Re: Book Hoarding
 

That's interesting since when I make book purchase I don't think of it in terms of future scarcity or value.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

I'm not considering future scarcity/price in order to buy books as an investment. I only buy books I want to read. I've just learned from experience that, with some books, waiting to buy is a mistake. Unfortunately this consideration sometimes compels me to buy books that I only might want to read in the future, and that I only might have time to read. This type of activity seems to me to be true hoarding, as opposed to the more usual experience of being over-enthusiastic when shopping for books, or seeing many enticing titles and having eyes bigger than your appetite, as the saying goes. And yet this true hoarding instinct, driven by thoughts that one might want certain books that might be scarce or expensive in the unknown future, seems like merest common sense to me. It is common sense, right?

Re: Book Hoarding
 

I suppose it is though for me I regret buying a book more often than not buying one. There are so many limited editions released every month and discovery of books I might enjoy that I feel I can never catch a break with purchasing books. So I place a stricter limit on what I purchase, and if I have passed a rare book I now want to read it's too bad- others will fill its place and I'll soon forget it altogether. Sometimes it happened like that and the book's price increased from $30 to $80 and while I knew it would be $150 later, I got quite annoyed and determined to not purchase or think about it anymore. I can't remember the title but I remember being very stubborn about it. Hahaha, maybe I'm just a cheap bastard!

Re: Book Hoarding
 

To me it does seem commonsensical to go ahead and buy any particular book I want now, rather than waiting until it becomes scarce/expensive. But several thousand books later, I realize that common sense might, just might, have gone off the rails somewhere.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

My book buying is similar to gveranon's. I know that if I don't buy certain titles now, in six months they will be forever out of reach. I always justify my purchase by telling myself that I can sell it for a profit later. This is true, and many times over in most instances. It is also true that I never sell my books. I occasionally drop some off at Goodwill to thin the herd, but, even then, often to my regret, because somewhere down the line I'll be looking for that book that I gave away six months ago. Definitely off the rails. It is probably some form of OCD or something related to a fear of death. Broad brush there.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

There is a bakery near my house that has a wall of shelves with books. Their policy is "take a book, leave a book". Sometimes I do exactly that with the books I've read and can part with. Then I buy a croissant and a capuchino.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Yeah there’s a book shop type thing on the high street near me but it’s all free and these people who have bought the building just encourages people to bring in old books and you can take anything you want for free.

I’ve started dropping some of my old paperbacks in there.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Re: Book Hoarding
 

A trick that works for me, is that I'll read up through the TOC and forward/intro/preface of everything in my personal library. That way I have a better sense of what I still have to look forward to and I can think about that instead of thinking about what I don't have yet. That doesn't entirely stop the books from stacking up of course.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

...And the foreword/intro/preface mentions some other title in a way that stirs strong interest in your breast and cortex, and you keep your cool and simply file that other title in your memory, and by the next day you realize that the other title, as described, is exactly what you need to read next (or, if not next, at least very soon), and you can't believe your luck as you order it and keenly await its arrival. Repeat, repeat, repeat...

Re: Book Hoarding
 

You guys have so much discipline.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

If it's a discipline problem, it's not a problem like, say, "one more potato chip." Books are unique, and the next one might be just the aesthetic experience you wanted (or close to it, anyway), or it might contain just the information or idea or conceptual framework you've been looking for. So you need that next book in a way that you don't need the next potato chip (or whatever).

Seriously.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

I was a real mess before I read this passage from Roland Topor's The Tenant.


The bookstalls were as repulsive to him as an endless row of garbage cans. Intellectual ragpickers probed unconcernedly through all the refuse on display, searching for some morsel of spiritual nourishment. When they found it, an expression of animal-like cupidity crossed their faces, and they snatched it up as if some enemy were lying in wait to steal it from them.


It cracked me up. Now I enjoy buying books, but I no longer need to. Ironically, I needed that book.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Occasionally I have been repulsed by the sight of fellow book shoppers. This has happened most often at library book sales (which I have learned to avoid). Thousands of books and a swarm of people acting like it's Black Friday at Walmart. (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.)

