The Japanese word tsundoku describes to a habit well known to all booklovers - that of buying books and not reading them; it can also refer to the To Be Read collection itself. It's a very useful word for all those who, like me, are unable to walk past a bookshop without the urge to go in, and can't leave a bookshop without the urge to acquire at least a few of the wonderful treasures from its shelves.
OK, anyone who knows me at all knows that the title here isn't actually a question. Simply put, there is - in my view - no such thing as too many books. I may have full bookshelves all around my house, with books stacked up in front of the shelves, a TBR list that would take me a good few years to get through if I did nothing but read all day every day, but still I succumb to the lure of an intriguing title, an eye-catching cover, or a random topic which catches my interest. So it might just be time for me to channel my inner Librarian and see if so can bring some sort of order to the chaos.
All is not quite lost - I have two areas of almost-organisation: my Swedish novels are shelved together, in alphabetical order by author, series together and ordered properly, and I have a bookshelf for (some) TBR books. I'd love this level of organisation to extend to all my books, but that's the hugest of huge challenges! The Swedish ones are tidy because they bring me so much joy and remind me how far my language skill has improved. Not too many years ago I had just 12; when we moved into this house 2 years ago, they didn't quite fill two shelves of the bookcase; now I've had to move some of Mr B's books from the third shelf to make way for the every-growing collection. It's probably a good thing it's not easy to get them in the UK!
While I'm procrastinating doing anything which will take hard work, I've learned more about my county library system. I've had a card since we moved back here around 12 years ago, but have given up borrowing printed books as I'm terrible at returning them. The fines I've paid over the years have surely been enough to fund a shelf or two! So now I'm a regular user of audiobooks and ebooks. I'm not a fan of ebooks at all and far prefer a physical book, but at times they can be useful. What I didn't know until this evening was that the library membership also gives access to newspapers and magazines - so much for thinking I couldn't read any online as I don't pay for any subscriptions! I also didn't know that our county library uses both Libby and Borrowbox, with different items available on each.
There are huge numbers of events on at the various library branches - from author talks to knit and matter groups; toddler rhyme time to Tech Club. If only I had the time, I'd love to get involved both as an attendee of some of these, and as a volunteer.
Before starting to sort my books, I definitely need to work out what to do with the nonfiction collection. I'll absolutely want to group them thematically in some way or other for the few areas that I have enough for a grouping to make sense - quite possibly only birdwatching and travel writing! Beyond that, I have a large number of single books on a wide variety of topics, so it's hard to think what will work best and make things easy to find. Do I go classic dewey decimal, Library of Congress, or another standard classification system - or do I go completely rogue and make up my own?
For fiction too, there's a question of grouping - I definitely don't want to do just strict alphabetical, but may well decide to separate out children's books, general fiction, crime etc. Should I have a 'favourites' area with the ones I'm most likely to re-read, or do I mix beloved friends with ones I've read once and am unlikely to pick up again? Should I be stricter and in fact cull anything I'm sure I'll never read again? (Yes, probably!)
To get inspiration, maybe I should go and visit the Bodleian Library - it's very local to me, and yet I've never actually been in there. Or maybe I'll just end up buying books about libraries - and then I'll have to work out where to put them...!
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