Do you have a bookshelf with books on?!

[VerrryNice]

I used to have hundreds of books on shelves around the house and loved them. Then I moved house several times and put them in boxes and they got dusty and mouldy so I got rid of them. Then I started using a kindle a lot more.

Now I don’t have any books on display in the house at all. I pass them on to friends or charity and keep a few favourites at the back of a cupboard.

I watched a programme about homes in Wales yesterday and one couple had all their books organised and on display around the house and it looked fantastic and you could really get a sense of the kind of people they were. If you came to my house you would think I was a complete non-reader with no interest in much at all! I was wondering what the norm was these days.

I've got 4 bookcases in 2 rooms and probably have close to 500 books on them. I love having books in the house.

We have 1 in the kitchen, 3 on the landing, 5 in the living room, 1 in the dining room, 2 in the kids rooms...

I'm not a hoarder, and only keep books I think I might read again. My house isn't big enough to have wall to wall bookcases.

Like my childhood copy of Slack Beauty which has few pages still attached to the spine.
Love the typo.

@RampantIvy, that would be a "don't like to" for reading for fun and a "can't" for academic reading - I just can't think in the same way reading on the screen. But I haven't tried a Paperwhite so who knows...

I have sooo many books, but realised after clearing late DFs house to get it ready for sale, that it was high time I faced up to decluttering my own home! I have a large pile that I'm recycling via WHSmith (and will receive a voucher - that I'll spend on Xmas gifts etc) . Others will go to our local charity shop or bookswap.
I might already have a Xmas new booklist on the go 😉

E ink is very different from a phone screen. I struggle to hold smaller books open and have experienced not being able to read a book because the text was too small.and typeface too dense. Enlarging text on a paper white is wonderful for those of us past our yoof.

If you are getting rid of many books, look for specific charity bookshops.

Ones like
Global Education Trust (20+) Facebook
Our specialist charity bookshops | British Red Cross
Sam Beare Bookshop, Egham - Woking & Sam Beare Hospices (wsbh.org.uk)
etc

Regular charity shops don't have a lot of space for books, and heavy books tend not to sell quickly

Yes, loads, some of them double-stacked. TBH some ‘weeding’ for charity shops is overdue though.

I absolutely get it for academic reading. I don't like to follow recipes from a screen. I print online recipes or use a recipe book.

A paperwhite is absolutely nothing like a phone or tablet screen. I find it easier to hold for reading than a book as well as being able to read in the dark, but the biggest advantage of the Paperwhite is being able to change the font size.

Books in every room, wall to wall bookshelves, they hold up the walls of my cottage! Occasionally I have a cull and take one or two to the charity shop 😁. It's a wrench though! Kindle only for equivalent of paperback novels that will only be read once.

Bookcases everywhere.

We ran out of wall space and were filling the bookcases two books deep which kind of defeats the point.

Changed over to kindle on phone got most fiction and only give shelf space to non fiction (with a few exceptions for first editions / sentimental reasons) gave us a bit of breathing space.

Books do furnish a room, as someone once wrote.

I have a collection of about 2300 books, built over many years (since I was an English literature student a long time ago). That doesn’t include my son‘s books. They’re all contained in bookcases (and various piles around the house…)

I think it’s become less common to have a large collection of books now that e-readers and
audiobooks have gained so much popularity. I like a kindle for holidays but otherwise prefer the physical properties of an actual book. I agree that they’re aesthetically pleasing in a home too.

People are all different, it may be that a screen works for you. I was just describing the academic research which has shown that in general, jumans recall less after reading on a screen than from a book, and some of the reasons for that.

There are always variations amongst people, obviously.

Now I think of it, when I visit friends' houses for our book club, no-one has books out. Maybe they're somewhere else or ruthlessly disposed of or on kindles.

I have ten bookcases, so books must run to 2000+ and a cull is in order. I can't be doing with screens, but love audiobooks for driving and pootling round the house doing domestic tasks.

If I think I'm never going to read a book again, I give it away. I think it's a bit pretentious and wasteful to show off your vast amount books just to tell people what you're like, when there's no way you could possibly read or reread them all.
I hate seeing shelves and shelves of books just sitting there unread. It stresses me out if I have even a small pile of unread books, in fact, and as soon as I've read one I'll decide if I'm likely to reread it, if not I move it on so it can give joy to someone else.

Floor to ceiling bookshelves along one wall of the living room, one wall of the bedroom, one wall of the dining room and DHs office has 2 walls of books.

When we moved to this house 13 yrs ago we had a bed, a sofa, a couple of boxes of clothes and the rest of the moving truck was just boxes of books, we have thousands.

I couldn't disagree with you more @Pinkdalmatian9 !!
We have literally hundreds of books in our house & we've read them all. Some I've reread several times. I'm in my 50s & have been an avid reader since I was a child.
Some of my books are from my teens & were gifts from my grandparents & parents. I'd be devastated to lose them .

We did a deep clean in our room today & I counted how many books were beside my bed - 96!! As I was dusting them I looked at each one & I actually said to dh "god I love books'

I decided when I was about 14 that I wanted a library & my incredible grandad built me a beautiful bookcase that year for Christmas. It filled me with joy every time I added a book I'd read to it. I still have all those books now in my house & the bookcase is in my parents house.

I just don't think it's pretentious to love books & want to be surrounded by them 😕

I only use my kindle for fiction @MidnightOnceMore

Why on earth do you think people have books to impress others? Surely they keep books because they, er, want to. Simple.

Only on MN have I seen the books as boasting trope. It happens every every time the topic comes up.

Only on MN have I seen the books as boasting trope. It happens every every time the topic comes up.

To be fair some of the posts do come across as a tad boasty. And the comment about feeling uncomfortable in houses with no books is pure mumsnet moral superiority.

Most of my books are upstairs, so some people might think we are not big readers but we are - just mainly on kindles.

Which posts are boasty @RampantIvy ? I'm genuinely curious about it
I never talk about my books in day to day life. Though I might chat about a specific book.& my friends & colleagues read too so it sometimes comes up.

This thread was asking people do you have a bookshelf with book on it & people have answered. I can't see how that's boasty...

It's the tone of the posts. I don't actually know how many books I have. I know how many bookshelves I have, but the "I feel uncomfortable in houses with no books" post on this thread and on other book threads are very sneery and snobby.

I love reading and always have a book on the go.

I find the other ones far more irritating and self-righteous — the ones that primly say ‘books are clutter I can’t have in my thoroughly Kondo’ed house where my sole purpose in life is making sure everything is dust-free and to have empty work surfaces’ and ‘I read 50 books a week, but ON MY KINDLE, which is the right way to do it, otherwise you’re just showing off by having actual cluttery books on actual clutter-bearing bookshelves’.

Or ‘I read ten books a day, but you would never know because I donate them to a charity shop literally the second I finish the last page. Sometimes I even read the last page while standing outside the charity shop so I don’t have the needless clutter of a book I’ve already read in my house.’

There was someone on another thread saying smugly that her only paper books were kept out of sight in a plastic storage box under her bed, and strongly implying that having visible books was an insecure display of your intellectual prowess, and that right-minded people wouldn’t have books ‘on display’ any more than they would walk around with their degree certificate pinned to their jumper.

Lots of books in our house. We’ve run out of space for any more!