To own book or not to own books... that is the question

[Lizzie in Ma]

I collect them and there is not a one in the house that I would not read again or have read again.(and again)

 

For the kids, same thing, there is absolutely NO twaddle in the house (except from the library that my 11 year old occasionally chooses) but the shelves are packed. Classics children's books, the My Book House series, Landmarks, Childhood of famous Americans, Jean Fritz books, books that were mine and my dh's like Miss Suzy and Miss Twiggly's Tree and Uncle Wiggly and Beatrix Potter and Thornton Burgess.

I have all the Lucy Fitch Perkin's twins books that were mine as well as the Chronicles of Narnia, Little House and Anne of Green Gables.

 

I do have and keep things that are "light reading" for myself. I am a huge Robert Parker fan as well as Clive Cussler. I wouldn't part with my Dragonriders of Pern series for anything nor my David Eddings.

 

We are huge readers, but often choose the same books over and over and so, I prefer to own them. But then again, "My name is Liz and I am a book addict"

[Julie in GA]

Just want to clarify that I'm very picky about what I buy. I often weed out via bookmooch & sale boards as well. The library works well for me as a way to preview books & decided whether or not to buy them.

[TracyR]

I love owning books . We can go back to our favorite stories again and again . We live in a small apartment at th moment. But have a big three shelved book case full of books , and a small three sheleved book case with our homeschoolstuff . Plus I think alo tof books are always laying around because my girls love to hear the stories and read them . Plus growing up my dad always bought books so we didn't have too much of a need to go to the library . So I think having my own books and loving to have my own books came from that too :>)

 

We have a small community library that we don't always get to. Plus I've noticed alot of the books are being replaced with comic books for the older children too . They put those up front so that my girls stop right there and don't make it to the back where all the true good stories are . So most of the time we're coming home with Pokemon . Not that I have anything against comic book stories but when its all the time every time that's when I have the problem with it .

So we don't go to our library all that often anymore .

[Peek a Boo]

We also own well over 5000 books, and that number will, G-d willing continue to grow.

.... (The library booksale does wonderful things for expanding our personal library at a very low cost, but it break my heart to see all these wonderful books no longer available to library patrons!)

 

....My kids pull these books off the shelf and absorb them, or they are curious about something and find a book about it, or they want to 'research' something. Having an in-house library makes this a natural part of their lives, and has done more for their educations than any piece of curriculum I have ever purchased. Yes, we can (and do!) put books on hold at the library for them to expand their research, or read more about something which interests them, but they wouldn't learn as much if they had to wait a week or 5 for a book to come in.

 

.... but when I find a wonderful book, it does onto my 'want' list... and then I wait until I find it at a used bookstore, or Goodwill, or the library booksale, or until we get another Amazon gift certificate from our credit card company...

 

...

We collect poetry books and pull them off the shelves, flip them open and read to each other. My 9 year old will take a volume or two up to her room and pour over them for days - or sit on the floor next to the shelf and browse through them looking for a poem she likes.

 

college textbooks on a variety of subjects, ....

Field guides, encyclopedias, Hebrew religious texts, art books, the scripts of plays, essay and short story collections, books about math, philosophy texts, Greek and Hebrew lexicons, French and German literature & dictionaries... these fill our house and fascinate our children.

 

...And last, and probably most importantly, we collect books because this is how we have always lived. We both grew up in houses full of a variety of amazing books, and it feeds our hearts to be surrounded by them still.

 

 

This is largely us too. I'm past the "need" to be surrounded by books --I'm plenty confident in my intellectual abilities, lol. But I *love* the feel, smell, and look of a book. The soft pages of a well-read and worn book, the crisp smell of a brand new book. being the first to crack the spine. knowing i can personalize it. Knowing there will be no late fees!

 

 

after tallying up triple digit fines a few times, it's simply cheaper to own than loan, lol.

 

I decorate with books. i use books to press stuff. To stack stuff. they are multi-purpose tools and get USED here.

 

with 5 kids, chances are the books my oldest no longer needs will be read by the younger siblings. And when the youngest has outgrown them, we'll have grandkids!! :D

[Lisawa]

I’m in the purchase camp! The more books on hand then better.... especially with more than 1 or 2 children at home... they will be used and read more than 1 time. :)

 

We keep resources.... literature, history, science and the like... I wish I could have 1 huge room with all the walls used as shelves! I bet I could fill them! I would want to...:D

 

For us… $$ is never wasted on a good book… :D

[Mrs Mungo]

I collect them and there is not a one in the house that I would not read again or have read again.(and again)

<snip>

I do have and keep things that are "light reading" for myself. I am a huge Robert Parker fan as well as Clive Cussler. I wouldn't part with my Dragonriders of Pern series for anything nor my David Eddings.

