Confessions of a Book Hoarder : My Collection

Confessions of a Book Hoarder is a new post idea I had this month. I really wanted a place where I could talk about books from the point of view of a reader rather than a reviewer. After all, that swhat I was long before this blog began. In these posts will be my rantings and musings from an obsessed book hoarder and avid reader, there will be no reviews. lists or memes. Just me and my books.

This week I wanted to talk about my collection. So here are a few statistics, because I enjoy numbers:

I own 186 books
Only 47 of those are hardback
This is how I acquired them:
4% Were gifts
5% Were purchased from online discount book retailers
15% Were bought at my local secondhand store for $0.50 each
24% Were bought secondhand online
52% Were bought brand new in-store or online
I have read 104 of my collection
And 82 are unread

First of I want to start by saying that I have a lot of unread books, but I don’t feel any guilt or shame. Sometimes I wonder if I am more of a reader or a collector? And why should I feel any guilt or shame about unread books? There are people (And I’m not judging AT ALL) who collect many things that they never actually use. Stamps, coins, action figures, key chains, even rocks! So whats so different about books? I enjoy collecting them and looking at them as much as I enjoy reading them.

That being said I am trying to buy less this year, one a month is my goal, because I do want to eventually read them all. And the ban is also to avoid buying the wrong books. If I bought all the books on my wish list I would end up with at least a few duds, and then I would hate that I wasted money on those books. To avoid this I am trying to use my library more this year. I could also end up losing interest in the book by the time I got around to reading it. And lastly the biggest reason of all is I am completely out of shelf space till I move later this year.

I myself, don’t mind used books. As you can see they make up more than a quarter of my collection and I have been buying more and more of them lately. Occasionally I am drawn to a beautiful cover and that is when I choose to purchase a book new. Or it’s a favourite author I love to support. I also don’t mind if I own one book in a series in hardback and the rest in paperback or the other way around. I admit I will wait for a paperback copy to come out if I own the first two in paperback. Or if I own all the others in hardback I will purchase it right away. However, if I come across it cheap then I don’t care what format it is I just want to read it! Same goes for cover editions. My collection therefore looks a little wacky, mixture of short and tall, in a glorious array of color. And I love every one of them! I know some collectors are more particular and I totally understand! If I didn’t have such a little bank account and more will power when it comes to the $5.00 I spend at the coffee shop twice a week I would probably have everything in hardback too. It’s just my need to own ALL the books and in my situation that means having a motley crew of new and used, hard and paper, even ex-library.

I’m really interested to know about your collection now. How many have you read vs unread? Paperback vs hardback? Where did they come from? How do you feel about matching series? And mostly, do you feel any guilty towards your unread pile? And is it as big as mine??

Thanks for tuning in! And I will be back soon with another edition of: Confessions of a Book Hoarder.