One of my favorite threads to look at in Goodreads is the show us your bookshelf thread. In this thread, members of the group can put in pictures of their own bookshelves to show to the other members. And I'm so thrilled to find that there are many people who have the same passion as mine, or as crazy as me (as some of the non-book lovers might call me).
One of the first thing that I see when I look into someone's home in real life or in the movies is the bookshelf. Unfortunately, in the country where I live, it's not always noticeable, because firstly, reading is not a favorite past time of the majority of the society and secondly, even if we do, because books cost so much over here, we tend to shelf it in our bedroom or rooms that most guests don't have access to. I guess in my society, books are not an accessory to be shown off to guests in your house hee hee..
So you can imagine my excitement upon finding this thread. I love it!!!!!! And most of the bookcases in this thread is amazing, they have so many books, some even have books piling on the floor in 3 stacks high because their bookshelf is already overflowing (like mine LoL). And some people have books laying around in all the rooms in the house (except the bathroom of course haha). Some are tidy, some are messy. Some are organized according to genre, some are organized according to the read status.. In short, I LOVE IT!!!!
And I would have participated by showing my bookcase in the group as well, but I can't seem to get my pictures the right size and uploaded into the internet. And my account on Goodreads is connected to Facebook, which means that I can't edit the settings whatsoever until I resolve the matters and disconnect them from Facebook. So I won't be able to show them in the group anyway.
However, here are a few snapshots of my bookshelf that I took with my Blackberry phone and upload it in this blog. So here it is... tee hee..
As you can see, my bookshelf is overflowing.. there are 2 layers at least to every shelf. And some of the books are piled on the floor, which means that I really need to have a additional second bookshelf, because I'm not going to give the books away... well, maybe I will, for the really old ones that I didn't like. Some of this books are on my TBR (to-be-read) pile. I have currently around 114 books on my owned to be read pile on my shelf.
At the moment, I'm trying really hard to be able to reduce that pile to an acceptable number before buying any new books. However, the drawbacks of that is, in my country, the bookstore rarely place a second order for the same book, so when that one runs out, there's no more stock and you have to order from amazon.com at a higher price with shipping. So, when I see a book that I like at the local book store, I tend to buy it first LoL..
And there is no public library that I can borrow these books for free, except for the occasional lending from friends. So I will never run out of stocks for books to read.
I guess the only way I can significantly reduce the numbers of owned-to-be-read books is by not making a visit to the bookstore, or amazon.com, which I'm trying really hard not to.. *fingers crossed* we'll see :)