--I don't throw away any mystery books. However, I also have a number of travel books, from the days when I used to travel a lot. I do throw away old travel books, because once they are very out-of-date, most travel books are not useful, and none of my travel books are unusual enough to be "collectibles."

--I'd much rather read a book than go to a movie.

Edited June 14, 2010 by IgnatiusofLoyola

[Hassan]

If I want the book and I have the money for it I buy it.

I guess I tend towards spending money only on reference sorts of books. Usually the subject reflects what I am working on. So I would buy Russian Politics and Society by Richard Sakwa because it is a five hundred plus page book on the formal structures of Russian society and trends within those structures. Things like trends in federalization. It's not a speculative book likely to by obsolete in five years.

I mark the books I read up. I underline a lot and write a lot of notes and references (like other authors whose points explain some mystery the author notes or expands upon his conclusion) and conclusions. I feel bad about doing that to library books and if I check them out I lose all my notes.

I don't have a big system or anything. I just do that because I'm a student which means I'm on a pretty fixed income and I don't want to waste my money. I buy used because they are cheep. I find $50 or $60 dollar books for like $7 by looking at Amazon.

[Sojourner]

I've actually been thinking about this lately since I've recently made a number of acquisitions for research purposes.

* In general, I don't utilize public libraries. I find my style of reading is not compatible with the limited borrowing period and fine structure most libraries impose. I will occasionally use libraries for research, particularly for periodicals such as scholarly journals. Those are often impractical to obtain for my personal collection.

* If a book is on a topic I am interested in, and I've seen it referenced in other sources (bibliographies, suggested reading lists, etc.), I am more inclined to buy it. I am less concerned with whether the author's views are personally significant to me -- I would prefer to have a well-rounded group of texts that offers me a variety of perspectives on a given subject. Right now, two of my research interests are contraception and marriage. So, I have a number of sources on each topic from Catholic, Protestant, and secular sources. Some of these sources are historical in nature, others philosophical, and others theological. I'm also interested in the Reformation, and have a number of books on that subject, also from a wide range of sources.

* For my "fun reading" I have a few different groupings. If I like a particular author well enough, I'll typically buy whatever he or she writes. Or, sometimes I'll buy on a particular topic. For example, polar exploration is fascinating to me, so I have a bunch of books about things like the Franklin expedition.

* I have a small collection of books I'd categorize as "spiritual writings." These are mostly personal reflections and observations by writers I find interesting.

* I buy books for my children's library from time to time as well. These are either books I read and enjoyed as a child, or books that I would have enjoyed if I'd read them. I also have a decent collection of teen and young adult fantasy novels/series. I primarily collect these because I want to have books available to my children that are relatively wholesome but will still stir their imaginations.

* My fiction collection runs the gamut; some books are mass-market junk (murder-mystery thrillers) and some are critically acclaimed works of literature.

* I don't really have much in the way of anthologies, although I do have a couple of poetry anthologies. I have no particularly strong feelings on them, since most of the stuff I'm interested in doesn't come in anthology form. I do have a couple of essay collections, and I tend to like those because they offer a conversation between different authors on a topic that interests me.

* I buy both new and used books. I probably have a close-to-even split, but slightly more new than used. I often buy online if I have specific topics or books I'm interested in acquiring. In my experience, bookstores are typically geared more for the pop reader than for the scholar. This is not necessarily true of used bookstores, but it is definitely true of larger chains like Barnes & Noble.

* I don't lend out my books, unless I don't care about getting them back. I have not found that people are conscientious about returning books.

[Hilde]

This is not a particularly thought through policy or anything, it's just how I do it.

*I'm not a fan of libraries. Only if there's a particular topic I want to research. Most of the books I've borrowed from the library have been about makeup and beauty and the like.

*I like owning books. I like to make the books "my own" by drawing in them. Writing, highlighting and so on so I'll know what I was thinking and thought was important the last time I read it.

*I don't like crime.(the genre duh) Norway and Scandinavia is big on crime book and I know many people who like and read them, but its just not my thing. I like fact books, diary,reflective or fact books more than novels. Most of the novels I have are classics, so a novel has got to be really good for me to own it.

*I don't really like selling or throwing away books that I've read. Even though I might never read it again.

*People have borrowed books from me before, and I'm completely fine and happy with that. Reading is what books are for. It's my experience too that people don't always return stuff. I currently have one video game and two books divided between three people that has not been returned for maybe like over a year.

* My library is void of books on politics.

* I have a lot of paperbacks. They're cheaper to buy and to ship.

* I like old books. I don't only mean books written long ago, but books that are physically old. Especially churchy books like psalm books and bibles.

* I order most of my books online. From amazon or British book stores. They can be used. I like reading a lot about the books beforehand, and they aid me in making decisions of what books to buy.

*I don't really have any favourite authors. Content is more important than the face behind it. I find myself with a bunch of scott hahn books on my shelves though. If it's about Catholicism it has to be orthodox of course, so the author can be important in that respect. And I own the complete works of edgar allan poe.

* If I could, I would have a room like Frasier's brother Niles.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Hilde' date='14 June 2010 - 06:57 PM' timestamp='1276556276' post='2128844']And I own the complete works of edgar allan poe.
[/quote]
So do I.

I also own the complete stories of Flannery O'Connor.

Edited June 14, 2010 by Era Might

[CatherineM]

It has to be a book I will read more than once or a book I need for my courses. Once I graduate, I will pare those down.

[Marie-Therese]

I would rather buy books than anything else.

