Books & Reading

To a non-reader, my life as a bibliophile must appear bizarre.
I cannot remember a life without reading. Amongst my life treasures are books I have moved so many times I have lost count.

As a child I loved to gather girl's stories from the op shops. My collection grew and grew and I read most titles over and over again. Despite being a 1970's girl in suburban Australia, I spent hours in England having a jolly old time in boarding schools and getting up to mischief on the hols. Then there were the horse stories and of course, endless Enid Blyton! For 40 years I have moved and relocated these books, shelf to shelf, box to box, home to home. And now I find my old collection still with me and a popular collector's item! So, now is the time to catalogue them and begin the search for titles missing from the series I loved most. (And woe is me, all those dust jackets I hated and threw away!)

 

As an adult, I continued to grow my personal library with second-hand books, expanded my "read" list with the endless supply of my local library and gradually began to afford brand-new books that weren't on the sale table! My cobbled together collection of book shelves have been added to over and over, until I find myself with my dream of a wall of bookcases, brimming with fiction and non-fiction.

Recently, I stepped into the brave new world of e-books and bought a Kobo e-reader. Mainly because a fate worse than death is to be trapped somewhere without a book to read but the weight of some "currently reading" tomes was causing me to sadly leave them by my bedside when leaving the house. Now I can have the best of both worlds!

I have been an active Bookcrosser in the past but am resting that aspect of my book life, for now. For no reason other than being busy elsewhere. However, the BC community led to some wonderful new friendships and I hope to rejoin the game some time in the future.

Of my three children, two are readers and one caught the obsessive gene. My eldest daughter lives at home, squeezing her own impressive book collection into her tiny room. She was a reluctant reader until I introduced her to The Hobbit when she was about 13 - and I don't think she has been without a book since then! We share our delight in hunting for book treasures, by scouring shelves and market stalls and treking each year to Back to Booktown at Clunes

These days, I maintain my online catalogue on GoodReads, which tells me I currently have 1255 books on my virtual shelves. So many books, so little time!