I’m looking to start collecting books, probably older/more rare books as a way to express my love for books but also to learn more about physical books and their histories. Currently I have some older books that were passed down to me including: a 19th century dictionary, an early 20th century book of short, Catholic stories, and an old book of poems.
I’m leaning towards creating a collection of pre-mid 20th century history books but I have other ideas as well. For inspiration though, I’m wondering what your book collections are! How did you decide to create that sort of collection?
by Professor_squirrelz
32 Comments
My theme is basically expository nonfiction/textbooks, if that counts.
I really like fiction but I’m wildly picky, and I got tired of buying books I wasn’t reading. For some reason, the nonfiction section felt off limits whenever I was looking for a good book.
But here I am now, smitten by my collection of books on grammar/anatomy/art/public speaking/many other random things. I never look for specific books or topics, I just look through that general section and wait for one that gives me a big urge to take notes on it.
I own all of KJ Parker’s published works and am working on my Tom Holt collection.
i don’t know if “collection” is the right term, but i shop used irl a lot and i’ve taken to picking up all kinds of stuff where the cover alone succeeds in making me go “hahaha *what*”. for example:
* *dragon lord of the savage empire* — what a fucking title. published, literally, by playboy paperbacks, which feels relevant.
* *the tell-tale tarte* — cozy mystery about a pastry chef and a poe scholar teaming up to solve a mystery. the sheer *audacity* of that execrable pun title.
* *the celestial steam locomotive* — the cover is literally a steam train going through space. i really ought to scan and post it; how many chances am i gonna get to crosspost something to /r/badscificovers *and* /r/imaginarytrains? but i didn’t do it as soon as i bought it and now honkai star rail is stealing my thunder.
* *timepivot* — just [look](https://www.reddit.com/r/badscificovers/comments/pgx7nu/brian_n_ball_timepivot_ballantine_books_1970/) at [it](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/28499410131888159/).
* *gossamer axe* — in the 1980s, an immortal music-mancer faerie discovers hair metal and realizes it’s the only music powerful enough to break an ancient curse.
that last example depends on the premise and not just the title or art, which makes the line between this “collection” and just picking out books while i browse kinda fuzzy — should *lives of the monster dogs* or *bats of the republic* be on here? — but there is a through-line here, in my own mind.
anyway the ability to create this collection emerges from the kind of shopping i got these through — lots of browsing, very cheap or very well-stocked secondhand stores or even library reject piles or just thrift stores, and a willingness to pay a dollar to turn “lmao look at this wild shit i saw” into “lmao look at this wild shit i *own*”.
edit: [here’s a direct link to the reddit upload of the *timepivot* cover](https://i.redd.it/cxplevqpk7l71.jpg), which should be expandable to res users
The vast majority of what I read is SF, especially hard SF. There’s a good number of sociological texts, some fantasy (Tolkien, Martin, Rothfuss, all of Pratchett, something else), a bunch of comics, but SF is the focus.
About 50% of my shelf space is Urania, the series that popularized science fiction in Italy. I’m a bit of a collector and I’m currently reading and reviewing (with a lot of photos) [the first 100 issues](https://recensioniinguantibianchi.blogspot.com). If you’re curios Google Translate is decent with my Italian prose.
Urania is still published nowadays. I grew up reading them, they were the reason why I got sucked into SF and collecting the earliest issues is a way to understand what the editorial pioneering era of SF in my country looked like.
I almost exclusively read manga. That count?
Tolkien.
Pride and Prejudice from Jane Austen in foreign languages.. i have several from europe, and from China, Japan.. i always looking to add more but I don’t buy them online, them came to me through traveling and friends.. mostly friends 😄
My theme is Doctor Who because I like the show and the books are some of the last new Doctor Who stories available to me.
Feminist/lesbian separatist sci-fi. I love the contrast between Star Trek TOS-like hopefulness and uninhibited rage. There’s just something uninhibited and raw about a lot of it. It can be hard to find, since the genre peaked in the 80’s.
Poetry. I have 100s of poetry books.
My theme is books that The1Pete likes.
He likes Library of America books, Penguin Classics, etc.
I have a not-insignificant collection of feminist fungal horror books. Nobody ever believes me when I say it’s a genre, but it is. I’m actually kinda proud to own a fungal horror novel that’s kinda sexist, just because it’s an oddity for the genre.
