When we moved into this house, I thought the libraries drive-up window a crazy luxury which. I never used. Instead, I would go inside and read the shelves.
Now, I’m a convert to selecting books on-line and picking them up from my car.
I had a friend ( now deceased ) that while smart on paper ( high IQ, almost genius levels of resourcefulness ) but was hostile to the idea of reading books unless they were reference material of some sort. Additionally, he was like a Chameleon, depending who he was around.
Around us, he was bright and articulate. When he retired and moved out into a more rural area, it was almost like he was deliberately inarticulate around the locals there. Amazing.
When I moved into my current house, some older relatives transported some stuff for me in their truck. Both were amazed at the number of books I have, and one expressed her opinion that I have too many books. I’ve been to their house; I can’t remember seeing many books there.
I really haven’t encountered people who are proud of not reading books, but I have encountered plenty who think it’s just fine to interrupt someone reading from an e-reader. Also, one of my coworkers was disturbed when I snagged a spare bookcase from an office that was being cleaned out; she didn’t understand why I needed more storage, or why I would clutter my office with more furniture when I already had a bookcase. (I had filled that one up with my own research books, along with sets of binders that I’ve compiled of industry-specific information.)
I confess, I don’t read a lot of books. The irony is that I was an English literature major. I kind of go through fits and spurts, but the last spurt was chewing through some Nabakov (Pale Fire, Pnin) and a biography of Mike Royko about a year or two ago. Most of my reading is non-fiction on the computer. I’ve been meaning to get back to Infinite Jest, though. Got about a fifth of the way through it before life intervened. I was really enjoying it, though. I’m the same way with movies. I’ll have a fit where I get through several movies at a time, and then I’ll go many months without watching a movie. I haven’t even been in a movie theatre since about 2007.
Pretty much all of my friends are major book fiends, and quite a few have larger libraries than I do (but they’ve either made more money or had at least two people collecting). Still, I’m pretty proud of my little library.
Yep, my library includes books from my dad’s collection, as well as some I’ve had since I was a kid (I was very into rocks and minerals, so I have loads of books on that topic). I also kept most of my college textbooks that were specific to my major; the ones that aren’t at work joined my collection at home. Every now and then I’ll weed out a few books, but that’s rare.
I have noticed that some of my younger colleagues don’t have proper textbooks; they have what are basically loose-leaf versions of textbooks in three ring binders. I guess they were lucky to get some kind of printed version.
Those and spiral-bound have the advantage of laying flat, too. I’d have appreciated that a LOT with many of my textbooks.
Oh, definitely! I’ve resorted to using a photo or document scanning app instead of the Xerox when I need to make a copy of something out of a book.
Sometimes the instructor or teacher can order a specific package of topics, so you get only the chapters that will actually be taught in the class. They’ll do as loose leaf pages meant to go into a the ring binder. It’s probably more common in college courses.
I was fortunate to only have to purchase one of those when I was in college; it consisted of selections taken from two textbooks. The resulting package was about as thick as a city phonebook (~2004), and was pretty difficult to use. Fortunately, most people in the class already had one or both of the books in question.
Yes! There aren’t enough good spiral-bound books.
Did this long ago.