You know you should stop buying books (or at least retrench slightly), there are a number of very good reasons for doing so (for at least a month or two) and for perhaps a week, you may manage it. Then you see a review, or you realise that book three in a series you're really enjoying is due out and so you can't help yourself - you go to buy it.
Then, you think well, it's only one - it might get lonely in the box on its own. And(!) if I spend x pounds in one order - I will save money! Yes I will, that means it's a bargain. Bargains are good. Now, how many books does that work out as?
A bit flippant, but if you've been there and done that, you know what I mean. I haven't bought any books for the last week and a half. I have, however, added 31 potential buys to my already dense "book of books"* Oh. My. God.
I'm very lucky in that my Father helps my affliction (disease? obsession?) by giving me Amazon vouchers for every birthday and Christmas. Which I then usually double up on. And that feeds the compulsion for a while, until that little tickle in the brain starts and you start acquiring all over again.
However, my housemate has told me that boxes of books stored in her parents loft will have to come out because they're having their roof done. I will also have to take posession of c.20 boxes of books that are currently in my mother's loft. We have no room for them as we have no loft, no garage, no real storage of any kind. So I'm going to have to let some books go. I'm going to have to be stern (and brutal) and be honest with myself as to which books I will read again once they're out of their boxes, and which books I will never read again because life is too short. And then I will have to dispose of them.
Amazon Marketplace is a good idea (you make money and it's fairly decent money) but, it takes time and you still need somewhere to store the books while they're waiting to sell. I could take them to a second hand book shop - I wouldn't make very much, but they'd be out of the house (off the floor joists - very important) and someone may come across them and find something they'd been looking for for ages.
The bibliomaniac side of me is screaming Noooooooo! but the practical side of me is pointing out that unless I make enough money to move into an old-fashioned four-bedroom house (i.e. a big one) then something's got to give. Shelves will go up first, in place of the bookcases (get a load of the weight off the floor), and then some furniture will be removed/replaced.
And then we will see. Will the loss of a portion (large or small) of my book collection (which I've been building since 1986) cause a sudden upsurge in bibliomaniac brain fever? Wait and see.
Mood:
Not happy.*a very nifty little filofax with the address dividers in it (ABC DEF etc.) and then when I come across a book whose review I liked - or that's by an author I like - then I list it in the section for the authors' surname. Probably comes across as rather sad - but, being that organised it means I rarely buy the same book twice because I'd forgotten I'd already bought it. Needs tidying every now and then, but apart from that it's quite a handy thing to use.
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