What’s in an author’s library?
/
Lots and lots of books, right?
Not necessarily. But that doesn’t mean that this author isn’t an avid reader, just that I don’t have the space to host all the books that I’ve read through my lifetime and that I will read in the future. That’s what public libraries are for haha. Sometimes I get jealous when I scroll through Instagram and see all the amazing bookshelves that people are displaying, and I look to my few bookshelves in the office and think to myself: I should have gone with that full wall of books in the living room that I tried to persuade my husband to get when we moved in.
But that’s what e-books are for. Right?
I love that I can have an entire library in my pocket on the phone or in my bag on the iPad. Also, they’re cheaper so you can get more books! I love a real paperback, the smell and the feeling, and sitting with a cup of tea, and holding it in my hands, and sinking into another world through the pages. But I love that with e-books too. We live in wonderful times where books come in many formats, and a lot of them are easy to bring with you wherever you go.
I do believe that as an author you should read a lot.
Books are magical. So read as many as you can in this lifetime.
And that belief is also why I don’t have an entire library in my home. Because I give the books away when I’m finished with them. I don’t have time to read a book more than once. Unless it’s an exceptionally wonderful book, and that is why some books stay on my bookshelf, and they are the chosen ones.
Unfortunately, I still haven’t required a copy of The Thorn Birds. A book I read many times as a child, but those books belonged to my grandmother, even though I borrowed them for years, until they felt like mine. That is one of my all-time favorite books. And I don’t have it on my bookshelf. That’s a mistake. But I love the idea of circulating my books instead of having them collecting dust in a room. I love that I can get new books from friends and they can get new books from me. That way, the book can have many lives.
I used to have a friend from Britain, who lived here for a couple of years. We would exchange bags of books with each other. We both read in English and had the same taste in women’s fiction. I got books that I would probably never have noticed or come across myself, and vice versa. She came across books I’d never find in the bookshops. And that way we learned of new authors and began reading their back lists. So, even though I once in a while dream of a bigger house with a whole room full of books, it would also be a sort of sad feeling to enter that room because I know I will not read the books more than once. Though books instantly give a room a cozy feeling.
I’d rather have only the books that I know I’m going to read more than once, and then gift the others away to other people who will read them, and hopefully they will give them away to other people, who will read them, and that way that book can have a wonderfully long life.
So, what’s in an author’s library? Hopefully, books that she cherishes. And hopefully, new books yet to be read. That said, I’m all for people doing their own thing. And if you are one of those people who have 4000 books in a room? Go for it. I know not a lot of other people are like me, and that they actually do read a book more than once. I just don’t have the time, because there’s so many new and wonderful books to be read as my Kindle library of over 100 ‘to be read’ books can attest to. I have a full library that way.
So, what are the books that I read more than once?
Cookbooks
Lifestyle books
Memoirs and autobiographies
And some fiction, like these:
The Twilight Saga
The Goddess Summoning series by P.C. Cast
All of Sophie Kinsella’s, Lisa Kleypas’, and Marian Keyes’ books.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Books like The Thorn Birds or other books that might have made an impression on me when I was young. And then there are the books on my office shelf and Kindle I’ve yet to read, and who knows? There might be some books there I’d like to read more than once.
What’s in your library?
Which books do you read more than once?