No, just more bookcases.

And an annex.

Several years ago I visited the Milwaukee Art Museum. They had recently opened a new gallery donated by a local woman to house her also-donated art collection. The gallery was designed to look like her home, a bit, and included some of her beautiful furniture. One of the security guards said she would sometimes come to the gallery to open and go through her mail, while visiting her art as she would have done at home, but with musuem visitors also walking around.

Perhaps you can donate a similar reading room at the library?

I love to read and moved boxes of books with me as I crisscrossed the U.S. several times to take up new career opportunities. Unlike you, I was an early adopter of e-readers. I love having access to my library at all times. Consequently, I donated my hundreds and hundreds of books about ten years ago. I only kept a few that were not available in e-format and my whole library of design and art books. When I moved last year, I donated the rest of my books excluding a very small selection of cookbooks and fiction still not available as an e-book.

I appreciate your love for physical books and shared it for many years, but I find that the convenience of having e-books at my fingertips no matter where I am and the freedom from dusting and cleaning books outweighs my love of the physical volumes.

I can blame my mother, too, Roxanna. She was an elementary school teacher and when I was very small, she taught in a one-room school with maybe 25 students in total. I didn't like staying with the (quite nice) lady they chose while she and my dad went off every day and put up enough fuss that she just took me to school with her. I talked out loud once, the kids all laughed, and so after that I was quiet. Everyone else had a book, so I wanted one, too. She gave me a pre-primer and let me come up to her desk and soon I was reading. I had just turned four and have been reading ever since.

My books live in wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling shelves that my husband built for me across the back wall of the living room as well as on four shelves of a ceiling-high, five-feet-wide bookcase/desk also in the LR, on floor-to-ceiling shelves he also built on each side of the fireplace in the den, and in free-standing bookcases in two bedrooms.

Recently I had a young workman here who stopped in the front hall after one look and declared that he had never seen so many books in his life.

I, too, always wanted a real book in my hands until the pandemic when the libraries closed and I learned to download ebooks on my laptop. I no longer buy many books (well, except for a few favorite authors), and being able to choose a book in the middle of the night and keep reading is quite alluring.

I've always loved reading. I do love books, but I was always strongly encouraged to use the library. So, I am not a book possessor. About 10 years ago DH got me a kindle paperwhite. I was not very receptive at first because why try to re-invent the perfectly functioning wheel ?

However, I quickly became a major fan and at this point probably 95% of what I read is ebook. Yes when the panemic shut everything down, I was reading happily , borrowing 24./7 from the library.

I don't have many books in my house, and often think that someone seeing my home would not think I read as much as I do. So yes, I am a book lover but not a book possessor.

Good description Salonva. I am not a book possessor either and growing up walked to our little community library frequently. A fellow librarian from the Free Library in Philly came to my house once for dinner and couldn't figure out where my books were. DH had a bookcase but it was full of his medical books and a shelf or two of our art books, reference books and cookbooks.

We still have 2 bookcases in this house but you'd only see them if you went upstairs to DH's study and opened the door to the walk in closet. One of my favorite jobs was to go through a collection and weed out old, out-dated, worn out books. I could send a list of discards to the main library where they'd post them and other branches could request them.

I must thank my Mother for my love of books and libraries. My little town didn't have a library until a group of women got together and started a fund raising campaign to purchase books. They were kept in two empty classrooms in the elementary school and every afternoon and evening these wonderful ladies volunteered to run the library - my Mom was one of them and she always took me with her when she was on duty. I was probably around 4 years old then. I still remember the hours I spent looking through the World Book Encyclopedia my parents bought from a door-to-door salesman.

When I was in 6th grade our town finally built a beautiful new library and I was asked if I wanted a job working there after school. So for several years I worked 9 hours a week as a 'Page" and was paid the grand sum of 60 cents an hours (10 cents more than baby sitting).

Like so many others here I read a lot but nearly everything is on my iPad.

I grew up in a home without many books. But I have always loved libraries. I think the card catalogue really enticed me, but Judy Blume ignited my love of reading, and of writing. I was always known as the reader in my family. Although I am now a writer, and hope that people will buy my books, I still don't own many books myself as it is my habit to use the library instead.

I once culled my books and donated them to a program that was building a library in the Philly women's prison. I then started volunteering on the project and began teaching creative writing classes in the prison too. Reading and writing have always gone hand in hand for me.

@maire_cate Yes, other learned book folks come to my home and I hear their silent questions about where my books are - a writer with few books?

I started reading around aged five in 1942 England. Due to war shortages I was allowed to join the children's section of the public library although it was really for seven years and older children.

I was given a set of her cherished Rupert Bear annuals by a kind lady when I was ill. Books were lent from private pre-war hoardings of series given as Christmas gifts etc. but only some were available. I never knew for many years that there was an Alice Through the Looking Glass!

Eventually I worked in libraries and even helped to set one up in a new development in an Australian country area.

