I have always been a great reader. I was quite a solitary child and would lose myself in books. I read classics like Jules Verne and Mark Twain as well as a lot of science fiction. I do not have many of those old books as things got cleared out over the years, but we still have plenty now. I saw that had been posting about her husband's collection and she wanted to see mine.
One wall of my study is covered in bookcases (Ikea Billy!). A fair chunk of that is full of DVDs and CDs, but we will focus on the books. These are largely non-fiction (see later for fiction). They are roughly grouped by topic, but sometimes I just need to find space for a book. On the top shelf on the left is mostly popular science with a few about music. Below that we have more science and computing with some travel guides by the alarm clock. Then there is a shelf of mostly graphic novels.
I have been collection the Sandman books for a few years and picked up various others. There are some comics there by Hive artists including and
. You will have noticed that the shelves have other assorted stuff that needs a spot.
Below the graphic novels are a mix of history, atlases, more music and assorted others. Then there is a shelf with DVDs and junk. Right at the bottom are some old computer reference books and more music stuff. I do wonder about getting rid of some of that as I may never look at those books again.
On the right there are some language books and dictionaries, DIY and instruction manuals. Then there is most of our vinyl album collection. Below that it is mostly gardening, but also some photo albums.
Upstairs on the landing we have more shelves that are mostly fiction as read by myself and my other half.
You can see that I really like Iain Banks and Doublas Adams. Between Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is the Lego Balrog I built recently. There are some biographies in there too, including three about David Bowie.
Opposite that is more fiction. The whole top shelf and much of the second is Terry Pratchett books. We both love those. You may also see some Richard Osman crime novels and others in that genre. There is a section for Neal Stephenson who is one of my other favourites. On the lower right as some books that belonged to the kids as well as some comic annuals from my youth. Due to the Velux window in the roof above the landing a lot of the spines on books up there have faded a bit.
I have not included the shelves in the kids' rooms. We probably have far more books than the average house, but they have been collected over many years and they do get read. Quite a few came from charity shops and some will end up there too. There are some we would not want to part with, but I do not generally find time to re-read books. I just think that I may have more time for reading once I retire.
I have used a few web sites to log what books I read over the last decades. I was using Goodreads, but as it is run by Amazon I wanted to get off there. Now I use the Rambling Readers instance of the Bookwyrm open platform that links to the Fediverse. I have contemplated whether we could build something similar on Hive. It should not be too hard to store the book metadata along with details of when they were read on the blockchain, but I have not worked out the details of how it could work. Books can be tricky to identify as there can be so many different editions.
I will continue to review books I read on Hive anyway. Maybe I will inspire others to try them, but we all have different tastes.
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