As a voracious reader and hoarder of books, I have a bit of a problem. I live in a small flat in Pimlico. My wife is also an avid reader. I work from home for some of my day before heading to the office and have to keep a fair amount of literature connected to my job at home. The place is getting full.
There is some advice here on how to handle it. I would like to ask commenters what you folk do about this. I have thought about putting some of my books into storage, but the rental price on storage can be pretty high. I have given away some books to charity shops and flogged a few of them on E-Bay, but I am reluctant to part with some of them as I like to dip into them if I am researching anything. And I am not yet ready to move into a larger house, although one day I shall do so and create my own private library.
I guess this is a problem if you are a libertarian geek like yours truly. The late Chris R. Tame, founder of the Libertarian Alliance, had a huge personal library; his flat in Bloomsbury was crammed with books, which I happily enjoyed going through when I briefly lived at his flat. Sadly, when he died two years ago, dealing with his book collection proved quite a headache for the executors of his estate. I have wondered whether, in my own case, I should create a sort of virtual online “library” that close friends and ideological comrades can use to borrow some of my stuff – and send it back of course – to ensure that my collection does get read and valued by people who might enjoy them. I honestly do not know whether that is workable, though. In my experience, lending books or DVDs to friends can often be a problem if you want them back by a certain stage.
Of course, some people may argue that in the internet age, this issue will eventually no longer be a problem because all books can be stored online. Up to a point. The trouble is that this old fart rather likes to have the physical examples of his favourite books on hand, on the shelf. I like them as physical objects as well as for their content.
This weekend, steel yourself to the task, and do a serious edit. You’ll find that if you approach the task with a Ghenzhis Khan like manly vigour you can say goodbye to at least 10% of your books. Don’t procrastinate by going the E-bay route. Don’t let your resolve be undermined by thoughts of the charity shop. Think big yellow skip and get chucking.
At the end of the day, you’ll feel a stronger, lighter and better man.
Think . . . mountains of skulls, mountains of skulls. . .
Similar problem here, solved temporarily by even more shelving (with the added rationale that books are really first class wall insulation and a damn good excuse not to decorate). Tip: if you fit shelves 9 in. deep or greater, you can double-bank on the shelves – equivalent to archiving those volumes rarely opened. When the wall space runs out? Well, I’m investigating the possibility of using paperbacks as loft insulation.
As to books accessed on screen, there’s a mention in this month’s Locus of a survey conducted by Scholastic in the US on 5 – 17 year olds. 75% agreed that “No matter what I do online, I’ll always want to read books on paper instead of computers or hand-held devices”. Must say I agree myself.
You can’t use a computer while you’re having a soak in the bath, so books are here to stay.
@Quentin:
Well you can, just not for very long, and when the inevitable does happen, the life of the computer (and possibly your own) comes to an abrupt end.
A waterproof EEEPC would solve this problem.
I’ve found that, through illiteracy and its cousin, reality television, I no longer have a book storage problem.
If you’re not moving house, then it is more work to actively declutter your life.
A couple of years ago we had some necessary adaptation work done to the house, which provided a similar catalyst for sorting out a collection that had grown for over 20 years — about 4 car-loads of “Honestly, I’ll never read/refer to this again” volumes went to the local charity shop (where the people got to recognise my arrival as signalling this week’s deluge).
Once you’ve started, it’s surprising how liberating getting rid of “stuff” can feel.
I second comments 1 and 2.
A further point on optimal use of storage space is sort your books by size, not by alphabet or category. Then instead of regular spaced shelves, you have the top shelves (say) 15″ apart, then 11″ and so on, down to a 7″ gap for the bottom shelves, on which you put the paperbacks two-deep.
J.P.
With respect to those which are useful to “dip into” when researching, the process of selecting out might be enhanced by taking a look at the resources of publications on the internet, such as those maintained by Liberty Fund, The Guttenberg Project, and several others. On things harder to replace, some have resorted to scanning in for storage on CDs or DVD. Those are quite easy to access if you get some good instruction on indexing (not just cataloging) the recordation.
There are also some internet sources that require payment for particular texts (there is usually a free “abstract” so you can be sure it’s what you need for ready access).
Unfortunately, intellectual property laws make it necessary to acquire and hold some works (Finer, Nozick, Hayek, et al.).
As for reading from the “Web,” one can use Web Eyes which works with Internet Explorer (www.WebEyes.us) and can give you the page turning vs. scrolling experience (as well as enhanced font sizes).
Meanwhile, with over 60 years of collections, despite some extensive culling of non-English language texts, “I feel your pain,” it weighs hundreds of pounds!
When I was young, my family lived in a two bedroom apartment with four children who were bookworms plus a gigantic number of religious books of my dad’s. My parents gave up the dining room to make it an eat in kitchen and turned the kitchen into a third bedroom. At that point, space was at a minimum so they turned the biggest closet in the apartment, maybe 3 1/2 feet wide by five feet long and from floor to ceiling, into a walk in library. It turns out it was a very efficient use of space. I remember placing my feet on opposite shelves as a child to climb up to the top shelves for books. They used all of the usual shelf cramming tricks and there were boxes on the floor that could be slid out for access to books behind them.
In my sister’s present house, she had her husband make a partition along where a hallway passes the living room. A floor to ceiling bookshelf with an open space in the middle height to keep an open feeling.
