Yes, the electronic age is here and despite me making a good wage from it all, it's really rather rubbish.
What's really poor about the whole situation is that bookshelves are going to be come a thing of the past. There are people reading this who have never had one. And never will. It'll all live on some electronic gizmo or in the cloud and that's so sad.
There is nothing better than going into someone's house and while they finish getting ready, looking through their bookshelf. It's like being given a summary of the kind of person they are. I love looking at other peoples book shelves, love it! Although mine is small and sparse, I'd like to have a great big massive one (bookshelf), filled to the brim with books. But it's bad for the environment and nobody buys books and you can't browse someone's kindle.
What a bummer.
But it's bad for the environment and nobody buys books and you can't browse someone's kindle.
Why?
I've got two bookcases full of crap but it's loveable crap
If I was to put all my books on bookshelves, I'd need a bigger house... I do like books, but then I also liked vinyl. TBH if you could rip books to a kindle, I'd already have made the swap and done away with all the paper
TBH if you could rip books to a kindle, I'd already have made the swap and done away with all the paper
You have no soul.
Ditto CD cases, when you were dating a burrrd you could get a good guage on the type of person based on the volume of Dido & David Grey cd's 😉
We're seriously down-sizing. Baby imminent and space at a premium. We had three huge bookcases in a fairly small two-and-a-half bedroom terraced house. Lots of paperbacks had to go but lots of 'art' and photography books have survived the cull. Also, anything not related to proper literature has been given to charity shops.
All that said, there's nothing worse than a person who defines others according to their musical tastes / library. I take the point that it can help provide a summary of a persons' nature but "Don't judge a book by its cover, YO!".
😉
there's nothing worse than a person who defines others according to their musical tastes
A person with poor taste in music is worse 😉
if your TV is bigger than your bookshelf, then you're working class.
All that said, there's nothing worse than a person who defines others according to their musical tastes / library.
Not defining as such but a certain combo of CD's would indicate that a somewhat gung ho approach could be taken to getting some action.
Having emigrated books suffered in the move.
CD's/DVD's compact down well books just don't.
We only have one partially filled bookcase now and it does look a little lonely.
It was always good when someone came round to lend them a book if it took their fancy.
I'm having bookcases built into my new house. I'm aiming for a sort of old fashioned sitting room.
It all started because my missus has a large glass dome (think huge snow globe ) with stuff birds in it. So I fancy a kind Victorian, Sherlock Holmes theme. Anybody know where I can get an old stuffed grizzly near or a suit of armour? Oh, I'll need a fez for the bear too 🙂
Forgot to add, I agree with Samuri, I love books and other peoples bookshelves. And I hardly ever buy books new, the beauty of reading other people's books is they vary greatly. If I bought books they would probably all be very similar.
Plus, they are free, and the more people get kindles the more 2nd hand books for me 🙂
and at no point has anyone ever picked up a Kindle* and said "Wow I havn't read that is it any good"
*they may have and other ebook readers avaialable
I will never replace the feel of a good book with some ikindle!
I love books, I love the smell of an old book and the dogeared pages, I also like the pleasure of being the first person to read a brand new book.
I will always have a bookcase of sorts, I currently have 2 which considering my recent downsize is pretty good going.
Looking round at the small bookcase behind me, I can't see any fiction 🙁 lots of nature stuff, birds, flowers etc.
The kitchen bookcase naturally contains mainly cooking books but there's lots of them, IMO digital media can't replace these, grubby, stained recipe books with hand written annotations that have been handed down a couple of generations can't be digitised.
We have another small bookcase on the landing with mainly fiction and quite a few kids story books, the youngest one is now 16 so not really sure why we have all those, I'll ask the missus 🙂
However the real jewel is in my workshop, it's mainly filled with workshop manuals and parts lists for motorbikes from the 50s to the present along with many old Motorcycle Mechanics magazines from the 60s and 70s that I can only assume have a 'needed' article in them. 😕
All my fiction reading is via a Kindle now though
wall to wall books here, can't stand electronic reader gizmowotsits. Definitely agree on the looking at other folks books and CD's as well.
We've just moved and slung a load of paperbacks out, but I couldn't bare to throw out the 'good stuff'. Also just inherited a house/contents and tbh I'm now looking at the vast piles of books (and shelves) and thinking that while I love books, when are we ever going to refer to them - as now we just 'Google' any question we have...
wall to wall books here, can't stand electronic reader gizmowotsits. Definitely agree on the looking at other folks books and CD's as well.
Plus One
we have a book case... but its filled with 400+ dvds and growing to the point we need a bigger one 😆
samuri - Member
There is nothing better than going into someone's house and while they finish getting ready, looking through their bookshelf.
Nothing? NOTHING!?
bigrich - Member
if your TV is bigger than your bookshelf, then you're working class.
Citation needed.
I prefer to look through a woman's knicker drawers while waiting. It's more revealing than her book collection.
😆
thing that gets me is that you don't own any of these ebooks or mp3s that you buy. If you die then they cease to be yours, you can never pass anything on, ypu can't riffle though piles of old books.
