I have always been a great reader. I was quite a solitary child and would lose myself in books. I read classics like Jules Verne and Mark Twain as well as a lot of science fiction. I do not have many of those old books as things got cleared out over the years, but we still have plenty now. I saw that @livinguktaiwan had been posting about her husband's collection and she wanted to see mine.
One wall of my study is covered in bookcases (Ikea Billy!). A fair chunk of that is full of DVDs and CDs, but we will focus on the books. These are largely non-fiction (see later for fiction). They are roughly grouped by topic, but sometimes I just need to find space for a book. On the top shelf on the left is mostly popular science with a few about music. Below that we have more science and computing with some travel guides by the alarm clock. Then there is a shelf of mostly graphic novels.
I have been collection the Sandman books for a few years and picked up various others. There are some comics there by Hive artists including @sidekickmatt and @katharsisdrill. You will have noticed that the shelves have other assorted stuff that needs a spot.
Below the graphic novels are a mix of history, atlases, more music and assorted others. Then there is a shelf with DVDs and junk. Right at the bottom are some old computer reference books and more music stuff. I do wonder about getting rid of some of that as I may never look at those books again.
On the right there are some language books and dictionaries, DIY and instruction manuals. Then there is most of our vinyl album collection. Below that it is mostly gardening, but also some photo albums.
Upstairs on the landing we have more shelves that are mostly fiction as read by myself and my other half.
You can see that I really like Iain Banks and Doublas Adams. Between Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is the Lego Balrog I built recently. There are some biographies in there too, including three about David Bowie.
Opposite that is more fiction. The whole top shelf and much of the second is Terry Pratchett books. We both love those. You may also see some Richard Osman crime novels and others in that genre. There is a section for Neal Stephenson who is one of my other favourites. On the lower right as some books that belonged to the kids as well as some comic annuals from my youth. Due to the Velux window in the roof above the landing a lot of the spines on books up there have faded a bit.
I have not included the shelves in the kids' rooms. We probably have far more books than the average house, but they have been collected over many years and they do get read. Quite a few came from charity shops and some will end up there too. There are some we would not want to part with, but I do not generally find time to re-read books. I just think that I may have more time for reading once I retire.
I have used a few web sites to log what books I read over the last decades. I was using Goodreads, but as it is run by Amazon I wanted to get off there. Now I use the Rambling Readers instance of the Bookwyrm open platform that links to the Fediverse. I have contemplated whether we could build something similar on Hive. It should not be too hard to store the book metadata along with details of when they were read on the blockchain, but I have not worked out the details of how it could work. Books can be tricky to identify as there can be so many different editions.
I will continue to review books I read on Hive anyway. Maybe I will inspire others to try them, but we all have different tastes.
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You have a very wide selection there, and it does look like you've had some of the books for a long time. Glad you decided to show us.
We've got a couple of Bill Bryson as well, he's so funny and interesting.
I like Bryson's style. I need to catch up on some of his recent stuff. There's just not enough time to read everything I'd like to.
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Hi @steevc
What a nice surprise to see your book collection, I am glad you decided to make this post so we can enjoy in these full shelves of so many different genres. (Also thanks to Livinguktaiwan who encouraged you to do so.)
A great contribution to the books theme, and I also see a collection of little cars 😉
Thank you and I hope you had a nice Easter :)
Cheers. Some of the cars were mine as a kid. We seem to accumulate stuff, but are not really serious collectors. We just like our books.
It looks like Terry Pratchett is a very common name among readers on HIVE... I'm more of a classic books reader, but I got a few nice recommendations to try out some of the "modern authors." Some recommendations from HIVE friends, others from family...
When we moved to Spain, we left a lot of books behind, and similarly to you, the idea is to give away or donate them to charity, or to the local library... Books are for reading, and not for collecting dust... :)
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I know of a few Pratchett fans around here and some even took their account names from the books. I will read the books again some time.
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View or trade
BEER.Hey @ph1102, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @steevc for you. Enjoy it!Did you know that <a href='https://dcity.io/cityyou can use BEER at dCity game to buy cards to rule the world.
My wife and I got rid of a ton of our books when we moved. I still have a few that I hold onto. Did you read any of the Tom Swift books when you were younger?
I don't know those, so maybe they didn't make it to the UK. I read a lot of Enid Blyton kids' books and Biggles adventures that were classic British stuff.
Maybe not then. They were pretty good. They kind of evolved over the years, but I remember they were always kind of fun. It looks like it had various iterations through the decades as well as a more recent failed streaming adaptation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift
Anne frank is also an interesting story , did you ever managed to vist the house in Amsterdam ? We used to go there with school almost every year back in the 70's .
We went to the house a few years ago. Things like that have some echoes in what's happening in the world now.
When I look at the books on my shelf, I am transported back in time to the version of myself that read them originally. Those books are like a time machine and I appreciate their part in my life's journey.
I get that, but then we should not get too hung up on objects. I suspect younger generations have a different perspective.
I would think traditional physical books are less common for younger generations. But then again, I've also seen a new trend where young men are reading books and then sharing what they though of them via TikTok, Shorts, Reels. It's charming and I'm here for it.
Reading may be trendy again, but it's a very personal thing. I'm not sure I ever did it to be cool :)
That is some big collection you have and a great deal of variety. The kindle has made me pick up less physical copies, but I prefer them over the kindle so I will normally go for a physical edition of a book if I know I will like it. One day I will improve my bookshelf :)
I've read some e-books, but I still prefer paper really. I don't get through as many books as I'd like to.
I really enjoyed this collection of books, those shelves really seemed to me like a reader/searcher of second-hand books.
Thank you very much for sharing this very interesting collection,@steevc.
Greetings!
It may look like a small collection given the space it occupies, but what you have here is pure gold or at least, as a lover of novels, that is how it strikes me. The collections I’ve seen in the community over the past month have been excellent, and yours is certainly no exception. I happen to own a few novels by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Jules Verne myself, and it was through those very texts that my own personality was forged over the years. I truly enjoyed reading your post and, above all, taking this opportunity to say hello ✌️
Cheers. We each have our own tastes. I read whatever I find interesting or entertaining.
Adams, Pratchett, Banks - brilliant. I'd like to know what's in your vinyl collection too! We got rid of heaps of books when we moved... Not enough room. And unlikely to read again so...
Those IKEA billy bookcases sure are handy!
A lot of the records pre-date us getting together. There's Queen and Genesis from me, Bowie and Madonna from her plus a lot more. I do have some recent special editions on vinyl.
que buena publicacion amigo, me gusta que tambien tengas coleccion de vinilos.
aqui en venezuela valoramos mucho el arte y la buena musica en la casa. saludos.
great post friend, i like that you also have a vinyl collection.
here in venezuela we value art and good music at home a lot. greetings.
Very few people, especially young people under 20, don't have, or don't seek to have, a library... having one is certainly a treasure, and with DVDs and CDs it's very original🙂
I think younger folk have a different attitude to physical media. I see it with my kids even though they do have books. One reads a lot on Kindle. I don't think either has a CD player.
see it in my children too
Update: @steevc, I paid out 17.676 HIVE and 0.000 HBD to reward 15 comments in this discussion thread.
I think the mix of genres really shows a rich reading journey :)