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[robot_god]

I know alotta you guys are gonna shit a brick about this, but the call must be made.

It's officially time to stop using books as decorations, people.

I'm flipping through this modern furniture catalog and apparently some people still think clever bookcases make them hip-as-shit.  This ain't grandma's house, guys.

Acceptable:  Pristine white room, block white furniture all perfect right angles, not a single decoration except for the macbook and iphone lying on the white coffee table.

Nah, that's just playin', but seriously I visited a friend's apartment and his girlfriend decorated the whole place as if she was possessed by her personality-less mom.  I was really appalled, there was a bowl on a side table with some crap in it and on the side table was one of those little pocket-books that they sell next to the registers on line at a bookstore, placed in a very deliberate way on the side table to make it look like it was thrown next to the bowl.  OMGGGGGGG that made me so mad.  WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO PICK THAT UP AND READ IT?  NO ONE NOT EVEN YOU.  Of course, bookshelf built into the wall, and since no one in the apartment can really use a computer effectively, an entire wall of DVDs.  That's the next thing to go, the new bookshelves:  DVD collections.  It's 2010, and you can pirate all this shit on your phone while driving.  They aren't legitimate decorations anymore.

[Drygioni]

Lovely stuff. Where do I sign up? Trouser Deity for Prime Minister

[CortJstr]

I just moved and the whole time my dad was complaining about all the books I have and couldn't figure out why I'd ever buy any. I have stopped buying DVDs, at least until I get a Blu-Ray.

[AugustWest]

Dude, it's a chick thing.  Let 'em have their fun.

[side_show]

I do not use books as decoration, but I do have a lot of books.  Too many books for them to be decoration.  I suppose the only solution is to have a library.

[jay-ell]

I have a huge book collection, mainly things for which there is no adequate digital substitute (e.g. childhood favorite picture books, obscure books about women's labor history during WWII, a copy of Crime and Punishment with my dad's class notes scrawled in the margins). They are on my built-in bookshelves in the kids' playroom, along with the board games and our meager collection of DVDs. (Except for collector's edition box sets, we chuck the cases and keep them in sleeves in a media box. I think we have maybe 2 dozen grown-up movies; the other 100 or so are for the kids, and most of them were given to us by my brother when his kids outgrew them.)

I had a bunch of those little "gift books" that my Mom has picked up for me over the years. I threw them away. I didn't even bother taking them to a used bookstore or donation center -- they're just trash. (Crazy About My Daughter, which I just recently unearthed, was clearly targeted at teens. I got it for my 30th birthday. Seriously, Mom, did you even open it before you whipped out your credit card? The bit about spending hours in the bathroom primping wasn't even true fifteen years ago.)

Unlike a lot of people, though, I have actually read most of the books on my shelves. Many of them were school assignments, and a lot of them are children's or YA books, but I don't buy books I don't intend to read just because I want to give the impression that I'm the kind of person who would. If you pull a book of my shelf and ask me about it, odds are good that if I haven't read it, Pedro has. Still, I have a lot of books that I've bought and never read, or that were given to me and I never got round to, and every time I run across one, the ghost of Thomas Jefferson appears and gives me a stern look.

I hate that there are books on my shelves that I haven't read. It makes me feel pretentious, even though I do mean to read them all someday. But I wouldn't say they're purely decoration. For one, they're not in a part of my house that a casual visitor would see. For another, they're crammed on the shelves every which way to make them all fit, so they're actually not very decorative at all. Not the way you seen in Pottery Barn catalogs and the like. For a third, a lot of them aren't the kind of books you display if you're trying to look smart. A lot of them are graphic novels and geeky fantasy literature. (Most of the FanLit is Pedro's, actually. Mine are the sci fi and mystery paperbacks.) Not exactly an impressive collection of classical literature.

[pmcd9]

I only keep books that I haven't read.  The one's I've already read I have no use for.

[jay-ell]

I keep mine. I like to loan them out, and I'm something of a re-reader myself. Also, a lot of the books I read are non-fiction, so I like to keep them around for reference.

I have a friend who buys multiple copies of books he's enjoyed just so that he can give/loan them to people he thinks would enjoy them. He just keeps them on his shelf at home until he sees someone who would like it. Just about every time I see him he has a book for me or Pedro. He's a neat guy.

Books he's read and didn't enjoy he sells to a used bookstore. But those are few and far between, because he rarely reads something that hasn't been recommended to him by a reliable source.

[CortJstr]

When I lived across from the library I got into the habit of making a snap decision as soon as I finished a book. If I won't read it again it goes into the donation box immediately.

[Doc]

I like my books. I like picking up a book and being able to start reading it randomly because I've read it before. I do have a few books I haven't read but they tend to be text books from old courses that I kept because I'll need them as a reference any day now.

I suspect I'm going to have to do something with them when I move again though.

[Choop]

dead animal magazines? who sees those and food magazines as juxtaposition? people who don't recognize how things get from point a to point b

[wombat]

When I lived across from the library I got into the habit of making a snap decision as soon as I finished a book. If I won't read it again it goes into the donation box immediately.

How can you be so sure you won't read it again? I feel like I have to let them, I don't know, ripen, or something. I go through the shelves when they get too full to fit new books and painfully pick out some to give away, but it's hard to decide immediately after reading.

Like JL, I also hate having books I haven't read. But in my case it's because I'm pissed off that I spent money on a book that sucked so much I couldn't get past the second chapter. That's the pile I should just take immediately to the used bookstore, I suppose.

[CortJstr]

How can you be so sure you won't read it again? I feel like I have to let them, I don't know, ripen, or something. I go through the shelves when they get too full to fit new books and painfully pick out some to give away, but it's hard to decide immediately after reading.

I've found I have to do it that way. If I put the book on my shelf then it just sits there for 3 moves until I remember I was never that fond of it to begin with and finally donate it anyhow. And there are quite a few books I kept that I'd like to read again but know I likely won't (The Iliad, I'm looking at you).

[robot_god]

Bah, I wanted a discussion about decor, not book-collecting.  This thread is anti-book collecting, guys.  You're doing it wrong.

[Mr Trout]

Bah, I wanted a discussion about decor...

Okay, I'll bite. This is the bookshelf in my main living area (click for bigger):



I have a lot of art books and some comics there, because those are fun for guests to flip though (though if beverages are spilled heads do roll), The others are my personal favorites that sometimes spawn conversations with other people who love the same book or author. The rest of my books are in boxes in my bedroom. I go through and re-read the Terry Pratchett fairly regularly; the rest I could probably stand to donate/sell.

Above the books you can see the famous wall boobs.