But when I desire and acquire books, I don't look at myself from the outside. It's an inward experience of thought and perception, and my main outward focus is on the books and their contents. No, I'm too immersed in this for the Topor passage to cure me of my fascination.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

I don't have enough room for many more books, so I try and limit my physical purchases to books I can't get for my Kindle... apart from when it comes to pretty Tartarus editions.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

On a tangential note, I am curious to know if book hunting features prominently in anyone else's dreams? I ask as they have become increasingly common for me in recent years, occurring at a rate of at least a couple times per month, and are likely my most frequent type of 'happy' dream, edging out even the more emotionally resonant 'encountering one's soulmate' sort of dream. These dreams invariably revolve around my browsing at a used bookshop/thrift store/library sale (something I do constantly) and happening upon a number of titles from my wishlist; usually these are books that exist in reality or are near-analogues, but there is a specific kind of disappointment, bordering at times on heartbreak, that results from waking up after one of these dreams realizing the book you were overjoyed at finding is an oneiric invention, a hybrid that has no basis in reality. As I said before, I have such dreams on an almost weekly basis - earlier this year I found myself looking for books in the same dream location so often that it obtained a strange kind of familiarity, able to be recognized both while asleep and in memory upon waking, and I can still recall the place's basic layout even now.

(Upon further reflection, just realized that this situation pretty much absolutely confirms Ligotti's statement that "the less you do, the less you dream about - but the more often, and more intensely, you dream". . .)

Re: Book Hoarding
 

@ChildofOldLeech: That's a nice recurrent dream. Talk about book hunting and dream reminds me of "Vastarien" or "The Medusa", especially the scene at an old bookshop's basement:
"The bookstore at street-level was no more than a messy little closet in comparison to the expansive disorder down below: a cavern of clutter, all heaps and mounds, with bulging tiers of bookshelves laid out according to no easily observable scheme. It was a universe constructed solely of the softly jagged brickwork of books. But if the Medusa was a book, how would he ever find it in this chaos?"

Unfortunately I haven't remembered my dreams for a while, and I buy almost all my books online. Most used bookstores around my area only carry high school literary books.

Book Hoarding
 

Others may relate.
My burg no longer has bookshops.
The majors are gone, though their stock seldom tempted me.
There are no Used bookshops, aside from a chain which shelves dreck.
Remainders, publishers overstock, cookbooks, crafty things.
Options at the public library are equally dismal.
Indeed, the library, which was a wonderful place for decades, strikes me as a sadly fading ghost every time I enter - and I visit twice a week.

My other great obsession, music, gradually ebbed as new trends no longer resonated with me and I ceased buying altogether.
I tell myself that buying books, protecting them, I am doing something akin to stewardship, safe guarding titles that may otherwise be lost.
The real trick, of course, is wisely dispersing the collection before I die.
Fail there, and the books' fate will be entrusted to the ignorant.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

ChildofOldLeech- Strangely I haven't had book shopping dreams yet because I've had many many recurring dreams about finding amazing grotesque plastic toys, finding amazing unknown obscurities in a variety of comic shops across a town of and dreams of online porn hunting. But in each of these I'm usually stalled by obstacles or the objects elude me somehow, I rarely seem to actually get my hands on the prize.


Some of my reading goals, possibly impossible...

- All the Gollancz Masterworks books (even if it's not the actual Gollancz edition) and most of the Gollancz Gateway Omnibus books.
- All the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line and all the books/stories even considered for the line (as with the Gollancz line, I don't mind if it's an edition by a different publisher).
- All Snuggly books and maybe all Chomu?
- All modern Tartarus authors.
- Most of Blackcoat's translations of French books.
- A good lot of Dedalus, but all the anthologies.
- A good lot of Haikasoru and Kurodahan.
- Try a book by each author published by Hippocampus.
- A good chunk of Valancourt's horror/speculative reprints.
- Try a collection by each Word Horde author.
- A good lot of Undertow's books.
- Read every diversity/social group anthology or magazine I can find.
- Get everything I can by Egaeus.
- A ton of small press magazines.

For the fancy hardcover publishers I wont pay that much over the cover price. Most of the Zagava, Ex Occidente and Raphus stuff is out of my price range so I dont have much plans for them.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

This thread has changed my book purchasing habit somewhat. I used to sit around until the books I wanted run out, but I guess the anxiety is getting to me.

