(Copyrights belong to me)
I'm a collector of several things, for example: literature. I especially collect classical literature works - even if I hadn't read some of it before. Dostojevski, Shakespeare, Orwell, Wilde and many others, who have been considered to be one of the great authors of all time.
I also collect books that interest me and books that qualify those both criteria's but also on top of the previous criteria's books that are old and perhaps even aesthetically pleasing to the eyes.
I most likely do not have any books that would be considered to be of any financial value, and even if I did, I would never sell anything I have. Oddly enough, I've grown very tight emotional bonds to my books. If there would be a fire in my home, it would mean a catastrophe. No kind of compensation would ever be enough to bring back what I would lose. So I sometimes fear that something bad might happen. I cannot think of any ways to prevent catastrophes with my budget so I try not to think about it too much.
I used to be a complete opposite of someone who collected anything. I didn't have much, and I didn't want much either. But after some time I started to crave for something to do with the moments I had and since I used to read a lot and I watched a lot of movies, it seemed smart to get back to those old hobbies. I guess that happened when I got my first long time period apartment and I had undergone some surgery - which is something I won't write about but will mention that besides my head my body has been also poked and cut through many times like it was a needle-cushion.
When I was recovering from the surgery's I wanted something to do, since going to school or work wasn't possible at first. I started by buying some old used DVD's of my favourite movies and TV-shows. And then I started to buy books too, since I used to be a very enthusiastic reader. Book by book, DVD by DVD I collected until I grew too fond of my collection that I just wanted it to keep on growing. Now I wanted a larger collection to also be able to share some of it with my friends and family. Like a personal library - although yet a significantly smaller version of that.
(Copyrights belong to me)
Later purchases have been two big book shelf's since the older ones were getting crowded. Now I can keep on collecting these small pieces of art to enjoy over and over again.
I have to mention too, that I almost never buy any new books. And most of my DVD's are used ones too. It's mostly for financial reasons but even if I could afford to buy anything I would ever want, I'd buy them used. Just because a book has had previous owners and some of them might be a bit rugged doesn't mean that they wouldn't last forever if you treat them well in your own lifetime. And since consumerism creates a flood of material things that keep coming, keep getting bought and thrown away, it's a never-ending cycle we must prevent with our choices or we will drown into thrash or we will use more and more resources to make more new things even if the previous things have been thrown away.
Just because you can afford to buy everything new, you shouldn't. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of homeless books and movies getting thrown into trash if we don't buy them for ourselves - into a home that would value them as they should be valued.
And if you get your hands to some free and exceptionally cheap books you do not care for nor you cannot get them sold you should think of other options to do with those books.
And I must mention that there are blogs and bloggers that create exceptionally amazing mythic cult-books out of old ones, and here's a link to a forum with pictures of what you can make. It seems that the original blog has been deleted for who knows for what reasons, but here's pictures of the amazing books that blogger had done:
Yet perhaps you can find other instructions from anywhere in the internet. Propnomicon has many links to many places with people who are prop-experts sharing happily their knowledge and know-how's.
And here's a book-suggestion to all of you who are interested in oddities and occult, mysterious books: The Voynich Manuscript. It can be found free to see and "read" in many places all over the internet - or bought copies of it from many bookstores. It's an old book that has been written in unknown language and filled with drawings of non-existing or bizarre things like plants, that do not exist anywhere in the world.
Here's a news column of the Manuscript to the curious ones -> Link to The New Yorker.
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