Monday, October 7, 2019

Do you collect books? by Jan Scarbrough #RomanceGems


In ninth grade, my English teacher Mrs. Neff told us we should buy and own books. I took her advice to heart. My father owned books, and they were displayed in shelves in our home. My mother was an avid reader, but she preferred going to the library and borrowing books. She was a child of The Depression, don’t you know?

So, over the years, I began my own collection of books, mostly paperback. I accumulated my college texts, and kept the ones on history and English. I read novels—buying Georgette Heyer and Anya Seton. I even bought the first wildly popular historical romances—TheFlame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss and Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers.


As my collection grew and grew, I built my own bookshelves—first in the basement and then upstairs flanking the fireplace. My office has two bookshelves. All the shelves crowded. Finally, I decided I needed to cull the quantity and started donating books to Locust Grove for their fundraisers.

Locust Grove is a c.1792 Georgian mansion built by William and Lucy Clark Croghan, near Louisville Kentucky. Lucy Clark Croghan is the sister of Revolutionary War hero General George Rogers Clark. I feel my physical books have a good home if they go to supporters of this historic mansion.

Yet, my collecting hasn’t stopped. Beginning in April 2010, I bought ebooks. Amazon’s Kindle app fit nicely on my new iPad, and Amazon was so accommodating to allow me to buy with One Click and somehow, amazingly, the book appeared on my devices—my iPad and my iPhone.

Do I read them all? No. Not enough time in the day. Most are on my To Be Read pile. What about you? Do you have an ebook pile or a physical one? Or both?



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19 comments:

  1. Hi Jan, I still have a few of my longtime favorites on bookshelves but the majority of my books are on Kindle. It's easy to deny spending a lot on them with this device util you look at your online library.

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  2. When we sold the house and moved into the RV and began our travels, I had to do extreme downsizing. My paperbacks were like best friends. I think I kept 3 out of hundreds. It was so difficult to part ways. Like you, my Kindle is loaded. Even though we've sold the RV and have a new home, I won't buy paperbacks due to storage. But there's just something about holding a paperback in my hands...

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  3. YES! I am a huge collector of books, but I am careful because I don't want to go through what others do -- downsizing. So, the ones I like, I keep. Which is still dangerous. I am very close to needing a 5th place to store my reading material. So....yikes.

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  4. I have books from my grandmother's collection. So yes, I collect books. I have not bonded the same with ebooks.

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  5. I started downsizing my library in 2001. Had an actual library—beautiful room with floor to ceiling shelves. About 3,000 books. It's taken me all these years to cut my book collection back to what amounts to 6 book shelves with 2 at our country home and 4 in town. I try to buy only ebooks now, but I still buy print too. What can I say? I love reading, and it doesn't matter what format.

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  6. As an early childhood teacher for over 30 years (taught Kindergarten and 3rd grade) I have a huge collection of children's books. Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, Jan Brett, Robert Munsch, and so many more. Since we moved into a tiny place, some of them are in storage but many have been handed down to my grandsons.
    As for adult books, I get most of them on Kindle now, except the ones I get from conferences. Those I give away once I've read them. I only keep the ones from my close author friends.

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  7. I used to collect physical copies of books, but had a "Great Culling" a year and a half ago and got rid of many of them. Nowadays I keep my collection on my kindle (unless it's signed, then I have to keep the copy.)

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  8. I have the same history! My dad had so many books and so did I. And when I had kids I immediately started buying books for them and they got passed down to each kid and now those books are with the granddaughters!

    Thank God for the invention of the Kindle! This saves so much space!

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  9. i have saved books a long, long time! 1955judymaharrey@g....

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  10. I have TBR piles of actual books AND on my e-reader, and I'm still buying more! I still think some day I can read them all... ;) Thanks for the opportunity! hidee.ekstrom@gmail.com

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  11. I have been collecting romance novels (with a few sci-fi) based on the cover models I collect, since the mid-1990s. I started with Fabio (in more ways than one since it was seeing him on a Johanna Lindsey cover that got me to read my very first romance novel) and have a few other favorite models. I think of them as my mini-art gallery since I don't reread books. But I'm up to 6.5 full-height bookcases, with the paperbacks stacked two-deep, and I am not buying hard copy books anymore due to storage issues. I just cannot justify buying another bookcase, and there's only room for one more in my "library" anyway. I get a lot of books from the library, both paper and electronic. I have actually started to cull a bit, too, though I've probably only donated 50 books so far this year. It's hard to let them go! But I know I need to do so. Karen H near Tampa (kesh307 at yahoo dot com)

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  12. I collect both paperbacks and Kindle books I think I have about 3000 on my kindle. I'll never be able to read them all. I probably have 300-400 books! I've been trying to get rid of some I know I will never read, I'm donating to my library for their used book sale.

    marthalawson8 (at) gmail dot com

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  13. I collect physical and e-books. The physical books are those for research and by authors my husband and I re-read. I don't know if I will ever read all those on my e-reader. I've stopped adding to them unless I'm certain I'll read the book. The problem is I know sooooo many excellent authors!

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  14. I collect print books from every genre. My little apartment is over run with boxes of books.LOL deborahdumm@yahoo.com

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  15. I try to keep my collection of paperbacks manageable. My Kindle, however, is another story...

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  16. I've gradually been getting rid of books for several years. First I started to get rid of reference books because I can look things up on Google. Then books I had read, because I don't like to reread books. I get so many books from the library and from conferences. When we downsized last year I shipped 17 boxes of books to my daughter who has a new and used book store. I get boxes of books to the library and to the Lupus Foundation, one of the few who accept books. And sadly I had to throw away many boxes of books I had stored in the garage because mice had gotten into them and they were in very gross condition. So now I only have two bookcases. And we won't discuss the Kindle app on my tablet.

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  17. Congratulations, Martha! You won a copy of Heart to Heart!

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