I love books. Sure, I don't read as many as I should, but I love reading. I've bought so many books lately, hoping to read them soon, but I've not got round to them yet.
One consequence of having so many books is you end up needing loads of shelf space. Now, my room's quite small, so if I need more space, I can't just buy another shelf. Instead, I need to put them in some unconventional places, maybe put a book in front of another, and those tend to be unaesthetic for me.
The first solution would be to just get rid of some books, but I love some books too much to get rid of them. So many of them hold a dear place in my heart, and I just couldn't imagine giving them away, it would feel like betraying a part of myself. Some books, I'm more willing to give in and pack them off to charity, maybe sell them second-hand in some cases. They tend to be either books I've outgrown or which I just plain hate, the kinds I'd regret getting in the first place.
There are two simple fixes, of course:
- stop being so sentimental;
- stop buying books.
I agree with the first, the second...less so. Libraries are great, sure, but it feels like they're all closing down nowadays. Have you seen how expensive a British Library membership is? And I love my uni, but it's so STEM-orientated that their fiction output is almost depressing to look at. So instead, I go to bookshops, hope the book I want is cheap, and off I go. Even so, I sometimes find myself buying a book on a whim, and there goes £10.
That's probably more context than necessary for this post. Recently, I decided to give in and give away some books I have. They're mostly non-fiction, such as dictionaries and factbooks, even the football atlas I blogged about a few years ago. Now I can shuffle some books over there, except it's not really a shelf, it's the top of a drawer. And one of those books, I was mainly using as a bookend, funnily enough. I also like keeping fiction and non-fiction books separate, which yes I'll get over, but I find it a bit satisfying to order my books like it's my personal library.
And, more importantly...that's still not enough space!
To be fair, as someone who tends to collect stuff, I'm used to running out of space. I'll find a solution in the end, why wouldn't I, but first I must get back to reading.
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