[quote=CaptJon ]bigrich - Member
if your TV is bigger than your bookshelf, then you're working class.
Citation needed.
3rd place, Top ten one-liner jokes, edinburgh fringe 2012. Can't remember the blokes name.
Agree with samuri though, bookshelves rock. Had once custom made for the last house, 5' * 6', the missus thought it was extravagant as we'd never need all that. I didn't dare tell her I knew it'd be full before we ordered it. paperback shelves on it are stacked two deep and we've a few other book cases through the house. I was made to clear away the bookstacks either to proper shelves or the charity shop.
I do not own a kindle, nor do I have a kindle app on my netbook - though I might get one so I can read Sherlock Holmes and the like for free when I go on holiday. Then again, there's a nice feeling when you hand over finished books to the rep, people spending a season out in a ski resort are usually grateful for something new to read
While I love tech, books are forever. Always grown up around books, as has my son. Would he love reading as much as he does if all there had been was a kindle? Apart from the actual words, books are real, you can touch them, scan a shelve for something, hold them.
Long live books and book cases.
We got rid of all of our books, my wife studied English literature at Durham, and Ioves real books, so we ended up buying about a quarter of them back from the local charity shop. She's now replacing all of her old favourites, although she does seem to do most of her reading on her kindle.
We have a proper poncy bookcase now.
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A Kindle might be able to replace paperbacks but will it ever replace coffee-table books and odd quirky books like the one we own about the Scottish islands by Hamish Haswell? No.
long live the bookshelf!
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My [s]GF[/s] Fiance is obsessed with the fact that we should have bookshelves in the lounge. Since culling the paperback collection substantialy on Amazon a couple of years back we only have about 4 shelves worth of decent books between us. The rest of the shelves in the spare room are filled with DVD's (probably never watch them again) and old dirt/singletrack/whitelines.
Now my mates dad is an ecologist and has thousands of books, lots of them actually old and useful - it kind of makes sense for him to have decent bookshelves. How many of us can really put our hand on our hearts and say this is the case?
I've read plenty of books, I don't tend to re-read them. Bookshelves are just basically society's way of making me pay for a slightly bigger house than I really need.
Mine are rammed
Stoner - that's not a bookcase. That's some kind of art installation with a couple of books added because it looks good. 😉 Get another few hundredweight of printed matter in there and it will become a bookcase - right about the time they are (as someone said earlier) stacked two deep.
long live the bookshelf!
I didn't know 50 Shades Of Grey came in so many different covers.
'ere, Stoner! Ya Coffee table's got a hole in it! What good's that? 😉
The day I get rid of my bookshelf is the day I install a touch screen, low wattage TV in its place that lets me (and anyone else) see all of my ebooks, and flick them over to the handheld reader.
(White robes optional)
Stoner - nice.
Paulosoxo - that ladder's a bit of an affectation isn't it? although I can see where you're coming from and appreciate the reasoning
Personally, I will re-read good books over and over and over. Even books I've read half a dozen times will give me something new each time I read them. doesn't stop me reading new books as well of course
Love bookcases, and have a house filled with them - but I'm trying to stick to Kindle for the cheap 'n cheerful fiction buys, otherwise they end up taking up a whole load of space, for books I'll never get round to re-reading.
But it's definitely the first thing I look at when I enter someone else's house.
Isnt there a danger full book cases simply say, "Look at what i've read, aren't i great?"
Isnt there a danger full book cases simply say, "Look at what i've read, aren't i great?"
Absolutely. I know some people that have bookcases full of "classics" that have never been nor never will be read. But, they, y'know, look right.
As long as people are reading, who gives a shit how they're doing it?
CaptJon - Member
Isnt there a danger full book cases simply say, "Look at what i've read, aren't i great?"POSTED 3 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST
Depends on the books you're laying claim too.
Paulosoxo - that ladder's a bit of an affectation isn't it? although I can see where you're coming from and appreciate the reasoning
It keeps the children happy
[i]Stoner - that's not a bookcase. That's some kind of art installation with a couple of books added because it looks good[/i]
+1 - more thought entirely, looks like a womens' work that
We have two biggish bookcases in the dining room, plus the kids have one each in their bedrooms. Hardly any DVDs or CDs and a small TV.
I've probably got more books next to my bed than some of these posted bookcases have, and then about 800 books in the lounge, 300 or so in the loft and about 1,000 at the aged parent's house waiting for me to buy a bigger house...
I had always wanted a house of my own for the sole purpose of turning part of it into a library. When I bought three years ago, I immediately transformed the front of the house into a library of which the walls are lined with books, and in which the kids are allowed to do nothing but read or write. It is a sanctuary at the end of the day, and the kids are growing up surrounded by wide ranging literature.
I don't own a Kindle (yet), but I can't imagine it replacing such spaces and what they contain.
Just bought new book shelves, went for a 5 metre one which turned out to be a little over optimistic!
I go back to the good stuff over and over again. The TV is pants so I just reach over and have a read.
I was surprised to see that my collection of historic motor racing books out number the cycling ones
