I estimate our family has around 3,000 books. We made our entire formal living/dining room into a library, and still every shelf sags three rows deep in book. We love every tome, but we frequently repurchase books we lost, thought we lost, can't remember who we lent them to, or forgot we ever purchased.
If you read this blog, you probably have a lot of books too. So I would really like to know: do you have a system of keeping track of them? What is that system?
Just memory. Nothing formal.
ReplyDeleteJohn
Every so often I try to group books by the same author. We have a large Terry Pratchett section and a smaller Tanya Huff one. It usually falls apart when I just plonk a book down after reading it.
ReplyDeleteYou can see my "library" here
My system involves donating all books I didn't OMG-ADORE-AND-TOTES-WILL-REREAD to a local hospital.
ReplyDeleteBut I live in a teeny-weeny apartment, and my OMG-ADORE books already take up too much of it. It's a matter of necessity.
Word verification: tilibili - they're getting more amusing!
John - same here for now, but it's really not working out.
ReplyDeleteFairy - I LOVE your library. I should put up a pic of mine. It looks like it's going to cave in any moment. We also try to group collections by author, but evidently they play musical chairs when we aren't watching.
JJ - Donating them to a hospital is a GREAT idea. I just bought an e-reader to slow the pace of bookspace bloom.
in our family it's me who's dusting the shelves, so I place the books according to my liking.
ReplyDeletewe have a removeable/adjustable system of shelves, so I sort them according to their size.
my husband keeps complaining about it all the time. and I know he's right.
:D