The Heinz Kruger Palace of (57) Varieties

[SupermassiveLBD]

Strangers are friends you just haven't met, yet. Even when they are baddies and drive science-fiction-y submarines, wearing a smart grey lounge suit.

Oh yes, bien sur, that night, a right-down RegulAr RoyAl turn was had by all...

Sorry. I thought you both realised wot I was referring to.

::fans self with somewhat dog-eared programme::

::blows affectionate RAspberry back at Twiggy::

Right. 'Tis late and I need my beauty sleep.

Good night everyone.

Good ol' Massive knew all right, Maudie. I am surprised you haven't fanned that progRAm to bits by now.

Good night, my friend, then, and sweet cravatless dreams to you

::Looks back at you::

Yes, that was clear from your last question. Actually, the progRAmme is somewhere in the tip I laughingly call an office carefully filed with all the other programmes amassed over the years.

I am quite sure that the thousands of lurkers and onlookers are entRAnced by our captivating wit and verbal dexterity.

::Thinks: would be far more challenging to have to work Mr Thornton's initials into one's sparkling apercus::

Goodnight again.

All this talk of looking back reminds me of something. Can't think what.

JusT off myself. I'm outta da JoinT.

::Looks back again::

Oh indeed. But is there any word in English that has a j and a t consecutively?

Roger that Massive...

ROFLMBO!

And trying to get all rude thoughts out of my head before DD does her first 'server' duty at church this morning (suspect I'm onto a losing wicket after catching up with last nights escapades on here!)

It's Mother's Day in many parts of the world - does that include the island? If so, have a great day, Massive!

Thank you very much Maud. I have been completely inundated by compulsory Mothers Day harassment Fun, so I have not had a chance to come on here before and wish everyone a happy time.

You should all insist on celebrating the international one too, then you'd have double the chucks.

Oh happy Mother's Day to you, Massive! LOL at 'compulsory harrassment' :) Indeed, the little darlings have no idea that all we really want is to be left alone for a few hours, do they?! I hope it's been a bearable nice day though.

Ladies, I need help - WHAT shall I do about all our books?! In the kids playroom we have a whole wall of floor to ceiling shelving, filled with literally hundreds of my and DH's books. They make the room look so untidy, they are spilling over the shelves and they are taking up space that I could really do with space for the kids toys. We have a cull every now and again but there are still silly amounts. We are never going to read at least 80% of them ever again and if we ever did want to read one again unexpectedly then they are a matter of pence on ebay. So there is no Earthly reason to keep them all - BUT we feel sentimental about them. It would be almost like getting rid of who we are - all our interests and hobbies over the years gone just like that (eg. I have 15 huge coffee table books about Frank Sinatra). Does that matter though? Do we really NEED to keep loads of astronomy books that I collected when I could easily look up anything I wanted to know on the internet? Does DH really need his 50+ history books? I just can't decide what to do. I know it's not exactly a problem in the grand scheme of things but it is seriously stressing me out! I suppose many of them could go in a box in the loft (if it ever gets boarded out) but once they go in the loft they'll never come out again so surely we as well be rid of them anyway. ARGH, it's driving me crazy. Do you all have large book collections and if so, where do you keep them?

I've just reposted my very dull post in Good Housekeeping, btw - not because I'm not interested in anyone's answers here, just thought a wider audience might convince me either way :)

Yes, to the frighteningly large book collection, Twigs.
And no to having a clue as to what to do about them all.

Where do you store your books, Massive?

Store?!?!? What means zis store, pliz?

They have bred and outstripped all attempts to impose any sort of order on them, Twiggs, so at the moment I have huge piles of the things standing about in the oddest of places. I could get more bookcases but I don't really have enough walls left.

Twiggy - I think Massive must have her webcam trained on Chateau Maud because that is exactly the situation we are in, too. Every so often, we acquire another bookcase but that is only for catching up purposes. We even have books on the stairs, because they are waiting to be taken upstairs but there is nowhere for them to go once they get there. I am thinking of getting a man in to build in some bookshelves, as that way we can use every inch and dump the hideous Ikea MDF jobs. I am now forcing myself to get rid of books as I read them. I very rarely read books twice, so in the very unlikely event that I want to re-read a book I will get it from Amazon for 1p plus postage. Bloke, though, cannot countenance getting rid of books - he has a sort of voodoo belief that as he reads them they absorb a bit of his soul, so it would be dangerous to let them go.