Books in infrequent use also can make furniture. You can stack an amazing amount of books under a coffee table and they are readily accessible. But it takes a decorative eye to make it look like something other than a pile of books under the table. Pretty books or antique ones go on the top if it is a glass top coffee table. If you take books as a decorating theme, as another one of us kids did in her house, you can account for a lot more of them.
Another trick is installing shelves up where crown molding is usually found. They are readily available with a short step stool, and don’t impinge on the open and comfortable use of the room at all. This is good for short spine books.
Long trays under a bed can store huge amounts of books in a way that is quite easy to get to.
Vacuum bags(Link). No not for the books. Although if you do decide to store any in a locker, vacuum bagging may be a very good idea. But if you vacuum bag all of your out of season clothing and bedding, that generates a huge amount of ‘new’ storage space.
I feel your pain. I have never been able to discard a book unless it was so utterly worthless that I didn’t want it in the first place.
I just move to a bigger house.
For me books are not just the contents or even the physical object. They are also memories of where they came form or what I was doing/where I was when I acquired them. Disposing of them is always hard. If it isn’t you are not a book lover.
Even so, if the more obscure ones were available free in e-book form I might be tempted to invest in an e-book reader – but I suspect I would still keep the books…
I am about to move soon (fingers crossed!) and will have to buy more bookshelves when I do so. My plan for my books (should anything happen to me) is to donate my collection to my old grammar school.
“..small flat in Pimlico…”
If it’s like most flats converted from 19th century town houses then it’s got very high ceilings.
one storage solution I’ve recommended numerous times is to utilise the space above the bath. A false ceiling above the tub with lighting & extractor incorporated & a roomy cupboard above for all those things that are rarely needed. Cuts down the air volume in the bathroom as well so it heats quicker on cold mornings.
Reducing heights in passageways is another good idea & can make them look less narrow. A three foot wide corridor with a twelve foot ceiling is never cosy. Access to the resultant storage space? Think laterally. As long as the wall isn’t loadbearing (& most of the time, even when it is) apertures can be cut through an adjoining wall so you might end up with a row of doors high up on your bedroom wall. Is that a problem?
Lastly, is the stairway within your flat? As long as you don’t reduce the height above the stairs to less than 2.1M there can be oodles of space available..Raking shelves all the way down the sloping ceiling is an option & they’re easily reached from the stairs.
Oh, it just occurred…
If you’re going to be living with several cubic metres of literature above your head it might be better not to rely on lolly sticks & selotape as the main construction materials.
Seems obvious but then when you’ve seen what I’ve seen……
I’m also looking at organising an online library to lend books to friends, since I can’t afford a bigger house yet.
A purge is always good, but will not solve the problem — which is not really a problem. You like to have a lot of books around. You will not be happy if you do not. Accept this as a condition and not a problem. If you throw away a lot of books for the sake of throwing them away, you will miss them. On the other hand, books that are in attics or otherwise inaccessible are not really of any value.
I have a house full of books, myself.
In your case I would do a few things.
1. Do purge out the dead wood. There is always some, but it won’t be more than a few percent.
2. Put up shelvage everywhere possible. As long as the book is on a shelf, even if it is above a doorway, it is pretty much accessible and usable.
3. Sacrifice other furniture and all other types of decoration in order to clear out room for shelf space.
If every vertical surface in the place other than windows and electrical fixtures is book shelvage, then and only then do you have “too many” books for your space.
A purge is always good, but will not solve the problem — which is not really a problem. You like to have a lot of books around. You will not be happy if you do not. Accept this as a condition and not a problem. If you throw away a lot of books for the sake of throwing them away, you will miss them. On the other hand, books that are in attics or otherwise inaccessible are not really of any value.
I have a house full of books, myself.
In your case I would do a few things.
1. Do purge out the dead wood. There is always some, but it won’t be more than a few percent. Do this periodically. Take the books to a good used bookstore that gives you credit, so you go in with, say ten books, and come out with five.
2. Put up shelvage everywhere possible. As long as the book is on a shelf, even if it is above a doorway, it is pretty much accessible and usable.
3. Aggressively sacrifice all other furniture and all other types of decoration in order to clear out room for shelf space for books.
If every vertical surface in the place other than windows and electrical fixtures is book shelvage, yet the books are still accumulating in piles with not an inch to squeeze in more — then and only then do you have “too many” books for your space.
The solution then is to move to a place where your books will fit, absolutely NOT to accomodate the scale of the library to the space.
None of the foregoing is meant to be ironic.
In my previous house, before we even moved in I had an entire wall of shelves and cabinets built into one room, and decreed that the room was to be called “the Library.” (It also housed the piano, but other than books that was it; and since I am the only one who plays the piano no one but me ever used the room.) However, the decrees of the lord of the manor notwithstanding, my wife commandeered a significant portion of “my” shelf space for bric-a-brac, photos and other decorative purposes (books themselves aren’t sufficiently decorative, you see). Needless to say, I quickly ran out of space for the actual books, and new additions were relegated to odd nooks, shelves beneath tables, etc. An intolerable situation, as I’m sure most would agree. The only solution, of course, was to move.
The new house has far more shelf space already in place, and ample room to add still more (which day is coming). The bric-a-brac is still there, but I no longer mind (as much). It has taken me decades to reach this point, but I actually think that I have enough space now. I shall die here, content.
To address the “lending library” portion of your post, I suggest taking a look at LibraryThing — you and your friends could form a group and easily track the comings and goings of shared volumes:
http://www.librarything.com/