I am a book packrat as well. Nearly everyone else I met while travelling went the (much cheaper and easier) route of buying used and selling back for credit. Not me. I sent home at least five packages of books to my parents so I could keep them without having to lug them around in my backpack for the next five months. I get attached. I also reread a lot: not necessarily entire books (though I do plenty of that), but sometimes I just like to look for my favorite passage in a book, or just open it up and see what I find. I like visiting with characters and places I've come to love. And I like to be able to refresh my memory when talking, thinking, or writing about them. Plus, I like to recommend and lend them out (only to very trustworthy friends).

I grew up in a house with stacks and shelves of books in every single room, including the hallways. To me, it's not home unless there are books everywhere.

I love this:

From The Writer's Almanac [link]

MONDAY, 12 March 2001

It was on this day in 1901 that the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie gave New York City 5.2 million dollars to construct 65 branch libraries. He had just sold the Carnegie steel company for 250 million dollars, and decided to retire and devote himself to giving it all away. He later gave money to create more than 1700 libraries all over the United States and in Britain.

[link]

By the first few years of the 20th century, Carnegie had refined the giving of libraries into a neat, streamlined procedure. Over 33 years, he provided funds for 2,811 libraries in all, including 23 in New Zealand, 13 in South Africa, and one in Fiji.

I can't find the quote G. Keillor used, something like, Carnegie said, "In a library, you are always in good company."

Java, there are masses of Carnegie libraries; while I've been using libdex to search and verify library copies of Weaver, I've been seeing them, and a couple of libraries use that Carnegie quote as an intro to their official website.

Several of the Seattle Public Library local branches are Carnegie libraries. Architectural gems and sanctuaries to the book, all of them.

I'm such a giddy bibliophile right now! I went to Borders and bought four books tonight, which was the first time I've bought this many books for myself in one trip since I quit working at Waldenbooks 15 months ago.

Two fluffy romances, both by fave authors who haven't written in a year or more--Jayne Castle, Jayne Ann Krentz's fantasy romance nom de plume, and Loretta Chase, who writes brilliant Regency-era romances with lots of steamy sex and aging bluestocking heroines. Also, the newest Eileen Dreyer mystery, the only author whose hardcovers I'll buy just to support her work, because she's so darn good. Finally, Everything Is Illuminated, because I read the synopsis this weekend when the film version was announced (Liev Schrieber's directorial debut, starring Elijah Wood as an American Jew journeying to the Ukrainian town where his grandfather was rescued from a Nazi death squad) and it sounded really intriguing. This one is going to take a while to read--I got through the first chapter and had to take a break because the prose is very dense, though quirky, and it's very late and my brain is tired.

The Roswell Public Library was a Carnegie library. In the late 70s it had to expand from the original adorable building to a much larger site...which was a block from my house. I practically lived there growing up. I still remember the shock of going to my first non-college library in a different town, and they had nothing! NOTHING! I was very lucky.

I use my local library frequently. It's a good place to stock up on reference books when preparing for a big-ass projects (right now I have about seven books on trees and shrubs out), or as Susan said, test driving new authors. I always browse the New Arrivals shelves in fiction and non-fiction to see if there's anything remotely intriguing. It's like impulse shopping in a bookstore but without having to actually spend any money.

I generally like to walk to the library, if the weather's nice. (My local branch is open until 9pm on weeknights, so it's a great thing to do on a summer evening). I have a tote bag that will hold just as many books as I can comfortably carry and no more.

Going back to the "How Do You Pronounce....?" conversation:

100 most mispronounced words/phrases. There were a few I use that I hadn't known were wrong, most notably "spitting image."

I finished my Laura Lippman book last night. I read her Tess mysteries out of order so I am pretty confused about where things were left. I need to go look at publishing dates and get a timeline in my head of where the characters are.

Heretically for a buffista, I almost never buy books I haven't read already. I don't need to own books unless I plan to reread them.

Yet again, flea is me. It's very rarely that I buy a book I haven't read already, and it's usually when I know it's a one I'll read more than once.

Books I do know I want to re-read, however, I need to be available to me in case I want to hug them on 2am and find out how-this-sentence-was-written-exactly.

I don't know what I'd do without the library. There was a small one just across the street from the building we used to live in when I was a child, and as soon as my parents let me cross the road on my own, I was there every day. We were allowed to take only one book at a time, and it was closed on Wednesdays (and those were really long afternoons on those Wednesdays!). We didn't have many books at home, because Hebrew isn't the mother-tongue of both my parents, and they both immigrated to Israel as grown-ups, so my only source for books was the library.

I do, however, get attached to the original copy of a book I read and love and want to buy in order to re-read. As much as I try to keep the books as unharmed as possible, some marks (like - how do you call it? - a sign of the book being-open on its back cover), I do like to have books that look as though they're being read, not just standing on shelves. My youngest brother once had an accident involving a bottle of shampoo and one of my books (in a backpack, in the army), and he was so sorry and embarrassed, but the book wasn't damaged, it only looked more read-in, if that makes any sense.

Also, books here are quite expensive. I can't even dream to afford to buy everything I want to read.