Feminist Pub 16: where the Bluestockings develop armoured stockings to deal with the thousand paper cuts

[FibonacciSeries]

Carry on.

I have still to collect a lot of my books from storage, so I've no clue how many I have. The Dewey idea has merit for me.

I'm going to end up with the situation where charity shops are asking me not to bring in any more books again though, because I just get the damned things dumped on me...

I take my books to the book bank next to the clothes bank in Morrisons car park, that way nobody realises that ALL the books were from me, because charity shops have turned me away in the past too. Dd's books get passed on to cousins who are the right age for them though, dn1 is a couple of years younger than dd1 and my youngest cousin is one year younger than dd2. The children are very grateful, the parents not so much.

I do all the "sorting of Stuff" in our house too, even though dp actually has more time to do it due to working pt and also me taking dd2 out at the weekends. He does general housework, but not any big sorting projects, because apparently I know what gets played with better than he does , and I have more clutter because somehow his computer stuff doesn't count as clutter but my craft stuff does.

Our books are not arranged in any systematic way. I just periodically look them over to memorise where everything is. We have only about 6 bookshelves. I think.

I'm slightly horrified at the thought of giving any of my books to charity shops. They number around a thousand, and they've been a sort of gradually expanding wallpaper for as long as I can remember. Sure, I'm never actually going to sit and read eg Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer. It serves no functional purpose to me whatsoever. But if it were gone, there'd be a gap in the books. Dreadful thought.

I used to feel like that Stormy but the reality is that I don't have a big enough house to accommodate all the books I have ever owned, so I had to force myself to be more ruthless with them. I have all my 'professional' books about managing behaviour etc, and I have a couple of parenting books that I will keep for a long time, but novels I get rid of. I read nearly 100 novels last year, I don't have space for the thousands of books I have gone through in my life (plus the ones that dp and the dds have read).

We 'might' have bought this house because of the recording space in the cellar and the room for me to have a study/library. Possibly.

House, that sounds like perfectly normal behaviour to me.

I actually feel a bit uncomfortable in houses where people have books all higgledy piggledy, with no discernable order. I know it's my problem, but I'd feel happier if I felt free to be allowed to sort them out. (No one's ever going to ask me to their house ever, I know.)

Oh dear, I rather like my books higgledy piggledy. Reference books (basically those left over from the various bits of higher education we have done) are organised, but novels are all over the place and tucked into nooks and crannies. If I thought of a particular book I would know exactly where it was, but a visitor wouldn't

Sorry you would feel quite itchy in my house!

I'd be perfectly happy in your house Petula. A visitor would be hard pushed to know we have books at all, because the ones I keep are stored in underbed storage boxes, under my bed! Since visitors don't normally rummage under beds (not ones I'd be inviting back at any rate) they probably think we only have children's books.

Oh dear! You'll have all those book-upmanship people from AIBU judging you for having no books if you do that!

I have no idea how many books we have.

In theory they're organized but DD and DH are not the kind to tidy up after themselves.

However, we have two floor to ceiling Billi shelves, several other shelves in general storage units, quite a few in a separate closet for work and uni things, I have a couple of shelves at school and there are always numerous books lying around or tucked in drawers. We also now use kindle so these are all passé books rather than current.

How many does that work out as? Lots? Many? Or a paltry few?

Sad to say to a bunch of intellectuals, but my dad was quite a reader, and my mother was intelligent but didn't much hold with learning for its own sake. I can recall helping my dad arrange books on the shelves, and he picked up one book and solemnly said, "That was one of the three books that your mother brought to our marriage bed." Well, the two of them got along very well together in spite of that.

Tei, it was the other way around in my house, my mom is a voracious reader and my dad only reads the newspaper. DH and I are currently in combat for shelf space in our new house.

hello everyone! I'm in South Asia and only just about got over the jet lag. It's warm here!

Our books are definitely in chaos. Reference books, books for work, kids' books, my books, DH's books, parenting books etc. But music books and cookbooks are generally in one place. Half the books are on DC's beds. I periodically make them clear out their beds.

Now I'm trying to think of a good place for plastic containers for food use.

Can you tell I'm a bit bored of work at the moment? Not that it's not interesting, but I need to be getting on to another thing but this thing is still dragging on...

There's a mystery (unrelated to feminism) which you O Wise Ones may be able to solve for me:

Lollipop persons - we have them at the pelican crossings and zebra crossings and traffic light crossings near schools. But none at a junction of 6 2-way roads near our school. Why? Is there something I'm missing? Who do I talk to?

I think it's your local council you need to contact. Video of how dangerous the junction is might help? They'll probably just say they have no money though

Our books are organised alphabetically by author, and split into fiction and non. But most of my books are on my kindle. Sometimes when DH is irritating me, I like to take them (and the CDs) out of order. I'm a bad person.

Also unrelated to feminism, went for a quick run tonight without my compression socks and holy badgers arse, my calves hurt. I'm getting really old.

We have no books any more (apart from kids ones).

I used to have an entire wall full plus boxes in the loft (started out alphabetical, but then I had a crazy weekend where I arranged them in a rainbow, and never looked back. I knew it had gone too far when I started selecting my next reading book by the colour of its spine though!), but now I have about a thousand on an ebook (mostly antique science fiction), and more on my phone (newer, purchased stuff), and more on my computer, and I I'm in computing, so most of my reference books are out of date after a few years, so they are gone too...

People coming to my house would get the wrong idea entirely - I read every night, and spare moments on the train, I always have at least one fiction book on the go, plus goodness knows how many reference articles and manuals I read - just none of them are in print. It's a bit sad, but I do love my ereader.

Chunky it's interesting. I briefly did research into reader behaviour wrt print vs electronic reading. (Inevitably it depends on the person and genre of book). Of course it is v out of date now!

I'm not sure whether it would be so common now, but when I was studying this 6 or so years ago, it was found that when students had the option of both print and electronic of a textbook they would naturally tend to read from the print version and use the electronic one for searching, quote-saving and essay writing - often using both versions simultaneously. It's not surprising really, but a conundrum for publishers and librarians! I suspect things are different now because the technology has improved and students are much more used to electronic resources