I have far too many OOP books even though I have had to leave lots behind in my travels to and from the UK to Australia. They are all over my small abode, piled on every flat surface excepting the wet areas! I do get surprised comments! My DiL asked yesterday if I knew about Kindle! Yes but I prefer a real book to hold even if a startled bug leaps out sometimes.

Well, this is Australia!

I use the library and so don't possess books either but I do love to read and I got that from my Dad. My dad was a voracious reader of everything from history to political thrillers to spy novels to biographies.

My favourite reading subject currently is to read books about books or book stores or libraries.

The story could be fantasy such as Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, non-fiction such as The Library Book, (loved that book), or an homage to the words and story of a book such as

Shadow of the Wind. And there are so many fiction books about libraries and bookstores and how they become the center of a community such as The Librarianist or The Library of Borrowed Hearts. And then we have Lula Deans Little Library of Banned Books.

I also still love to hold a book and to turn the pages and to bookmark my place with any piece of paper that happens to be nearby..

I came to reading late as my grandfather, who we lived with us used to read to me and it never occurred to me to 'try' by myself. I also went to a progressive school where reading was expected to be taken in by osmosis. It wasn't until my father, bored by the After Christmas lull, sat me down with a copy of What Katy Did which, of course I couldn't read and shouted this shaming fact to my Mother. She replied that school was for teaching reading and that she had been able to read since age 3, if not from birth and had got through all of Dickens by 10 years old.

It was a strange attitude considering my grandmother, living in the US worked in a bookstore/library and often sent books as gifts (hence the Katy book).

From about age nine I visited our local library, a gloomy Tudor building (two doors up from Shakespeare's Birthplace) and chose my own books, but was then sent away to a convent boarding school, where the nuns did not encourage reading, nor were you allowed to bring books from home so I was reduced to reading 'set books' (for exam studies) often 'borrowed' from the desks of pupils in higher years!

Despite all this I am never without a book or two and use the library about 3 mins walk away or pick up 'used' books from charity shops etc.

Distance to a library is one of the factors I have looked at when considering what home to move to. They need a filter for that on Zillow.

One of life's pleasures....reading. I can still remember going to library as a kid. It was like stepping into another world. The quietness, the librarian, the dark wooded shelves full of one's next adventure. I can see it in my minds eye. I loved walking into it and excited about which books will come home with me.

I can't really give credit to anyone for exposing me to reading. Maybe it was the wonder of the English language. Not growing up in an English speaking home could have propelled me into the written word. I'm still excited to learn a new word.

My daughter has inherited the love of reading and I must say she surpasses me in the amount of books she reads.

My grandmother taught English and had a large collection of fiction (as well as grammar), and she had friends who willed their collections to her when they died, and I went through some of those that were still in boxes. I stole copies of Gone With the Wind and Tom Jones when I was ten, and those were two of my favorite books. I was a bit young to read Tom Jones, and so I saved it until I was 13 or 14, which is also about the time that a movie came out that was based on the book. I was too young to see that movie when it came out (I think you had to be at least 16), but I really wanted to. As a teenager (about 16), my sister somehow got a copy of Moll Flanders, and I was somehow able to steal this from her (temporarily) and read it when I was 14 or 15. I was previously unaware that books like that existed, but my sister has continued to find more books like that and has a large collection of them in paperback.

I got my first degree in German and English literature and took 27 literature classes at that time, including ones in French and Russian literature (in translation). I also took French language classes so that I could read books in French, and then later Russian classes, but I never became fluent enough in Russian to read books in that language, although I did translate a Russian folk tale from Russian (and German) to English, and I wanted to make it into a screenplay, which I started but never finished. I will say that I am more interested in Russian literature than French, but there are several French authors that I really like, such as Moliere, Victor Hugo, and Baudelaire. I like Balzac, but he is not one of my favorite authors.

I have never read an eBook, but I wish I could. I find tablet screen uncomfortable to hold, as I do a lot of my reading in bed. One advantage to an eBook would be that I would not have to worry about having a light to illuminate the pages.

I'm at the point now where I am going to have to get rid of a lot of books, and this is going to take some time for me. I'm going to have to understand my priorities better. Lately, I've been collecting anthropology books, and they are good for me to read when I want to go to sleep.

I was born in rural Kentucky in 1936 when and where the depression was still a factor. Thus, we didn't have many books except schoolbook readers that the State Education Department sent my teacher-mother as samples. There was no local library, and I solved the problem by reading the books we did have over and over. There was a copy of God's Little Acre by Ernest Caldwell that my mother said she debated with herself whether to ask me to wait awhile before reading it or just let me go ahead. I was 12, she didn't stop me, and all I got from it was the extreme poverty it portrayed. The other stuff went right over my head. (We discussed it much later.) I still have one of those books, The Love-Hater, by Berta Ruck that I considered the ultimate in love stories.

