"The buying of more books than one can read" Topic

is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity…

A. Edward Newton

I believe this applies to miniatures, as well. Or, maybe that's "toward insanity..,".

I've stopped buying physical books. Everything I read is on my kindle. At 72, I'm selling off my library so family doesn't have to deal with it when my string runs out.

I have been quite disciplined than most of you guys, I never got more minis than I could I ld paint and not more than until they were done. And every book I get I read.
Reading now David Walder's Nelson and a Ebook Austerlitz

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"

Nick, your family will appreciate it. When my dad passed, my brother and I had to deal with a library of 25,000 books. I'm not going to do that to my kids.

I keep my library at under 500 books. Every once in awhile I will do a small purge. At some point when I get older, I will significantly reduce my collection.

I did a purge of my books a couple of years ago and have been a bit more careful in my recent purchases. most of the time.

I do get a lot of paper books at used book stores, for instance thought a few times will I reread any of the O'Brian series again and if not should pack them up and give them back were I got them from.

Purge and donate to local library annually but still have too many bookshelves full. Will be moving in a couple of years and will purge down to one or two bookcases

Purging of books…that is heresy!

For me every book has three costs. The dollar price, content value, and bookshelf space cost. I've done purges in the past to make more shelf space.

I have donated to local library's book sales as well as take them to local used bookstores for credit.

I try to keep the books somewhere around shelf space--say 4,000 volumes--so I can find everything. But I don't lose a lot of sleep over it. The kids appreciate books, and I can think of about four bookstores within a two hour drive who will write a check for the whole collection when the time comes.

If there were four shops in the area prepared to write a check for an entire miniatures collection, I'd stop worrying about them too. (If I wind up downsized while out of the loop--stroke or heart attack, say--some cases are marked and the daughter in law has a list of individual books on the others. Should get me down to about 10' of wall space.)

The problem is not too many books, it is too few bookcases.

I did a purge where I got rid of books that I know I will always be able to get at ant decent public library. As I have no more space, I carefully only buy books that I see as a real reference work and get any fiction or fluff from the library. I would iike to buy a crypt so I can take my books with me.

jgawne, I live next to one of the biggest municipal libraries in the US--or was, two head librarians back. Useful--but not trustworthy. They never were, really. See how long it takes them to replace their old Agatha Christies with sanitized versions.

"Fiction" and "fluff" are not interchangeable terms. Good fiction continues to speak, and great fiction speaks to us differently as we ourselves learn. Those are precisely the books I would not trust the present generation of librarians to safeguard.

How much research do you intend to conduct in your crypt? Is the lighting adequate?

Considering most wargamer's books will generally have a strong whiff of history about them- and military history at that- when I kark it a couple of mates will take the books, grab the ones they want and give the rest to the Defence Library at one of the Canberra sites. If you have a nearby military/naval/air force base then that's another option for unwanted books.

Outside of a dog, books are a mans best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read anyway.

Good Lord, I have more unpainted blisters and unread books than I care to admit. I eventually get close to catching up at times.

But you, it's what makes life tolerable at times……

When I was working I had little time to read or to play with army men. I purchased books and army men to read and play with when I retired.

Right now I am reading the official history of the US Army in WWII. It's about 50 volumes, I have read about 20 or so, and I own the reprints of about 30 of them printed in the 1990s. I can get the rest on line.

I get rid of books when they are replaced with better data or when I decide they no longer interest me. I give them away or they go to the used book store for store credit.

When I retired my wife and I had a custom home built in rural Kentucky, very inexpensive place to live. And now I have a 30 X 60 foot basement wargame room. Storage for all the books and troops. It's not hoarding if the boxes are labelled.

Every day I read books and paint, or glue, and trim flash, and take photos of the troops, or set them up on the table, or in the yard. My collection is vast and I am not getting rid of any of it.