We only managed to be in France for La Fete des Meres, so I did get double mummy points that year.

Ooh. Guy has just asked Marian to be his date for the sheriff's fair.

::quiver::

We once managed to be in France ...

I am very of your enormous book collections. My fantasy house would have a library, but as it is I'm quite good at getting rid of them as we have absolutely nowhere to store them and since most of what I've read to date has been chick-lit they've been fairly easy to part with. H isn't a big reader so pretty much all of his are in/on his bedside cabinet. I have mine in, on and tucked down the side of mine, a few in the storage.bit of the desk in the dining room, a pile under the coffee table by the side of my seat in the living room, and more in the living room cabinet. DD is the only one of us with a designated bookshelf which is crammed to overflowing (it's not small either!).

All going well, I'm hoping we might manage to get the big bedroom done for DD over the summer (wasn't planning to until next year but she needs a new bed so may as well get it over with in one hit). Then we can have her current large single bedroom as a study and fill it with shelving!

Twigs, ladies, I also sympathise. We also have many book problems. They are everywhere - they are breeding, like tribbles or something (that's one for you, massive ). It unfortunately means I only buy books when I really want them, because of the problems of managing them in the house. I also need to do a massive cull. I built shelves in our spare bedrooms to hold them, only to find that when the kids came along the books had to be ejected to make room for kids stuff. Both of them have bookcases stuffed with books. But I really don't want to discourage them from reading so it has to be. But the kids books are the least of our problems. We also have bookcases and bookshelves installed in most rooms, and of course - books on the floor, which I hate.

But I have figured out that the cost of storing many of these books (buying bookshelves/book cases + the annoyance of them being there) is greater than the cost of buying new copies of books that you give away to the charity shop, if you happen to want one that you gave away. And if you can manage to sell your unwanted books, then all the better. I have sold books via ebay and amazon.co.uk. But you are often making only pennies, so its probably better to just give them away to charity unless they are quite valuable.

I'm also trying to cull the kids books, but so far it's tricky because my son is only just learning to read, so I can only justifiably through out the baby picture books at the moment.

I've also learned to not spend too much money on the kids books by buying them from charity shops, school fairs and discounted booksellers (like The Book People) and we are using the local library regularly too.

Coffee table books - ugh - you have to resist. My lovely hubby has bought some corkers in the past - including one called "Poo" and you can just imagine what that is!! But he is worse than me for getting rid of them. He also has a load of art books. But he is better at getting rid of the technology books we have - because they do date very quickly as e.g. new versions of software come out.

I could go on, but am probably boring you all senseless.

Twigs - I have a story link to send you - will do that now...

I have started organising termly book swaps at the family centre where I work - completely free - everyone just donated their unwanted books and picks up some 'new' ones - it went really well last time & we're having another in a couple of weeks.
Only problem is I end up bringing home more than I donate. I also used to get free books in my previous job, although they were all donated last time!

Twigs, I send you a DM.

I would like to start using an eReader (e.g. a Kindle) for reading, but I can't justify the cost of buying it plus the ebooks themselves at the moment. That said I have various e-reader apps on my iPhone, and they are great, except the screen is small of course. If you stick to classics (which are out of copyright and therefore usually available for free) then it's not bad at all. But of course there are many books which are not suitable for this treatment (e.g. coffee table books, reference books). But of course the internet is making many of those redundant anyway.

We have a similar problem with CDs!!! We have hundreds of the damn things and got some shelves specially made (to my design) to store them in the most economical way. But now I am ripping the lot of them, and when I am done, something has to happen!!!

Similarly DVDs. I don't actually buy that many DVDs - other than kids ones and Armitage related ones, I can only think of two or three I have bought in the last year. Hubby is the same (except for the Armitage DVDs . Our trouble is the screeners - the 60 - 70 unsolicited DVDs that arrive on our doorstep in December every year. Sometimes they come with notes saying they must be destroyed no later than a certain date, but we never do this. So we have hundreds of the things. Sometimes they come in box sets or in paper slip cases so don't take up so much room, but most don't. We also can't sell them or give them away. They have to be destroyed if we don't want them.