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Post Your bookshelf/Library

DrHappyAngryDrHappyAngry Member Posts: 1,577
in Off-Topic
The famous quotes thread made me start thinking, I have the most schizophrenic book collection. So show me your library, I want to see it!



I've got a disjointed mix of classics and history, older American literature like Twain and Poe, a bunch of Sci-Fi, some out of print non-fiction by Asimov, with some crazy counter culture stuff like Hunter S Thompson and Ken Kesey, as well as a shelf of Manga from those 2 years I lived above a Japanese book store.

Right now, I'm reading Armageddon in Retrospect, a posthumous Vonnegut book. The last book I finished was the Anabasis by Xenophon.

Comments

  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    edited January 2018
    Can't post any pictures, as my modest book collection is still packed away. But I have most of Tolkien's more mainstream works: Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, the SIlmarillion, as well as the Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. I have "The Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis, the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe, a collection of many of H.P. Lovecraft's works, the Hitchhiker series by Douglas Adams, the complete collection of Bone by Jeff Smith, and Uzumaki by Junji Ito.
    *edit* forgot to mention a copy of Beowulf. Doh, need to turn in my Christian card. I failed to mention my Bible, sigh. Darn thing is never on the bookshelf anyway.
    Post edited by ThacoBell on
  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    edited January 2018
    You wanted to see the library?
    Here you go.

    https://www.leue-photo.com/england-complete/source/image/uk-0094.jpg











    (I wish. However the couple of over stocked, messy, bookshelves we have in reality is something I would never put on the internet) :'(
  • DrHappyAngryDrHappyAngry Member Posts: 1,577
    Heh, Library Porn. I'd love to have a library like that someday. I'm still using that old steel shelf I salvaged from a gas station I was working at like 17 years ago. I snagged figuring it'd be really sturdy and last, and it has. I keep wanting to get a nice wood bookshelf, but other priorities always seem to preempt it.
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    Sure:



    It is mostly a collection of short stories, poetry, history, and pop culture studies. It also has a mixture of my roommates books as well. A fun game we have with guests is guess whose books are whose.

  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    DrHappyAngry said:

    Heh, Library Porn. I'd love to have a library like that someday. I'm still using that old steel shelf I salvaged from a gas station I was working at like 17 years ago. I snagged figuring it'd be really sturdy and last, and it has. I keep wanting to get a nice wood bookshelf, but other priorities always seem to preempt it.

    I've visited a lot of stately homes and castles over the years and that library was the most stunning thing I have ever seen.
    High Victorian, modeled on a first class railway carriage, but then with an extra twist of it being in an effing great castle with owners who had a lot of money.

    And the descendants still get to live there, all the plebs like me paying money to gaze in awe at their treasures. Could almost make you revolt, but then it wouldn't exist at all, so those are the breaks
  • tbone1tbone1 Member Posts: 1,985
    My wife and I are book nerds. We have two 7 foot by 4 foot book shelves packed book, two 5x4 shelves over the computer desk, two five foot shelves with first editions, and some things packed away. All are messy, of course. we actually READ our books.
  • DrHappyAngryDrHappyAngry Member Posts: 1,577
    tbone1 said:

    My wife and I are book nerds. We have two 7 foot by 4 foot book shelves packed book, two 5x4 shelves over the computer desk, two five foot shelves with first editions, and some things packed away. All are messy, of course. we actually READ our books.

    Let me see, I don't mind if it's messy, just curious what others are into.

    I've actually read almost everything that's up on my shelf. There's a small stack in the center that's stacked vertically instead of horizontally, and that's my to read stack (the stack with The Epic of Gilgamesh). Admittedly I do occasionally pick up a book and decide I'm not into it. I hate to say it, but I just don't like Edward Gibbon, he rambles and meanders far too much. I tried reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and he'll go off for like 2 pages about how much Commodus sucked, but not provide any actual reasons in those 2 pages.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    The Epic of Gilgamesh is interesting. I remember the first time I read it thinking, "I swear I've read this before." Being the oldest known epic, you can see its roots in almost every adventure fantasy.
  • Contemplative_HamsterContemplative_Hamster Member Posts: 844
    edited January 2018
    I've got thousands of books. Recently got rid of hundreds. Still have thousands. They're everywhere, not just in one room, so no pics can do justice.

    Edit: Wondermark is right on the money.
    http://wondermark.com/442/
  • Dev6Dev6 Member Posts: 719
    Contemplative_Hamster said:

    I've got thousands of books. Recently got rid of hundreds. Still have thousands. They're everywhere, not just in one room, so no pics can do justice.

    Edit: Wondermark is right on the money.
    http://wondermark.com/442/

    Sounds like you live in paradise. :)
  • tbone1tbone1 Member Posts: 1,985
    DrHappyAngry said:

    Admittedly I do occasionally pick up a book and decide I'm not into it. I hate to say it, but I just don't like Edward Gibbon, he rambles and meanders far too much. I tried reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and he'll go off for like 2 pages about how much Commodus sucked, but not provide any actual reasons in those 2 pages.

