June 20, 2008 • Print This Post
Back in February, my family decided to sell our house. Given that we wanted to make the most money (d’uh!), we followed our realtor’s advice and emptied our closets as much as possible. End result? Sixty boxes of my books went into storage until we could move to a new town.
We arrived at our new home (yay!!!) and the moving trucks pulled up. Out rolled box after box after box of books. And more boxes. And even more! At the end of the day, my original sixty had at least doubled, probably more.
What did they do, in the darkness of the rented storage space? Send out shoots and gather up all the other books in that giant facility to them, saying here was somebody who can’t bear to throw books out? Sprout like mushrooms?
I’ve now got collections I barely remember. Passions whose scale astonish me. Okay, I admit I’ll buy any Georgette Heyer book standing still but that many boxes of cookbooks? I have every edition of everything Linda Howard ever wrote. <thud> (Okay, that’s probably a really good idea…) Did I really buy all those Suzanne Brockmann books in one six-month period, the way my family keeps reminding me? Talk about glomming an author!
Have you ever woken up to find yourself with stacks of books you barely remember buying? Do you enjoy gobbling up books by an author? Who have you discovered this way? Did you want to keep the books or give them away?
Diane, wondering what comes next
Posted by Diane Whiteside @ 6:04 am • Filed under: Diane Whiteside
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LOL! I feel ya, Diane!
My problem is that I buy a book, it goes into the TBR pile I forget I have it and buy it again!!
I hate it when that happens!
Ooh, Angie-la–I’ve done that before, too…
I DO gobble up books by author–if I read one and love it, I often go and try to pick up everything they’ve written. Of course, it’s much easier when their backlist is relatively short
But yes, my TBR is like to bury me alive someday…
Oh yeah, Angie-la, how many times have I done exactly the same thing? Argh! But this time I bought software to help me keep track of all my books. Hopefully, I won’t have too many duplicates – except for the ones I deliberately bought second copies of because I won’t lend out the originals!
Nice to hear somebody else grabs everything an author has ever written, Fedora! Maybe we should compare TBR piles?
Is that a girl thing to do, like guys comparing biceps? Should we do that by number of titles or height in feet? Of course, we’d have to include ebooks somehow.
Have I mentioned that I somehow arrived in my new house with only one small antique bookcase? My TBR pile is scattered everywhere – in my bedroom, my office, the guest room, my smart phone. You name the place, you can probably find a book there to read!
Yeah, my TBR pile was all over the place too. The DH threatened to bag it up for the trash man! Now all but one big plastic box that fits under the bed is out in the storage trailer. When I have read what is under the bed, I get to bring a new batch in.
And I am an author glommer, too! It started years ago with Jayne Ann Krentz. And now everytime I read a new author with an extensive backlist, the quest is on.
I am actually in the process of doing that with you right now!
I have all the ‘Devil’ books.(The Irish Devil is still my fave!) And am starting on the Texas Vampires now!
I wish I could keep every book. Hubs and I moved a lot thanks to the AF, so I got used to paring down my books whenever we moved. It’s a habit that has lasted 15 years even though we’ve been out of the service for 4 years now. *G* Good luck with all those!
You’ve got all of JAK’s books? Wow, Angie-la, I bow before you in admiration! That’s a lotta, lotta books.
Thanks for adding me to your collection!
I’m a big Linda Howard fan, too, but I don’t have some of her ones like “Midnight Rainbow” and “Diamond Bay.” I wish they would reissue these books.
I think we’re all afflicted. I finally decided to put down all my books in a notebook – well it came to two notebooks! I can’t possible read all the books I own but I can’t stop from buying more. I guess I’m a collector as much as a reader lol.
I remember when I discovered Sandra Brown and Barbara Delinsky and Linda Howard; had to get all their books.
I found a used book store years ago and picked up whatever Delinsky books I couuldn’t find anywhere else. They had tons of them; I was in heaven.
Diana, I’m not sure how we’d go about comparing TBRs
Unlike catslady, I haven’t catalogued it all yet–maybe if I did, I might be able to avoid duplicating purchases 
And we do have books everywhere, much to my husband’s dismay…
Diane,
You know, there are only a few authors whose entire backlists I have. I think my “problem” is I discover them after they’ve had quite a prolific writing career. Diana Palmer, for example, I just discovered last year – and I’m trying to get all her books. [Pretty much an impossible task.] I decided to read her entire backlist before I did cursory research – if I had, I might have given myself another goal
I tried to catalog all my books – made a spreadsheet, rather detailed, with book information… but I got busy for a period, and went on some buying sprees, and what with a move, it’s out of date again, and I’m hesitant to buy more books so I don’t buy duplicate copies (again)!