I have one room of my house which is the "library". It's too small and it always will be I think. Three walls are covered in bookshelves and one is a window.
Eventually i'm gonna get me a big leather recliner to read in.
It's dim, the curtains rmain closed pretty much at all times and the lighting is barely passable, but that's how I like it.
I refuse to let myself succumb to the temptation of placing a radio, television or heaven forbid a laptop within the room.
Its jus a place of peace and quiet. Except for next door's damn dog!

Wow:) You're all people with the same collection issues.

No idea how many books I have either; but about 60 linear feet are on shelves. Then there's bags, boxes and milk crates under the platform bed. My shelves are urethaned boards with stacked bricks (my family has several generations of bricklayers and the bricks are ones left over from summers of cleaning used bricks for reuse).

I try to separate them out by general topic and size. Doing shelves by size makes for more fitting on the shelves.

I plan on having a garage sale this year and letting go most of my science fiction, novels, poetry and some of my antique books, maybe some cookbooks and others too.

Someday I hope to afford custom bookcases to match my white maple woodwork. Especially in the entryway where two walls are entirely books.

I also try to keep a dictionary, thesaurus, style guide and other referesnce books in each area I write or read in.

I don't have a library, exactly, I have enormous numbers of books stored wherever there is room to store books, including an old airing cupboard, large enough for nearly 1200 books, the cupboards on top of the wardrobes, nearly 1000, under the bed another 200 or so, in the front room 3000 or so and various stacks in convenient and inconvenient places (if using the bathroom put the books in large plastic boxes, otherwise they get damp). In total about 6000 or so.

Regards,

Tin

I'm so glad to discover that I'm not the only bibliophile in the bunch. When we moved into this house thirty years ago, our older son - then 15 - undertook to count all our books. He stopped when he reached 1,500, even though his self-assigned task was incomplete. As I said, that was thirty years ago and the book collecting has gone on unabated ever since. Both my husband and I are dedicated readers. He prefers non-fiction, philosophy, travel, eastern religions. My reading tastes are more eclectic: detective fiction and mysteries (my favourites are Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Georgette Heyer good old Dame Agatha, Josephine Tey, Colin Dexter,Elizabeth George), biography, reference books (believe it or not, I read them for fun!), theology (Christian) and comparative religion, poetry, plays, historical novels and history, actually anything with print on a page! Our bookshelves in six rooms including the kitchen (where else would I keep my vast collection of cookbooks)overflow onto the floor, tables, bedside tables. There are books in both bathrooms, books in the hall, and even in the car (just in case I get stuck in a traffic jam or something).
I still have my complete collection of the Anne books (Anne of Green Gables, etc.), Mowgli, Just my complete edition of The Children's Encyclopaedia - all left over from my long-gone childhood.

I learned to read when I was three (when I was four, I became the youngest member of the Birmingham Public Library in England) and I've never stopped.

When our younger son and daughter (in-law) still lived in our city, my daughter (in-law) and I used to spend Saturday afternoons in one of our favourite local book stores. Both our sons are voracious readers, too.

Ouch! Please note after Mowgli, I meant to insert 'Just So Stories', but only the 'Just' appeared in the post. Sorry.

I started to read at about two and taught my little sister when she was about the same age and I was about 7 (Christmas 1968). She and her kids (4) now have a house filled with books, hey some of those are mine. I read dictionaries for fun (mainly English) but also English-Latin and sometimes English-French. And when someone quotes something in a book, I then track down the source and read that.

Regards,

Tin

If anything, I need more shelves. I see an interesting book in a store, I snatch it, and I put it on the shelf. The odd thing is that I won't place a book onto my actual 'bookshelves' until I've read them. They're kind of like trophies.

I have hundreds of books lined up on the shelves and more than enough to read. Maybe a trip to IKEA is in order...

I have one wooden bookshelf with old books, and three plastic milkcrates stacked by my bed for favorites, what I'm currently reading, journals, etc. And there are many books that are floating around somewhere.

lol, that's funny... library....