 

On one of our moves I had a box of junky novels that I didn't particularly like set aside to give away to the thrift store. However, hubby took an *extra* box, mostly full of trashy romance novels (hey, I'm an Army wife, he's away a lot, a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do) but *also* in the box was part of my Pern books. I was ticked when I realized it. I had to go through them, figure out which I was missing and replace them. But some of the ones I lost were my mom's from the 70's. I was SO TICKED!

[Jenny in Atl]

I have to stop myself from buying. We we moved last, my FIL asked me if I had ever heard of a library. :glare:

I was spoiled working in bookstores for about 10 years, got lots of free bks/mag/etc. I still love the smell of a bookstore or library. I guess you can never have too many shoes or too many bks!!

:iagree:

[eve]

I buy almost all of our books. Our library far enough away and we just now have a second car. Also, going to the library with little ones takes up precious time raises my stress level especially since our local library rarely has the books I am looking for. Finally, several of the books we use are out of print, and I plan on using them more than once for each child, this builds a library that I can pas on to my children.

[Reya]

Someone asked me why I don't own a lot of books. Well, I guess the answer is that I have two 3 shelf bookshelves for my kids books, 2 shelf bookshelf for myself and that is about it, minus our homeschool curriculum.

 

My main reason is that a lot of books are not worth owning. Some are cute and interesting, but would probably only be read once. When I find a book that is truly wonderful, something that we would go to again and again, then I purchase it. For my kids this includes books like the d'Aulaire history books, the Little House on the Prairie books, special authors such as Lois Lowry, Patricia MacLachlan, James Herriot etc... For me it includes Susan Schaffer Macaulay, Elizabeth George, Charlotte Mason.

 

I may be more likely to purchase books if I was without a library, but up to this point I have never had a problem with this. Even when I lived in a rinky dink little town in Illinois that had a 900 sq. foot ranch house as its library, I still had access to books. So I guess I just don't see a need to own a ton of books. Of couse this is just my opinion and current state of mind. LOL Any thoughts? :bigear:

 

God Bless,

Michelle

 

I own many books because I love to read and I love books, but I own a tiny fraction of the books I've read. I resell many to used bookstores, so that keeps it all under control. MANY, MANY of the books I read aren't readily available through the library. Others are types that I frequently consult. Others I like to reread, and others are just good to own. When we moved into our first house, the sum of all our other possessions was equal to the books we had. And since my grandparents died, that's nearly doubled.

 

There is a tight statistical correlation between the number of books in the home and the level of a child's literacy--higher than the correlation between the amount of reading the adults do with the children. There is also a very high correlation between scholastic achievement and IQ and the number of books in the home. Which is certainly something to think about--the presence of books probably says a lot more about the values of the household than the books actually making kids smarter, but it might make you think about what your values are driving you to do!

 

The kid books in my house cannot fit on a single 6' bookshelf. And I only have one biological child at the moment. School books alone take more than two 6' bookshelves.

 

I once calculated that I'd spend $5k a year on books if I bought them all. YIKES!

[bethben]

I realized the need to have a homeschool library when ds hit the 3rd grade reading level. Our library has a lot of JUNK! Now even, the Hardy Boys are being replaced with Hardy Boys graphic novels. I too do not have a problem with a comic book here and there, but the library is starting to become a place of kid/mom contention. "But why can't I get this book?!" is starting to be heard more and more. We use MFW and love the book basket thing, but it's coming to a point where I don't want to go to the library because ds can't find anything that looks good to read (and that I approve of). I'm just sticking to requesting the book basket books from MFW and just buying all the chapter books I think would be good for ds to read.

 

Here's a plug for buying books too. Ds would not read Encyclopedia Brown. I kept telling him he would like it. He wouldn't touch it even if I checked it out from the library. I found one at a garage sale and bought it. 1 week later ds read it and loved it. YAY! It was just because it was sitting around. He will also read on his own books on science or history that are on the shelves- just because it looks interesting. We will be getting more books as we can afford them. My mom has a joke that says "homeschoolers don't need insulation, they just buy bookshelves!"

 

BIG QUESTION - someone mentioned a scanner that tells what books they have. How does this work? Can you scan all your books, go to the bookstore and find a book and will the scanner tell you if you have it?

 

Beth

[Rhonda in TX]

I find, though, that I prefer to own the books. A lot of times the really good books at the library have a long line of requests. That means I have to wait awhile, and then I can only keep it two weeks. There have been many times I have taken books back to the library unread. If we own it, it's much more likely to be read eventually.