My wife and I talk about just burying me in the basement along with the collection, that may actually be legal here. We both plan on living to be very old people and have fun every day with our hobbies, each other and the dog.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

Mike,
I love it…"it's not hoarding if it is labeled!" 😂😂😂

So I have been labeling boxes, figures, etc. Like a fiend…so I'm good!!
Regards
Hitman
😎

I have about as much shelf space devoted to books as games. I've read all the books and played all the games. I've played more games multiple times than I've read books more than once!

So that's about 6 shelves x 2.5 feet/shelf = 15 feet of books and 15 feet of games. (That's also how we measured music collections back in the day: 15 feet of albums would be a lot of music.)

Not included in the above is 3 banker's boxes of published Traveller materials. Are they books or games? I think they're books, because I've included other RPGs in the books part of the 15 and 15 described above. So I guess I have about 20 feet of books and 15 feet of games.

I sold lots of books to the booksellers in Harvard Square when I was finishing my advanced degree. It kept me in beer and pizza. When my nephew was a pre-med, he sold a lot of my surplus and duplicate RPG stuff on eBay and/or and Amazon. We split the difference. I still made a profit after the split (because I'd gotten so much of it at clearance-must-go prices), and it kept him in beer and pizza.

I find my Kindle a lifesaver. I have a couple of dozen books downloaded to read, and keep another couple of dozen on my wishlist, and only actually buy them when it is time to refresh the download list. It is amazing how much cheaper books are if they've sat on your wishlist for five years…

Ive binned huge sections of my fiction, which frees up space for physical history and wargaming books.

Too many books to read, too many figures to paint for me. I've downsized my Ospreys by about 50-60% and am trying to get rid of unfinished or unstarted mini projects. Haven't bought a figure in about 2 years I think. Books…sadly just ordered one but not wargaming related.

Kindle has been good for me. too. I still have way too many physical copies of books, but they now form a carefully curated collection. Most fiction I read is electronic; classics and pretty pictures usually end up as physical copies.

I have more models than I can build, more minis than I can paint, more books than I can read, and more guns than I can shoot. I lack discipline.

Before I moved to Poland, I bought out a used bookstore's History and Psychology section for about $.50 USD a book and shipped all of them over as part of a container.

Now, 20 some odd years on – the books are read (mostly) and sitting on the shelf. My wargaming library is quite small compared to others – only about 100 books, I'm guessing.

Without children, I have no idea what will happen to the books or the miniatures. I've left the wife explicit instructions as to the most valuable books but…

As for buying books – yep, just bought 6. Miniatures? I've made a few purchases "just to finish up a couple of projects" (or, so I tell my wife!). :)

inch high, when you steal from Groucho Marx, give credit.

I got to use that line on a friend when she told me the paperback I'd loaned her had been eaten by her Bernese Mountain Dog.

Robert P, it's doubtful the Groucho Marx attribution is accurate:

link

@Bunkermeister

"When I was working I had little time to read or to play with army men. I purchased books and army men to read and play with when I retired."

There is sheer logic in that response! I plan on using that every time the wife gives me the "EYE" when there is a delivery.

I stand corrected. Thank you, Inch High Guy!

I actually had a problem with books because I used to buy a lot of them and not read them. I still have many books which I've never read due to different reasons. So now I try to buy books rarely, but the most interesting ones. And I'm also a student, so I just can't buy everything I need to read. I prefer reading e-books. And I want to mention that now there are so many books and other sources online that there is no need to go to the store or library. Last week I was writing about Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, which I knew nothing about, but I found online everything I needed. This page provided me with useful apps detail, which helped me a lot, and those samples provided there, I think, helped me the most. Of course, I found much other information on JROTC, but still, it was hard to choose what to include in writing. And those samples helped me. And I think that soon electronic sources will be even more popular, and people will buy less and less printed stuff.

I've got more books in my big Book case that I have not read than read.

My favorite book, which I've read 10 times, is 'The Master and Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Lol.
I bought a company that included to my surprise came with 2,000+ copies of Rocco's American Civil War artwork and his Napoleonic artwork, 1,500 copies. Plus a third book on Gettysburg Artifacts, 1,000 copies.
So more than I can read. Over course there were also 1,000s of Concord and Osprey as well.