Let's see, I live in a really small house (864 sq feet of living space, plus an unfinished basement and a large garage.) Bookshelves actually take up a fair bit of the furnishings in my house. We have a "living room" that actually houses the dinette set, and two computer desks and the large dog crate, all of which house books in haphazard stacks. There is also an actual bookshelf, an older three-shelf job in dark wood finish that I got in an auction lot, mostly because of the things that were ON it. It houses my collection of craft booklets and books on two shelves and my antique books on a third shelf. In the "dining room" which is where the TV and couch are, we find few random books on the back of the couchand atop the entertainment center, and another three-shelf bookshelf, of the pre-fab variety, housing two layers of paperbacks on the bottom shelf and LOTS of hardbound editions on the other two shelves, with paperbacks stuffed in to the gaps no top, plus stacks of books on top of the bookshelf. Kit has a bookshelf all her own in her bedroom, completely full of her kids books, including everything from infant board books to Jon Belairs and Marguarite Henry that she won't read for years yet. I can think of at least five boxes of books in the basement, three more in the garage, and I'm sure other boxes have books in them. Plus, I can think of a good dozen books that are currently on loan.

I haven't counted my books for many years, but I was at around the 5,000 mark back then.

We have roughly 20 bookcases scattered around the house, although that just covers the more literary works, my Stephen King collection, selected horror and SF novels, and some of my wife's books.

Most of the books are up in the finished attic, and stacked two deep on bookshelves. At least I can see 50% of them now, which is better than when they were all in boxes.

I still have 1,000 or so books back at my parents' house in Ireland, and would like to bring them to the US some day.

Speaking of libraries, have any of you seen Stephen Spielberg's library? Here's a link to a tour of his house that shows the library:

http://www.insideskywalkerranch.com/skywalker-ranch-tour.htm

I think that's George Lucas' house, not Spielberg's!
It does have a library to die for.

Oops, sorry, it is George Lucas' library

I don't often get a chance to check this site but enjoy the bookworm section.

I looked but don't see how to set up a thread. I was thinking that it would be interesting to have one that told of how people came to learn how to read, what started their love of reading, and how they came about collecting books.

My older brother is two years older and my older sister is one year older. My father would read us the comics in the newspaper when he came home. As my brother, then sister were able to read the strips with him, I too, picked up the skills. By the time I started school I could read and during the first grade I got into the fifth grade materials.

My mother read lots and lots and had a room full of books that I got to go through. So I picked up my collecting habit from her. My real addiction for reading began, though, when I read Beowulf in the fourth grade, I do have hundreds of comic books I've acquired over the years.

I'm watching "84 Charing Cross Road" while I do this. Are any of you familiar with it? It's about books.

Vivluze

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“84 Charing Cross Road” was on TV here recently. I first read Helene Hanff’s book a long time ago, and I try to catch the movie whenever it comes round.

I am thrilled to find out that I am not the only person who dreams of one day having a house with a library that has shelves running floor to ceiling and wall to wall. With one of those little ladders that runs along the shelves for good measure. At the moment I have two bookshelves in my bedroom and that is not nearly enough space. We have two huge bookshelves in the lounge but that holds all my moms paperbacks, old childrens books, reference books, gardening books, my old varsity text books and of course my mom's time magazines.

My moms sitting room where she and my dad watch tv has a table in the centre covered with her books on lace making and knitting, etc. She has another two bookshelves, one in that room that holds the knitting books and another in the room next door just for her lace making books.

All in all we have more books than we can count. If I don't get another bookcase soon I am going to be living like one of my favourite Clive Cussler Characters, St Julien with books in piles on the floor and under the bed and on top of the computer, oh dear! And the worst of it yet is I don't even have all the books I want. P.S. does someone know where I can get a copy of Anne's House of Dreams, I have all the others but I just can't seem to find that one!

You can get them from here

I think you'll find that most post worldwide too.

Hope that helps.

For my hardbacks I have 5 nicely finished 7 ft high shelf units in the living room. One is devoted to my Easton Press editions. In the dining room is another for the various mystery thrillers, paperback as well as hardcovers. Opposite that is one for my 'reading list" - I get books faster than I can read them.
I have 4 homemmade units downstairs for my SF paperbacks. They are 8 ft high, 2 ft wide and have 11 shelves spaced just for paperbacks. Unfortunately I have a lot of SF digest magazines that I don't have shelf space for, so they are carefully packed in strong boxes.
Upstairs, downstairs, all around the house, books everywhere. This is the life!