Nov

24

I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving day! We are still eating/celebrating/visiting with family but hope to get back in a routine soon.
I saw that Dianne had this book poll over at her place, Unfinished Work and since I love books and reading I thought I’d play along.

Where do you most often buy your books? Online? Secondhand stores? Big name bookstores?
I get a lot of books online, mostly for my husband. When we do buy them in the store it is usually at a big name bookstore. I love to go in Barnes & Noble and spend time browsing but I can actually leave without buying anything! I do have some but he owns way more books than me. Most of what I read comes from the library or is borrowed. Stacy & I swap books a lot!

If you buy online, which do you prefer – B&N or Amazon.com? Ebay? Christianbook.com? or elsewhere?
I use Amazon the majority of the time and most times those are books for him…..he has me do all the ordering for him! Sometimes I use Christianbook too depending on what he’s looking for.

Do you put your name in your books? If so, are you a bookplate or stamp person?
I do write our name in books now, in the hope that the book will find it’s way back to us.

How do you feel about loaning books to others?
I have loaned books out to people and hubby might do it a little more than me. There have been times that we haven’t gotten them back before and that bothers me some; D just has me reorder them if he doesn’t get it back! If there is a certain book that has meant a lot to him he’ll buy it and give it away to various people. I’m sometimes hesitant to loan them but don’t always feel like I have a good reason to say no so I usually end up doing it.

Do you highlight or mark your books as you read?
If it’s a non-fiction book I do mark, underline, highlight in them….hubby sometimes writes copious notes in the margins of his books and that is fun to read to see what spoke to him. But mostly I read fiction and don’t tend to underline in those as much. If there is something I really like in a fiction book, lots of times I will xerox the page that has something meaningful on it to me.

How often do you visit your local library?
I usually go to the town library 1-2 times a month; I also check books out from my church library and I might visit it 3-4 times a month.

Do you collect any certain kind of book?
The only thing I might have right now that qualifies as a collection would be all my old Nancy Drew books from childhood; one of my girls wants them but I think I’m going to keep them for a while yet before letting go of them! I love old books if they have some significance to us, like if they were owned by a relative that is no longer alive. And I do have a series of books by Brock Thoene I liked. I think I would like to collect certain ones but just haven’t picked anything yet.

What do you do when you’re done with a book and no longer want it?
I have done different things depending on what options are available to me at the time…..I have put them in a carport sale before, donated some to the library, given them away or passed them along to others. I may have even given a few to Goodwill in years past.

Do you keep a list of or catalog the books you own?
We actually do have the books in our home office/library cataloged! Hubby wanted to be able to find any book at any given time so he offered to pay all of the 4 kids if they would categorize, record, catalog all his books; 2 of them took him up on the offer because they needed money! The 2 girls worked on it at different times during the summers a few years back. They are done by the Dewey Decimal system that a library would use, have numbers on the sides and are entered on the computer so he can look up what he’s looking for (it’s the teacher in him, that’s his spiritual gift) I thought it was a little odd when he first talked about it but it has actually come in quite handy; I’d say he has 600+ books and they can get quite out of control if not organized some way. I still think tons of them need to be weeded through and gotten rid of but he’s having none of that right now.
I also keep a list of who has borrowed books from us so we can try to gently ask for it back if we need it for reference.
I keep a list of what I’ve read; it’s on the sidebar of the main page of my blog and I started doing that when I started blogging. Before that I would keep sporadic reading lists.

Any other weird book habits you’d like to share? I hope that about covers it!

Okay, so let’s hear it from you other book lovers! Post your answers here in comments or in your blog and be sure to let me know.


6 Responses to “Extra, Extra, Read all about it!”

  1. Dianne Says:

    Wow, 600+ books and catalogued too. COuld I borrow a couple kids? 🙂 Thanks for playing along – I love hearing about other people’s book habits!

  2. Debi Says:

    I started to catalog our books but used my own system rather than the Dewey Decimal. Then I kept getting new books and getting rid of books, so I gave up on keeping up with it. Now I’m happy just to have a database with the books listed! That’s great to have books from your childhood that can eventually be passed on. I gave the Grandma’s Attic series to my sister for her future kids.

  3. Susanne Says:

    My word, over 600 books! I think I’d catalog them too, if I had that many! Wow, I borrow more than I buy. My dream house, however would have one of those floor to ceiling library’s in them and I’d fill every shelf!

  4. Stacy Says:

    Great answers, I did this one too 🙂 I knew you guys had a lot of books and I am actually surprised that it’s not more than 600. It sure looks like it in those bookcases upstairs 🙂 Maybe a lot of that is magazines and catalogs. Sure looks like a mini-library to me!!

    Hope Thanksgiving and the party went well!

  5. Gail Says:

    It might actually be way more than 600 Stacy! I was trying to be conservative in my guess and I wasn’t at home at the time to look at it on the computer…not sure we still have that program though.
    It is sort of a mini-library!

  6. Stacy Says:

    Look it up and see if you still have it, and how many books you guys have catalogued! I am still trying to decide what software to try to use for mine, probably the same type as I use for our DVD’s (the company that makes our freeware DVD software also makes a book one, so I will probably use that). That will most definitely be a project for next year, I won’t even think about starting on it now!

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