I get complaints about the stacks of books around the house. This is one of the reasons I check books out from the library (the other being that books cost a decent amount of money these days).

Nancy, if your books still fit on shelves, you are doing better than I am. I have piles of unread books all over the house. When we added on to our house we included a small library, which was promptly filled with books, and I still have more books than shelf space. But if I break a leg, I've got plenty to read!

Guilty as charged!

Me too! Although I go to the library frequently, I still have stacks of books as I am out of shelf space. However, I have read all my books. My sons usually give me Barnes & Noble gift certificate for Christmas, birthday, Father's day, etc. About every three years I am overwhelmed and donate a bunch of them to the senior coop down the street.

Dahlink: They fit on shelves, but only because the shelves are deep so I can get two layers of books. There are also a lot of stacks on top of the shelves. And some on the floor...

Kelly

I'm right there with ya. Daedalus and Ukazoo and Atomic Books draw me in every time I'm near. I have a strong delusion that I can single handedly save independent bookstores.

I also take several library books out every week. Even though my own personal library could supply enough books for me to read for years, I always put those aside for library books, under the theory that I can always read mine later, at a time when a library won't be available.

I'm totally guilty, as well. I tend to favor certain authors, so when I see their books discounted somewhere I will pick them up. Then I never get around to reading them because, by then, something else has caught my eye. I tend to not get carried away in bookstores because they're too expensive. My problem is used bookstores and wholesale clubs. Who can resist half off the cover price?

Oh my, yes you described me to a tee!!! I just finished buying a pile of books from both Chapters and Amazon-why, who knows. The odds of reading them anytime soon are nil. I have already started stacking books on the tables downstairs and just last week I gave a bunch to the library. Hey I bet that's why I thought I should buy more. lol.

I've horded books since childhood. Yes, I frequent the library, but continue to seek out and store books. Only recently have I begun to 'shed' some of the duplicates (not unusual to have a hard and soft cover of the same title). I did just last week walk reluctantly away from a title though it continued to prey on my mind for a couple of days and even considered going back. Hope that's a sign of progress.

Nice to know I'm not alone. I read a book yesterday, from the dollar store, by Chris Lawford and found it very interesting until I arrived at page 235 and the next page was 197, I think, so I jumped forward to the next page 235 and then the next page was 269, so there was about 30 pages missing, and my question of why theses good books end up at the dollar store was answered. This was probably the twentieth book that I have bought from the dollar store, but the first one that I have read. I'm very anxious now to see if the others have the same problem.
Thanks for letting me know that I may not be normal but I'm not quite as abnormal as I thought.
I have a friend that is a retired newspaper editor that has stacks of papers throughout his house as high as four feet tall. He told me the other day that he has been catching up and he is only about two years behind now and he has also cut back to only buying 4 papers a day except 6 on Sunday now.
Warning! Reading may be space consuming.

Books stacked around my workspace at the office, beside the bed, the Barco-lounger. Yeah, I'll get to them. Recently began stacking them horizontally on top of the vertical books on the shelves. I even filled a bag with discards and took them to Ukazoo. They wanted one, paid me $2 and recycled the rest. Sigh. But there's hope. Foot surgery coming up.

I used to be a hoarder, but at the insistence of my wife, I gave myself a specific cap on number of volumes... So now using librarything to track my numbers, and taking advantage of the ever amazing, wonderful bookthing I have a controllable library with an interesting, rotating collection.

I'm running out of room, too. I live in a relatively new house that had no built-in bookshelves (when did they disappear from houses?). So I keep adding bookcases, or plopping piles of books on end tables around the house, hoping that my wife won't notice that our living space is gradually shrinking.

Kelly, I don't recommend the intervention solution. I have a feeling that you'd have to buy some books to see you through the stay in the intervention facility!

I definitely suffer from the same malady. I had only a slight case before I started hanging out on Read Street six months ago. It's gotten worse. I think it's a highly contagious Internet virus, sort of like the flu bug. If the CDC comes knocking at my door here in NY, I'm pointing the finger right back at Baltimore. I'll use your post and the above comments to make my case.

Advice to book hoarders: never move. Movers base their rates on weight, and books are heavy. If you move yourself, that's a lot of back strain. In a New Yorker profile of Nora Robers, she says she married a carpenter so she'd get free book shelves. How romantic! Maybe book hoarders should marry movers. I'm guilty of buying books not because I'm dying to read them but because they're on sale. I noticed once that I had most of one author's worst books and hardly any of his best ones. Apparently the best books didn't go on sale.

like many other posters here, i'm guilty of book hoarding. i read everything i get out from the library, knowing they have due dates, but then i buy books or get them from The Book Thing, intending to read them, WANTING to read them, but I feel that since they're mine, i have all the time in the world to read them later. hence, i have shelves of books, about half of which are unread, but definitely not unwanted or unloved.

I work in a library, so I try to buy only books that I want to keep and perhaps share with friends, but my downfall is the annual Smith College book sale--such great books, so cheap, for such a good cause (the money raised goes for scholarships). It's always a challenge to avoid buying a book I already own.