DH thinks I’m being pretentious

[ramalamadingdong1]

This is so ridiculous but DH and I have been having a jokey arguement about this tonight and I think he IBU but I’m prepared to be told different.

I’ve recently bought a shelves for our living room and have started putting book on it. I’m an avid reader and fluentish in another language having studied it at university and lived in the country. I’ve put the English versions of the books I studied on the shelf and love getting them down to read parts of them.

My DH is not a reader and can’t understand this. However, a friend of his was round the other night and commented on the books. I explained I’d studied them at university in their original language and still enjoyed reading them albeit in English.

Tonight my DH laughingly said he thought I sounded pretentious going on about university and keeping these books on display. I only answered a question about them and there were plenty of other books there!

Now I’m wondering if I should just hide my books!

WIBU to display them?

For a supposedly ‘jokey’ argument between the OP and her DH this thread has brought out some quality vitriol towards the latter.

I agree

I threw out lots of books written in their original languages, most of which I had inherited.

I did that, too - and now I particularly regret getting rid of the Hebrew ones (because the text is so beautiful) and the Hungarian ones (because the language is so . . . odd. It's pretty unique - only Magyar (Hungarian) and Finnish are part of that particular language family. They were just very interesting to look at). Funnily enough, I found a book in German hiding on my shelf just the other day. Can only read about seven words of it, but I'm keeping it.

I may leave it open, sort of casually, in full view when we have guests. (Now that's pretension . . . )

We once had friends staying. The room their children were put in had 4 bookcases. The mother turned around some of the books so the spine was not showing! That was my section on psychology, health, beauty and I think sex - it would have been sex she was objecting to. Those were the days - now it would be internet porn on their phones.

I am not a fan of clutter actually and am quite tidy so eg we have 4 bookcases in one room upstairs, some shelves of books in another and books in my home office but not anywhere else. They also can get very dusty. I'd quite like a system where they were hidden under the floor in a machine, you could view their spines on a computer and then you could press a button and the one you were after came up down a shute. When I was about 16 I gave every one of my books a cardboard index card and put the dewey library system of numbers on card and book. I obviously should have been a librarian.

My ex husband was like this - he didn't like me mentioning anything that made me sound smart apparently it was showing off and being rude to his friends (he didnt even pass gcses, his friends all very intelligent despite not being highly qualified so really dont see the insult, just his jealousy).

It's not pretentious, if you love the books, you love the books - that's what book shelves are for!

lethaldrizzle if you love books then you must fall into the envious category

People can be very pretentious about books - about anything really. But OP wasn’t being pretentious and it sounds like her OH was being undermining.

My husband was a Kindle-denier until my MIL rented a house in Sicily for 4 weeks one summer.

He ran out of books, naturally, came sniffing around my & the kids' kindles, was rejected, and then drove 20 miles to an electronics superstore to buy an overpriced, ancient Kindle.

Of course it's nice to smell a real book. They can't compete with a Kindle on a holiday, though.

The word ‘display’ is a bit telling, but as OP tells it, it’s her DP who used it. ‘Books do furnish a room.’ But really, bookshelves are just handy places to keep books and find them easily.

When we moved house the removal men had to shift a lot of books. The foreman said:

• Here, have you read all these books?
• No, only some of them.
• You know what you should do when you’ve read a book?
• ? ?
• Throw. It. Away.

I’ve had enough of living with my daughter. I’m a single mum and I’ve over compensated.
She’s 22. Shows no signs of leaving home. Goes to uni locally. Spends money like it’s going out of fashion but gives me nothing. Just taken her to Bali and quite frankly she was a miserable ungrateful demanding cow. Even her brothers were pissed off with her. Oh I forget. She was happy when she met a guy off Bumble out there and brought him back to our ( fucking expensive, I’ve saved for a year for this) beautiful villa.
She’s jet lagged this morning. Aren’t we all. So she’s up cooking at 530am with her music on.
Am I the only one who thinks living with an adult child should be outlawed. Or shall I just bite the bullet and move out myself. I scream internally constantly

choclover that sounds grim, and also, like you've wandered into the wrong thread.

When my living room is finally decorated (completely refurbed) I am going to start buying hardbacks for this reason. I think they look beautiful displayed and even more so when they relate to your past!

Wait why are you reading them in English at all if you can read foreign?

To me it sounds as if he’s actually proud of you but that’s his way of saying it. Keep the books if you wish to do so. He’s totally impressed!

Books. Huh. Collect dust they do. I got rid of nearly all mine.

Wait why are you reading them in English at all if you can read foreign?

Cuz it’s easier I imagine.

when we moved my 'D'H took a box of my books to the tip because ''we have too many books''

Shovel time.

Yanbu.

I recommend a badger shaving brush to dust books, fwiw. @cleanerswin

"It’s a really interesting divide: those who see books on shelves as being ‘on display’ v those who see them as ‘stored conveniently’. My books aren’t on shelves for others to look at. They’re for me and my family to use on a daily basis."

This. Might add that we don't keep our car in the street outside our house "for display" but because it's got to be kept somewhere, that our tables and chairs are not there "for display but because we need something to sit on and put our plates on, and that the kitchen fridge isn't placed in the kitchen to be visible but to put meat and cheese in.

"It’s a really interesting divide: those who see books on shelves as being ‘on display’ v those who see them as ‘stored conveniently’. My books aren’t on shelves for others to look at. They’re for me and my family to use on a daily basis." Agree with this too.

It’s a really interesting divide: those who see books on shelves as being ‘on display’ v those who see them as ‘stored conveniently’. My books aren’t on shelves for others to look at. They’re for me and my family to use on a daily basis
I agree.

IF books were on display then that would be pretentious. (E.g. Works of Plato but they don't know anything about philosophy). I saw an interior design article about selecting which books go on shelves to stage the room. That's pretentious.

But a normal bookshelf isn't 'on display' at all. That's people having books because they read. Only people who don't read and feel a little insecure would look at a normal bookcase and think it was showing off.

It’s a really interesting divide: those who see books on shelves as being ‘on display’ v those who see them as ‘stored conveniently’

I don't think the two are necessarily divided.

It is possible to have both books stored conveniently and books on display. The typical example is people who have books "on display" in a public area of the home where they know visitors will go ( coffee table books are the worst) but also have the conveniently stored archive of their Jeffrey Archer/Jackie Collins/ Louise Bagshawe populist trash out of sight in other rooms in the house - bedrooms, study/offices, spare bedrooms.

I think it easily possible to be pretentious if you are deliberately putting the more erudite books in the display area to create an educated impression where round the back is the trash section.

But a normal bookshelf isn't 'on display' at all.

It might be if there is a deliberate choice to have a bookcase in a public area of the home when the actual normal storage bookcases are elsewhere.

I have a separate "library" - a spare bedroom that I had floor to ceiling bookshelves installed in on four walls. I have no book cases in areas of my home that visitors would go because I don't need them or the extra storage. If I did put a book case in my lounge, it would 100% be putting it on display. It would be a deliberate choice to have books for viewing by visitors.

We have majority of our books in the guest room, they are mostly academic, business strategy and economics books (novels are read and if in paper format passed on - we don’t have the space for them)...the reference books are used and accessed frequently but they are not the sort of thing you want in a relaxing shared space - no need to remind you or anyone else of your day job. I’m sure the small number of overnight guests don’t want to look at them either but until the room that should be a study gets cleared they will remain there, out of sight from most - including the health visitor!

I also don't agree kindles win hands down on holidays. Bright sun or floating in a pool or up in the hills with no power or signal - can't beat a real book, they win hands down over kindles in my view.