Conspicuous display of physical books

[simplyparticular]

The majority of my childhood reading was from the church or public libraries, so owning books isn't part of my roots.

I spent my college years working in the library. Then a few years at a publishing house and bookstore, where I did get a bit of collecting bug. 9 moves involving 22 Waldenbooks cases cured me of that.

A healthy tech habit introduced me to Palm's Peanut Reader store and I shifted collecting to digital. The 22 cases of books are long gone.

And now I don't even collect ebooks. I've heavily culled my Calibre library of most freebies, and even many paid books I've passed over. I get the majority of my reading from Overdrive libraries.

My children prefer the physical versions, so we still visit the library and have many books in the house (including a complete World Book encyclopedia!), but they are used and loved, not "displayed."

[astrangerhere]

My house is stuffed with physical books. The entire back wall of my living room is wall to wall books - 22x6.5 feet of them. It looks lovely, but our books are read, they are not for display. This was just the best way to store them. We have more than 1100 books in the house. This is mostly because my wife is just as much a reader as I am, but does not like e-reading.

[Fat Abe]

We have a 5th bedroom that I use as an office. It has 7 bookcases that extend from floor to ceiling. There are too many physical books that have yet to be produced in a digital edition. Math and physics books that I used as a grad student are irreplaceable. Film books like Screen World are very htf in mint condition. Most of my science fiction books are now available in epub or kindle format, but I like to keep the original paperbacks on the shelves since I don't like paying for a second copy of anything if I don't have to. The only exception are movies, which tend to improve over time due to remastering in a higher definition format.
Not everyone needs to keep a library full of books in their home. But, most professors and authors who have been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC, and other news programs do seem to own a lot of books. For scholars, it seems to come with the territory.

[Pacdoc]

Has anyone else had the experience of inviting new friends to your home and been told that NOBODY could have read that many books and they were just for show?

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by Pacdoc

Has anyone else had the experience of inviting new friends to your home and been told that NOBODY could have read that many books and they were just for show?

During the pandemic, my book wall was my Zoom background (I sat on the couch for all my meetings). I had many people compliment my "background" until I started standing up and taking books off the shelf to prove it was real. But I don't think anyone ever accused me of not reading them.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Pacdoc

Has anyone else had the experience of inviting new friends to your home and been told that NOBODY could have read that many books and they were just for show?

I've had that experience on a couple of occasions. Not to mention one comment a couple of decades back that our basement looked like a well stocked branch library. Sadly(??), many of those books are now replaced by digital copies.

For the yahoo who was most vociferous that no one could have read all those books, I offered him a reward for finding a book that had not obviously been read and was still in the newly purchased state.