Every year I promise myself to read than buy anymore books, yet this year I'm reading less compared to last year and buying even more books! At this point I need to put in red capital letters "THINK OF THE BUDGET!" whenever I go online.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Uh-oh. Sorry!

Re: Book Hoarding
 

I've frequently been spending weekends looking at book listings and reviews. Yesterday I signed up to as many publisher mailing lists as I could think of, but I suppose a lot of them are inconsistent with mailing lists or just forget about them altogether.

What Valancourt does on goodreads is a good model of how a publisher might keep readers informed.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time looking over Black Coat's dizzying output, considering how interested I might be in the catalogue of Newcon Press, reading lots of reviews on SFinTranslation and then getting caught up again in reading old controversies.

My reading goals seem more delusional when I consider how long it takes to even browse all these books!

If I had read all my anthologies years ago maybe there would be more authors I would have ruled out by now. But you can never tell if you've only read the weaker side of someone's work.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

I appear to have been mixing up Raphus and Mount Abraxas Press. Can you buy Abraxas books anywhere but Ziesings? Not that I'll ever be able to afford them.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

You can purchase directly from them through email: exoccidente@gmail.com

Re: Book Hoarding
 

So, as best I can tell, Mount Abraxas is an imprint/rebranding/sister company of Ex Occidente. Historically, I've seen it sold by only two retailers: Ziesings (US) and Cold Tonnage (UK). But as To A Lonely Peace mentions, your best bet is to buy from the publisher directly. In my experience, he's been very responsive to email inquiries. His editorial legacy speaks for itself.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

In my experience, he's been very responsive to email inquiries. His editorial legacy speaks for itself.

I wish to second Ucasuni on this. Dan Ghetu has been creating a remarkable legacy through his Ex Occidente press and Mount Abraxas imprint (also including the former Ex Occidente partnership with Zagava).

These books are true works of art, and the written work of these authors, many hard-to-find elsewhere, are a unique contribution to literature. I only wish Des Lewis was still posting here as his reviews of Ex Occidente works are superlative.

I hope that you do connect directly with this press! One of the very best.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Undeserving kind words. Thank you.

The books are officially distributed by Simon Gosden at Fantastic Literature (UK) and by Mark Ziesing at Ziesing Books (US). I have a long standing relationship with both these gentlemen. I am sure they will be glad to help any of you with any Mount Abraxas / Ex Occidente Press recent titles.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Add to this trying all of Immanion's fiction authors, Norliana, Small Beer Press, Wakefield Press and Eibonvale Press.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Books, books, books. Whatever do we do with them? We do not re-read most of them (too many others waiting for attention). We do not give them away or pass them on. Selling feels a bit like sacrilege (unless one disliked the book) and so they sit on the shelf, waiting. For what? My death, so they can be boxed up and shipped off to some donation center? For me to move and face a whopping fee to transport hundreds of pounds of pulp? To collapse on me, creating a temporary tomb (my preferred way to go).
Sometimes I feel my living space would be better without books: clearer, more minimalistic. But I would miss them so.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Perhaps, but your quality of life would drastically decrease.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

For you to re-read when you get old, and current books are of less interest.

Joyless
 

In my early twenties, I had the notion of assembling my own "library."
Classics, art books, histories, reference works, etc ...
What one would see in movies set in the stately manor.
Folly, what with the public library, and later internet.
Still I did buy, and continue to buy, books that beckoned.

Behavior I find puzzling, I am now witnessing in my supposedly rational female friends and relatives.
There is an almost manic craze for tidying, jettisoning possessions that no longer "spark joy."
Decluttering.
For so many, that means clearing the bookshelves to a Zen-like state.
Many, I have had to plead with - "Don't throw the books out in the trash! Donate to your library, give to a retirement home, drop off at the Salvation Army."
Someone will value those castoffs.
This is the polar opposite of hoarding, and it saddens me.
I wonder how many will regret their actions in a couple of years.

