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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsDo you have this many books? (pic heavy)
Suffice it to say my father likes books
This is his library downstairs.
That's not even all of them as many of these shelves are DOUBLE faced!
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,681 posts)Wow, that is a lot of books!
We have many as well, but I think your father has more.
He must like to read!
I have many books.
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)Chan790
(20,176 posts)I have nearly every book I've ever owned. (Actually, I really am a collector of rare and valuable books...I also trade and sell from time to time.)
I like to think of them as my dowry...I may be a shiftless slacker who only dates lawyers and other hot nerdy women but I come with enough books to endow a library. Some day some attractive funny women with more earning potential than I have may demean herself to actually settle upon me...I figure it'll be for my books.
My father is something of a collector too, but not for the same reason
For him it's almost a hoarding thing. He loves books and reading, and is fairly well read, but he's actually only completed a small proportion of the books in his library. He starts and puts down WAY more books than he ever finishes. A lot of these books were collected during his university years when he was studying Chinese. The rest were collected over the years living here in Vancouver.
u4ic
(17,101 posts)Who sold half half his book collection before he moved across the country. He is "down" to 3,000.
I can't begin to imagine how much it cost to ship 3,000 books!
Chan790
(20,176 posts)First-hand knowledge.
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)Chan790
(20,176 posts)Locut0s
(6,154 posts)Still less than I'd have thought considering the weight and volume of 3000 books.
Chan790
(20,176 posts)Also, I'm assuming freight shipping. You box them. You put them on a pallet. You wrap the pallet in plastic. The guy comes and puts it on the freight truck with everybody else's freight order. You receive them off another truck days later and sign for the delivery. They set your pallet in the driveway.
Moving them by moving-truck or via a parcel service is going to be much higher. I actually have a story about this from a summer job. I worked in shipping for a manufacturer of screws. Part of my job was arranging freight pick-up for outside processing. We'd send 4000# of screws to the heat-treater by freight, the cost was about $2500 for the pallet with return-service (meaning we're paying for round-trip). When they came back from the treater, I'd have to break down the pallets, partition out the orders, box them up and send them to the individual customers via UPS or USPS or FedEx...that shipping (now ~4100#) usually cost ~$8000. (One-way! If they returned the parts for any reason it cost us even more.) That was every day and we got preferential rates due to our high shipping volume...we ship two entire UPS truckloads a day.
Paperbacks are cheap to ship...hardcovers weigh 3-5x as much and price goes up accordingly. At the 90% u4ic said they actually were, it's probably twice the $1200 I thought. More if there's insurance involved. I have a couple books that I have to personally carry when I move because the insurance cost on the appraised value is obscene and because I just feel safer when I'm responsible and personally-handling the $50K 170-year-old hand-illustrated books. I know I'm going to be delicate with them, who knows what gorilla the freight shipper has handling my stuff.
u4ic
(17,101 posts)Also in Canada, not the US. Would be more expensive, but you gave me a ballpark estimate. Not as much as I expected.
orleans
(34,072 posts)Locut0s
(6,154 posts)Why would you be pissed?
blogslut
(38,009 posts)He and my Mother had a stupendous library and Dad read every single book on the shelves.
I remember reading one book after he died and realizing that he tried so very hard to get me to be interested in its subject matter when I was an insolent teen. I blew him off at the time. But, then I read it and I was amazed and astounded and I cried because Dad was gone and I could not share the experience of that amazing book with him and I realized that I was a terrible daughter.
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)I'm sure the very LAST thing your father would have wanted would be for you to feel guilty for being a terrible daughter. The very fact that he tried as hard as he did you get you to be interested in the book means he loved you. No father who loves their children would EVER want them to feel this way of themselves after their passing! Being an insolent teen is hardly a rare thing, one might go as far as to say it's a natural part of growing up. I'm sorry for your loss and empathise. Remember your father as the man who loved you. But don't ever think you were a terrible daughter.
eppur_se_muova
(36,281 posts)and you proved to be a great daughter after all. :hugs:
surrealAmerican
(11,363 posts)Some of ours look like that, with the books piled on top. It makes it hard to get to what you're looking for.
Neoma
(10,039 posts)And get more books to fill up the new shelves.
Revanchist
(1,375 posts)I tend to donate them to shelters or the VFW once I'm done reading them.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)along with my own.
pipi_k
(21,020 posts)room in my tiny house for a collection that big, which is why I love my Kindle so much. I was able to donate a lot of my actual books and make room for other things, although I did keep some hardcopies of the ones I read over and over again.
anyway, I love books too, and would guess that I've probably read a few thousand of them over the years.
PS...so I just checked my Kindle account and there are 1132 downloaded books there.
Try fitting that many books into a pocket or purse!
IdaBriggs
(10,559 posts)*Every* room.
We have bookshelves everywhere, and waterproof bins (maybe 30?) filled with books in the basement. I also have a bunch on my kindle - a few hundred, maybe?
Periodically I go through, and filter - I think I found new homes for five boxes (200 or so?) adult books, and then over the summer we donated 150-200 children's books alone (that my kids had outgrown) to a local daycare.
Mine is a household of readers, and I go through books like chocolate. One other poster mentioned her "dowry" being books, and one of the big selling points my husband brought to the relationship was an understanding that, while I might not "waste" money on shoes or purses, books were non-negotiable. Lol!
Earlier this year a dear friend passed away from cancer; she was a fellow book-lover. While still reeling from the news, I went to a local bookstore that, as chance would have it, was closing down - a double blow. The good news was they were selling everything in the store dirt cheap (hardcovers $5; paperbacks $2/$3 or less without a cover), and I ended up with 75 books for a little under $200, many of which I wouldn't have bought if I wasn't so grief stricken. Every time I've read one of them, I have remembered my friend, and wanted to share thoughts about them. She had a wicked sense of humor, and I dearly loved to talk books/characters with her, especially our favorite decadent indulgence the "trash romance with fantasy elements and feisty heroines" - sigh.
I miss her still. My memories of her are all wrapped up in books and crafting....which describes much of my life....
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)hunter
(38,325 posts)My wife and I cannot walk past a used bookstore. My wife still buys used books on the internet too, I've stopped doing that, maybe 'cause I've already got most of the books that have influenced me...
In our defense we are quick to lend them out or give them away too, at least those that might be easily replaced.
I have a Kobo, and enjoy browsing gutenberg.org not that it doesn't stop me from buying new books, but there is no more room on our shelves for more, and no more room for more shelves without taking some of the art down. Oh dear, we collect art too, not the expensive kind, it's mostly family and friends art, and art we've purchased from local artists.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)If you add back the metric ton of books he'd donated to friends of the library/given away to friends over the years, he probably had three times as many....
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)many on shelves in my computer room, and many more stored in plastic cartons in my garage because I don't have any more shelves in my house.