Like many of you, my love of reading started with my mother. She loved to read but the little town where she grew up had no library. Reading material was hard to come by except for The Coal Miners Journal. She made sure we had lots of books. I devoured all the Bobbsey Twins books and anything about horses or dogs. I was one of those kids who read under the blankets with a flashlight.

We had a nice library although it was a mile or more from my house. However it was a short walk in the opposite direction from my school, so Id walk to the library and then back home which was quite a trudge.

In school we had "library" a few times a week where we went as a class to the little school library and chose books. We also has silent reading time in class. I wonder if they still do this?

I dont keep many books in my house because I generally read fiction and I don't reread it. I get most of my books through Libby, our library's online book portal or use my wondeful local library, which is very close.

I can't imagine not having a book to read at all times.

Our dad used to read to us at bedtime. Mostly poems, from Dr Seuss to Christina Rosetti. I loved our twice weekly library time at school! And each classroom had a library of books we could borrow from for the weekend. And every day after morning recess, we had milk and the teacher would read to us. Often a chapter book, so we had a continuity. All the way through sixt grade we had all that, and it was wonderful.

We had Scholastic Book Fairs every year, as well as a yearly ordering oppurtunity.

Did I love books because they were available? Or did I enjoy the availability because I loved books? Who knows.

Oh, Maire, I love that!

Honestly Ded - I had the biggest grin on my face combined with tears. Such a moment.

Love that!

Rosefolly and I came by our love of reading from both of our parents. We visited the small library closest to us for a while when I was fairly young but later on, most of our books came from going to Walden Books at the local mall.

I have a number of bookcases filled with favorites, that I do reread when the mood hits. I also have a couple of bookcases with nonfiction books on various interests of mine. I do read ebooks but there is something about holding a physical book and flipping back pages to see if I missed something, or to remind myself of what’s going on if I have put the book down for a while.

When we went downtown to Marshall Field and Company, Mom would leave me in their wonderful book department while she did her more boring shopping. Heaven.

Someday, you will all read about me when I am crushed beneath the falling stacks of books. There are worse ways to go. I have bookshelves and antique secretary desks and barrister bookcases and built-ins all over my house and every one is full - not sloppy, but full. Plus forty on the nightstand. Another twenty next to my reading chair. Some people wince and tut-tut but I don't care. I decorate for me and I love the warmth and comfort of my books. Give me books rather than ceramic and porcelain statues that need to be dusted and teach me nothing. Give me books rather than glass thing-a-ma-bobs that do not provide a story or emotion or travel in my imagination.

It was my dad that read to me every night. And when I got older, we read side by side - he read his books and I read mine in silent companionship. These days, he is in his 80's and I am in my late 50's and live a few hours from each other. We still share books and talk about what we are reading each and every morning. Sometimes, when I find a great micro-history online, I order one for me and one for him so we can read simultaneously. He loves getting book surprises in the mail. My oldest book is from the 1830's and my newest one arrived yesterday.

My kids are now in their 20's and also voracious readers. They tell me they want all of my books and love that I annotate all of the non-fiction and write comments in the margins while also being tidy with my literature. They both have bookcases and shelving and the books travel freely between my house and theirs. I have a kindle - it's around here someplace. And I don't like it. I want the pages, I want the cover, I want to own the story, not a virtual copy of the story.

All sorts of people collect all sorts of things. People have different hobbies and interests. I don't want fancy clothes, nor do I care about decorating trends or purses or make-up. I have to travel with a half-empty suitcase because I always search for used book stores. I have books. Thousands upon thousands of them. I don't cull because they bring me happiness and comfort.

These stories are wonderful - thank you everyone for sharing. ♥ ♥ ♥

PAM

Pam, reading side by side, even if miles apart, is fun. DH and did a twist: I was reading Wallis Simpson’s memoir, and he was reading a biography of her. Mind you, of course she wrote hers while many of the people involved were still alive. But as DH and I compared our reading each night, we wondered if we were reading about the same woman! Very different takes. We talked a bit about why, and not only was she, well, Wallis, but also seeing things from a close perspective, without benefit of history or of concurrent events and conversations. (for example, ”touring through France on our way to visit friends in the south, while staying a step ahead of reporters” is very different from ”fleeing the press onslaught to hide out on the Côte d’Azur”. Not verbatim but like that.)

Pam, that is how I feel about books too! Although I do collect ornaments and other things and loved new fashions and designer bags so I crammed my drawers and wardrobes as well as bookcases! Which also do as display areas for the small stuffed toys I could not resist at one time. That started off as a pretty snow leopard in a charity shop who begged to come home with me! Then he needed other friends...

My father read to me at bedtime to send me to sleep until he was sent abroad during WW2.

If the story ended and I was still awake he would add an "and" then make up more of the story. I find some authors do that too when the word count is too short!

My dad made up stories, too, Ann. They were mostly bear stories, and when my little brothers came along, the bears got meaner and had wilder adventures, but in my stories they had to be sweet or else I cried.