    I once saw, possibly in 1066 and All That, the book refered to as “The Fall and Rise of the Roman Gibbon by Edward Empire” and I have been unable to take it seriously ever since.
  • GrammarsaladGrammarsalad Member Posts: 2,582
    The rest of my books are in my closet. It's too messy and embarrassing to show :blush:


  • DrHappyAngryDrHappyAngry Member Posts: 1,577
    tbone1 said:

    The pride of my collection. From 1906 until his death in 1930, Kin Hubbard wrote a one panel comic for The Indianapolis News that was soon nationally syndicated. Groucho Marx, for one, was a big fan. Every year he put out limited runs of his best comics, sayings, and columns at Christmas time. These are rare and people don’t give them up, so when I find one I buy it.

    Nice. I recently stumbled across Isac Asimov's The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science, but it was $300 bucks, since it was signed. I'm still tempted by it, it's probably still at that shop. Funny thing is that shop had to move all the Hunter S Thompson and Phillip K Dick to behind the counter, since those get stolen all the time.
  • QuickbladeQuickblade Member Posts: 957
    Re-reading is a major cause of bookshelf explosions across my apartment, which is akin to a physical book version of restartitis.
    Contemplative_Hamster said:

    I've got thousands of books. Recently got rid of hundreds. Still have thousands. They're everywhere, not just in one room, so no pics can do justice.

    Edit: Wondermark is right on the money.
    http://wondermark.com/442/

    This is me.

    I've only got 2 bookshelves in my apartment, but I've got hundreds of paperback fantasy/sci-fi novels that used to be stacked 3 high and 3 deep on one shelf before I exploded it across my bedroom because of rereaditis, a complete collection of "Great Books of the Western World" that takes up 2 shelves by itself, and is a treasure of, well, what it says on the spines, and yet more books ranging from dictionaries to college textbooks to chemical reference books to DnD gaming books to hardback sci-fi books to children's/teen/young adult books to yet more fantasy novels. About the only genres that I don't think I have ANY books in are (auto)biographies and political BS books. Ain't nobody got time for that. Although I've been mulling about making an exception for "Fire and Fury".

    On my dresser is about 8 stacks books ranging from about 1 to 2.5 feet high each.

    And then there's all the books I've left behind at my parent's place, probably half again as many books...

    So to show you the bulk of my library, I'd have to take a few pictures of my very messy bedroom.

    I don't have thousands, but I certainly do have several hundreds.

    I'd like to get rid of some of them, I do actually have a box of them that are duplicates or I've read and didn't like. Most of my collection happened at a massive used bookstore, and I'd buy dozens at once and not read all of them before the next visit, causing me to buy duplicates for when I bought them because I didn't remember reading them, or forgot.

    But a LOT of them I've read, many of whom I don't really think I'll ever re-read. But still, I don't want to get rid of them, because I do cherish the stories in them.

    I'll part with my books when I'm on the ground stone-cold dead. E-books have NOTHING on physical copies. Except storage capacity versus volume, I'll admit.
    UnderstandMouseMagic said:

    I've visited a lot of stately homes and castles over the years and that library was the most stunning thing I have ever seen.
    High Victorian, modeled on a first class railway carriage, but then with an extra twist of it being in an effing great castle with owners who had a lot of money.

    And the descendants still get to live there, all the plebs like me paying money to gaze in awe at their treasures. Could almost make you revolt, but then it wouldn't exist at all, so those are the breaks

    Last June I was on a cruise with my mother around the British Isles. We went to Trinity College, home of the Book of Kells. The Trinity College Library was, while not the largest library I've been in, certainly the one that was most awe-inspiring. It was like visiting a cathedral.

    Plus, you know, seeing THE Book of Kells in person.
  • shmity72shmity72 Member Posts: 46
    well my study is also the play room' for my grandson at the moment so most literature is on the top shelf.

    i have a turn of the 18th/19th century color pilgrims progress. 2nd edition, steven donaldson thomas covenant series, bible, cs lewis stuff, bernard shaw, rudyard kipling, carl jung, ibsen, etc and non fiction crap like grays anatomy, oh yah lots of research stuff for faerun. i know i'm forgetting something?
  • shmity72shmity72 Member Posts: 46
    i was friends with a former curator of the burke museum, wesley wher, at the university of washington. he mentored me in fine lit. etc..i also got to see the underbelly of the climate controlled 'lower library..that was cool.
    way back in da' early 90s
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Most of mine are in digital form. Should I still take a picture lol
  • shmity72shmity72 Member Posts: 46
    http://www.trollart.com/fossilslides/show3/pages/paleoNerds.117.html

    that guy^
  • booinyoureyesbooinyoureyes Member Posts: 6,164
    OOOhhhh, I can't wait to go home and take a picture of mine.

    My friends and I call this the "Shelfie". Like a selfie, but less duck face and more text.
  • tbone1tbone1 Member Posts: 1,985
    @Nonnahswriter Guess what? I met John Green at a Pacers game two or three years ago; we were next to each other on the escalator coming from the parking garage. Nice guy; I kept the conversation to basketball because it was a Pacers game and he might need the break from the book nerds like me.
  • DrHappyAngryDrHappyAngry Member Posts: 1,577
    So these are a couple of my prized possesions, my gold leaf copy of Huck Finn and other works, and my signed Pic of Richard Cheese.

    For xmas, I gave my friend a beautiful gold leaf copy of The Aeneid. I had a tough time not wanting to keep that one for myself.
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