Sci-fi! I’ll switch over paperbacks to hardcover if I get a chance but then I’m reluctant to pass on the paperback. I’ve been reading this genre since I was a child. I still have my. 1960s copies of Tom Swift. My bigger passion is my embroidery/needlework books. I love reading the history of embroidery and how it’s affected women. History of techniques, stitch dictionaries, how to, etc. I enjoy stitching so it’s an extension of that passion. Storage is a major issue at this point!
It’s “things I liked.”
I used to buy books on subjects I was interested in. Pirates, Central Asia/Great Game, poetry, baseball, wwii air war, etc. I would recommend avoiding broad categories in favor of smaller niches. Some people even collect specific kinds of bindings. That way you not only have interesting things to read, but you learn a lot on a specific topic and don’t get distracted by shiny objects.
You can build a pretty good collection on a fun topic without spending too much money.
Grad school is my theme! Cultural anthropology theory, postpartum trauma, & psychedelics with a few books on writing good for variety.
I have several editions of specific books, Wicked being one, and the Jurassic Park books. I also have pretty much everything by Gregory Maguire and Neil Gaiman.
First World War – general histories, histories about specific battles, biographies of generals, discussions of tactics, geo-political histories, – pretty much anything and everything, and preferably written by people from the countries concerned in their own language – so books about the German experience are mostly written by Germans in German; same for France, Italy, UK, Russia.
19th century Russian literature, but I don’t know if that was the answer you were looking for 🙂
The books that made me. It’s a fairly eclectic collection, but anything that has had a big impact on me as a person or as a writer, I generally try to track down the most appealing edition.
Books with production issues…its a tiny collection right now: just an older hardcover copy of The Odyssey with the cover attached upside-down.
My library is a mix of regular books, manga, and light novels. The core themes of my collection are split between deep, dark, philosophical/psychological fantasy books and wholesome comedy/romance books.
Stephen King. It started off with me just having a copy of everything he’s published. But I’ve expanded it a bit more than that. I have the two versions of The Stand, soon to be three. I have a copy of IT in Hebrew. I have two autographed copies. I have pictures of myself and my husband standing near him when we went to a book signing at the Savannah Book Festival where he appeared. I also have a “Christine” hot wheels car and a Stephen King Funko Pop doll. I have magazines where he’s done articles and a list of questions to ask him in case I ever get another chance to meet him. And I have his sons’ books. I may have a Stephen King obsession.
My book collection started because the Brandon Sanderson and Will Wight kickstarters… That’s my theme. I just got Legends and Lattes kickstarter too. And the Good Omens graphic novel kickstarter.
My collection is quite small only about 15 at the moment. I really tend to go for horror and sad endings.
If I see a copy of the Odyssey in any form, I’m getting it.
Ooooh, here for the comments. I love Memoirs but my collection of them isn’t big. I just have like 200 psychological thrillers 😂 I guess maybe if you could collecting “trendy” books, but I dont think thata a thing 😂
The comments are much more sophisticated than anything I would deem a collection. I do have like 500 books tho & *I* love them all 🥰
I have a collection of Harry Potters from around the world.:)
I buy what I like, and I like a lot of things, so my library as a whole is varied as most are. As far as active collecting goes, as in seeking out specific titles to buy, I could say that I collect natural history, specifically vintage illustrated natural history books and modern books about vintage illustrated natural history books. Then within that genre I have smaller collections. I have a frankensteined complete set of Jardine’s *Naturalist’s Library* but am slowly attempting to put together sets in both the original cloth binding and the second-issue red cloth binding. And then there’s my mini-collection of various editions of Wood’s that I started because I wanted to see how many different pictorial bindings I could find. And then there’s the various Goldsmith editions.
I collect (and read) mysteries published between 1880 and 1940. I have several books which are first editions or early editions; and many that are reprints. Since I purchase the books to read I am interested in the story, not the value of the volume.
It’s almost all sci-fi and fantasy, with a dash of historical fiction and nonfiction history books. And then a whole shitload of Agatha Christie books we took from my wife’s grandpa’s house after he passed away.
I have an ever-growing collection of football autobiographies. At the moment I have 160 books. They are so interesting to me and useful because I can use hhem for assignments since I go to a sporting college