My library is extensive and topically diverse. I have quite a lot of older books which were passed to me by my parents, including a large set of the classics which contains everything from the Autobiography of Ben Franklin to War and Peace to The Last Days of Pompeii. I have several collections of books from the 50s and 60s and a lot of them are books that I cherished in childhood (Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Little Women, etc.). I have lots of theological books, a huge collection of different Bible translations, and then I have my "books I would save in event of fire." That includes my breviary, a copy of Divine Intimacy, my Bible, a collected T.S. Eliot and a collected Frost, Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, and a hand bound copy of a book my father wrote while he was alive. He had a few copies printed and sewn at a bookbinder, and he covered each one by hand. That one is priceless.

I would have a house completely devoid of everything if I could just have shelves of books. I only get rid of books that completely have no meaning or interest to me.

[TeresaBenedicta]

I just love books, frankly, so I'm pretty liberal on what I keep. If it interests me, I keep it. I kept the majority of my school books because the majority of them were well worth the reading and well worth the keeping. (Philosophy and Theology, mostly, and mostly original works.)

Right now I can't do a lot of book buying. If I do buy something now, it's probably going to be something on a particular subject of interest to me. For example, I just bought [i]Natura Pura[/i] by Steven Long, OP. It deals with a controversy in Philosophy/Theology that is of particular interest to me: the nature/supernatural ends and grace relationship.

At some point in the near future I'm going to have to go through all my books and get rid of anything that isn't "convent" appropriate. Everything else will go to the community library.

[Brother Adam]

I have also scaled back significantly on the number of books I buy and keep. I used to own something like 8 large bookcases to contain the books I owned and now I can keep them all in 4 (about 14 shelves). If I am not likely to read a book in a long time, if ever, I try to get rid of it, even if it is a cool book or good topic. I have owned a significant number of Catholic books that I just really have no use for and have sold a lot of them. The only collection I regret selling is my GK Chesterton collection, but I needed the cash.

The older I get the more I loathe material possessions. I have a great battle brewing within me right now to sell almost everything I own - especially our tv. Material possessions are too distracting and most do not add to a truly good and holy life, but I realize I have a family and have to consider their needs and what makes them legitimately happy as well. If it were up to me today I would only own clothes and books - and perhaps a radio.

[Thomist-in-Training]

What a great topic!

Like Brother Adam, I sell books--when I need ten bucks, or when I am running out of room on the bookshelf my dad made me. Because of this, the amount of books I own has stayed pretty constant in the past year. Probably 50 books have passed through my hands though onto or off the shelf.

I used to never buy new books, but just the other day I bought an "essay" sort of rambling book that looked interesting. Sometimes I've found that Barnes and Noble does have useful things, like Petrarch in English and Italian (okay, actually I haven't used that as much as I hoped, but it was a good find), twelve short stories by different authors in English and Italian, "Oldman's Guide to Outsmarting Wine," and that sort of thing.

I have

old paperbacks that I have snuck off my parents' shelves downstairs (a few "Jeeves and Wooster" books for example), notebooks, Latin and French and Italian dictionaries, poetry, a cherished copy of 'Hamlet,' and about ten cookbooks that I love dearly. Also saint books and other spiritual readingy things. I read a good amount of novels, but I have bought few of them for myself as an adolescent & young adult and must have sold most of the ones I did because I don't have many on the shelf. In fact, my sister was quite angry when I told her I sold "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." I think I was right though--it's not very well-written compared to 'Order of the Phoenix' and 'Deathly Hallows' (which last sits there, orangely, right now).
Also, the first volume of the Summa which I saw used.

Ignatia (can I call you that for short? you can say no), can you list some 'cozies'? I'm eager to know of some--over the past year I read all of Sherlock Holmes, which I loved, and this month two of Ralph McInerny's (sp?) which I mostly liked but a little sadly seemed to fall just past the edge of cozy into PG13 land.

[CatherineM]

I'm having to pack all my books up right now. The flood didn't get them, but I have to move everything out for the repairs. It is staggering how many I have. I've only been here 4 years, and they have bred and reproduced apparently.

[IgnatiusofLoyola]

[quote name='Thomist-in-Training' date='14 June 2010 - 09:52 PM' timestamp='1276570341' post='2129092']
Ignatia (can I call you that for short? you can say no), can you list some 'cozies'? [img]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/public/style_emoticons/default/detective.gif[/img] I'm eager to know of some--over the past year I read all of Sherlock Holmes, which I loved, and this month two of Ralph McInerny's (sp?) which I mostly liked but a little sadly seemed to fall just past the edge of cozy into PG13 land.
[/quote]

Sure, I can do that. Give me a day or two to look through my collection and rate my "cozies" and I'll send you a PM. Some of the "coziest" books are the older mysteries, of which you can probably find some at the library, but the library probably won't have everything a given author wrote. If you like Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, you'll like some of the English cozies. In the list, I'll be sure to include Sister Helen's favorites--the religious Sister "stamp of approval." I also like cozies with a sense of humor, I'll include a few of those. But, any book I recommend IS going to have a corpse, since it's a mystery, but it won't dwell much on the murder itself, mostly on the characters.

I'd say call me Iggy (or, since there is another Iggy on Phatmass who shows up once in awhile, you can also call me IggyLoy).

[Era Might]

I've been thinking today that I'm going to just not have a personal library...I'm just going to keep a few books that I know I will read throughout my life. What annoys me about a personal library is that it never ends. I don't want to spend money on books for the rest of my life. I think I'm only going to keep books that are ABSOLUTELY essential (e.g., "The Complete Works of Shakespeare"). There are probably no more than 10 or 20 books on my shelf that fit that description.

Edited June 15, 2010 by Era Might