 

I love for my kids to have, at ready disposal, a host of good books to choose from. I buy a lot of my books used, or get them through paperback swap, so I'm not spending a lot of money on them.

[Felicia]

I looove books, lots of books. I dream of having my own library room filled with great literature, how-to build or fix things type of books, (my ds is always wanting to build or fix something) encyclopedias of all sorts, great reference books, wonderful children's books that have lasted the test of time as well as a few wonderful newer selections. The possibilities go on and on.

But alas, like so many others here I have very limited spacing, so I love my public library as well. Even if I had the wonderful dream home library I would still go to the public one. My kids love it. It is something of an adventure day when we go. What new journeys and adventures will we find?

Gee, I just might grab up my kiddos and go first thing in the morning. :D

 

Happy reading!

[frogpond1]

get easily at the library, and the classics that my children will all need to borrow and read. With 4 children the necessity of a library is great. Some books have sat for years on the shelves until a certain child was ready to open them. If they weren't there they'd not get read. The library is fun for little kid books and research, but they're dumping the books I love. Many of my books are library discards. I love most books that were written in the early 1900s or earlier.

[mcconnellboys]

I agree. If you have access to a good library, I don't think you have to feel that you must also have a ton of books cluttering your home. My own home will probably fall down someday when I clear out all the stacks of books that are supporting the roof, LOL, but I do understand that this cluttered lifestyle is not for everyone. Now that my little guy is growing up, I am slowly beginning to rid myself of most of the books for younger kids, save for those very few really great classics that we want to keep. At some point, maybe I'll have a little breathing room, too (if the walls are still standing)....

[tnmomofboys]

I buy a lot of our books. We have a good used book store where I can find a lot of my books. Our local library is not that great and the wait during the summer for a requested book can be LONG. I look for used or use my 20% off at Barnes and Noble for summer reading lists. I have better luck with the library during the school months.

[swellmomma]

I don't have much in the way of twaddle books, but when it comes to school books or classics I have tons. I am horrible at returning the books to the library so I was finding my overdue fines were more than if I had bought all the books to own, so that is what I do now. I already get tons when I order from SL but then add to that as I find good books, or buy ones to go with our history or science study.

[sadiegirl]

I LOVE books...I buy books that I know my boys will want to keep...others we get from the libary. But can I say that one of my fondest memories as I child were the Sunday afternoons visiting antique shops and flea markets with my parents and I discovered Nancy Drew,Bobbsey Twins and many other books. These books were dusty,hidden treasures that I still have today and gave me countless hours of reading. I say if you question whether to buy a book...consider resale shops and flea markets. Also one of my rules is to pass it on...sometimes my mom and I buy books and share them with as many as 5 friends or more.

[Kate in Arabia]

BIG QUESTION - someone mentioned a scanner that tells what books they have. How does this work? Can you scan all your books, go to the bookstore and find a book and will the scanner tell you if you have it?

 

I didn't see the earlier message, but we have Readerware, a software program that comes with a small scanner. You can scan the bar code on your books (or type in the ISBN), and the program looks up all the info about the book on the internet and puts it into a database. You can print out the database, or put it on a PDA, to take it to the bookstore, etc. I'm currently trying to update ours before our summer vacation (when I buy a lot of books).

 

About the topic, we have a lot of books. Dh and I are both really bad about buying books, which is unfortunate because neither one will keep the other in check, lol. We don't have access to a good library here, so I generally get a lot of books over the summer, particularly for the kids. I try to hit up as many used bookstores or library sales as I can find in the space of four weeks. We are reimbursed our homeschool expenses from dh's employer, so I feel I have a little more latitude there.

[Sahamamama]

because we check out so many books each week. They tell us that we are solely responsible for getting their circulation numbers up, but I think they are joking (?). ;)

 

So many of the books we read at this level (little kids here, ya know) are nice, but not keepers. For example, this week we will read 10-20 books on fish. Now, I like fish, and we will read and read and read about them, BUT... for us to BUY all of those books would be unnecessary, even if we could afford them (can't). The library system allows us to "use" them for the time we need, then release them back for others to use -- like catch and release fishing, no pun intended. I think it is a GREAT system.

 

I know there are those who think if a book is worth reading, it's worth owning, but my philosophy is, if a book is worth reading, it's worth borrowing from the library, ha ha ha.

 

Some books we do own, and others we will add over the years. We have a little house (700 square feet), so we have only one small book shelf in the house, and 4 more in the garage (ack, I know, I know). But it's tight here. Whaddya gonna do?