Re: Joyless
 

I doubt they will regret it since minimalism is in fashion right now. It's a pain to move or get rid of physical books. Many like the idea that they have millions of books at their disposal, and they only have to push the download button to read one. I would switch to reading on the tablet or kindle if not for my issues of decreased reading speed and increased impatience. Also people don't often steal books, but they will steal those devices.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Minimalism is a fascinating idea that I did look into at one point. But I simply cannot be a minimalist when it comes to books. Everything else, yes. In fact, give me a bed, a comfortable chair, a CD player, and walls crammed with books and I think I'd be perfectly content.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Obituary of Madeline Kripke (sister of the philosopher Saul Kripke), "who kept one of the world’s largest private collection of dictionaries [20,000 volumes], much of it crammed into her Greenwich Village apartment." Follow the link and scroll down to see an amazing picture of her apartment:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/n...ronavirus.html

This was not mindless collecting:

And here is a longer profile/interview with more pictures of her collection: https://narratively.com/the-dame-of-dictionaries/

And I can't resist adding this:

Re: Book Hoarding
 

I was looking at my written wishlists and adding the most important things to amazon wishlist again and I thought "I need to take a break before I enter the rest, maybe I'll spread this over the next two days"!

But I'm buying less books.

A couple of weeks ago I looked through all my books to get the priority books established. There's still some comics that I have no idea if I still want to read them and I don't want to get rid of them until I'm sure.

Some stuff I regret buying: Russell Kirk's Ancestral Shadows (I thought the one story I've read is just okay) and Oliver Onions (I've liked 2 or 3 of his stories well enough, but do I need this huge book of them?) But I won't get rid of them unless I'm really not enjoying them if I ever get around to them.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

When I look at authors I'm particularly interested in, I often say to myself "I'll read all their books eventually", but this is looking increasingly optimistic and unreal. So too that idea of keeping up with the small presses I'm most interested in.

How many authors do you manage, try to or realistically plan to read their complete works? Is it folly for a regular reader to try to be completist about many authors who written 50-100 books?

I'm still keen on being completist about SP Somtow and Tanith Lee.

Does any of you keep up with many fiction magazines online and offline?

Re: Book Hoarding
 

I have had a few temporary insanity episodes I pared down my book collection a bit too much. Where, for example, I brought 2 big bags to the library to donate, when, had I been more discerning, I should have just brought one small one. Of course, I don't regret all of these (letting go of mass market paperbacks never bothers me, and I do prefer to get rid of books that I have strong feelings against for whatever reason, like Sartre's "Nausea".), but there are a few that strike me as sheer madness in retrospect. I actually donated a first edition set of Thomas Mann's multi-volume "Joseph and His Brothers" (Which had a beautiful personalized dedication in exquisite calligraphy), simply because I had just purchased James Wood's more recent translation. Yet how much I've regretted that ever since!

Still, it is kind of funny. I only know perhaps one person in the real world with even a vague appreciation for books and literature. So I read pretty much for myself alone. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's even a noble thing in it's way. But it would be nice to have someone to discuss it all with on occasion. However, the ignorance of the average American today is pretty staggering. I saw a survey not so long ago that detailed how 30 percent of American adults actually think that the sun revolves around the earth rather than vice versa! (Really, how is this even possible? How can a person live so incuriously for 45 years as to not know such a basic fact of existence?) A similar survey showed that less than 5 percent of the adult population in this country reads a single book a year after college, even when "book" is defined so generously as to include Oprah Winfrey's list of top cookbooks. When these are your neighbors (70 million of whom voted for Trump, good grief.), I guess it's to be expected that literature and book collecting will always remain solitary pursuits.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

Pan Michael you have no idea HOW MUCH I empathize with what you wrote. It's like existing in a world filled with silence. It's beautiful and terrible simultaneously.

Re: Book Hoarding
 

If one were to select a country to live in based on what its readers are like, you might consider some of these statistics (but some of these articles are getting a bit old). Literacy rates and number of enthusiastic readers being a very different thing, especially with Thailand.
Finland ranked world's most literate nation | Books | The Guardian
Which Countries Read the Most? - WorldAtlas
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Indians 'world's biggest readers'

I had heard Australia was a good country of readers, but that was Terry Dowling saying that in the 90s.