Why do you keep so many books (if you do)?

As for being book deprived, don't feel bad for me; now I am Totally Not. Plus my 8 year old is a much better reader than his nephew is, which I'm pretty sure has something to do with the fact that I keep all these books around and my sister doesn't (so I get to feel superior, and who doesn't secretly love that?!)

Lately all I want to do is let my kids watch tv, but they are both sick and driving me nuts right now. If I didn't have the tv (and the computer), I'd be locking myself in the bathroom to hide. With a book, probably.

The surprising thing (or not?) is that it led to me loving awesome literature, too.

and yet i'll take my gazillion books over my gazillion records any day when it comes to moving.

Likewise, though my father kept mentioning the possibility of forbidding certain comic books etc, and I was part of the generation-within-a-generation that wasn't allowed to play Dungeons and Dragons.

I believe in limiting and to some extent supervising television intake, depending on the kid's age (though I think it's key for children to enjoy things their parents find stupid), just not in doing so in favor of reading (past the age of "practice makes perfect"). Especially these days. My parents tried it at one point, but I was reading hundreds of books anyway and my brother has a learning disability, so a uniform policy was too tough to cobble together.

(My parents don't read, watch TV, watch movies, or listen to music, so in this case this stuff all came out of my father's suspicion of Evil Influence and my mother's New England eyebrow-raising at anything that Doesn't Serve Some Practical End.)

2. Continued lust from an adolescence of looking into Manhattan brownstones where the walls were lined with endless curious tomes.

3. A tendency towards obscurer reading, and a tendency towards only buying things on sale, meaning if there's any chance I'll want to read a book someday, and I find it cheap enough, I'll grab it, because when that day comes, I will not be able to find it again.

Um. What exactly do they do for spare time?

My mother quilts and plays bridge, and town politics are sort of a spectator sport here. Sometimes she knits sweaters for upcoming birthdays. Bridge is kind of an indulgence, but it doesn't cost any money -- she's horrified at the number of movies I own. My father, well, he's got his own recreations. (He's Very Religious, along Pat Robertson type lines.)

I keep the ones I keep because I like having them to open and read from. About 160 of them are volumes of poetry. About fifty are various reference works. The rest are just damn good books.

this is pretty much the reason why i have so little vinyl. freaks me out. feel like i need more stability for me n vinyl to happen.

I have kept a running list of every book I've read since January of 1992. Seriously! This may seem obsessive, but sometimes I'll think of something from a book but won't remember where it came from - or need to figure out a title or author - and it really helps.

(I also have a running list of books I want to read, but that is so out of hand that it should never be discussed.)