new library

I wondered where you were Fran, you'd gone so quiet all of a sudden, should have known it was a project of some kind. A walkin library, its great and a very good use of that cupboard.
I know all about books, we have hundreds, all of us love to read and lets face it one doesn`t treasure a book and then get rid of it, they do take up a lot of space and even though you think they're all in order somehow it never seems to stay that way, lol, I never know whether to place them by their size, or catagory, I like to try to have them in order but it never works, how did you manage to sort them without getting sidetracked, for instance, if I sort my history books it takes ages as I tend to have a read halfway through, encyclopaedias, one has to have a browse as something catches the eye and gardening books, well you can imagine, photo albums are a nightmare and the whole family gets involved....
Good one Fran, if you go quiet again I'll know your in the library..

Mmmmmm! Love a library or a bookshop! Once in - I eventually have to be surgically removed! 'Kindle' just doesn't do it for me. I need to feel the book, smell the pages, mull over things. I'm sitting next to our 'library' right here - a 5' x 5' shelf unit from a certain Swedish store, crammed to each edge with cookery books, gardening books, nature books, music related books, paperback novels, travel books, Spanish language books and topped with framed family photos. Once you've got your walk-in library sorted, Fran, you'll be in your element! Just arrange seating and plenty of cushions nearby and you'll never move all day! (and probably all night!) ;o)

Kindle would be a waste of time for me. Like you, Nariz, I need paper and print. Apart from that, the sort of books I particularly enjoy just aren't available on Kindle, and dropping THAT in the bath when I fall asleep in the warm steam just isn't an option. I have more water and bubble bath damaged paperbacks than I care to admit.
That looks like a brilliant little library you've got there, Fran. It never occurred to me you might be trapped in a cupboard when you went quiet!

Great ... I love shelves, cupboards and storage space :o)))

Adding to GoYpedia.

That's a really good idea Fran

get-at-able a great word : )
very good job there Fran, looks very organised

So, that's where you've been. I should have known there was a project involved!
That's going to be a great help, Fran. Like others, I have books everywhere and regularly running out of space for them. Trouble is, I find it hard to part with 'old friends', even although it is unlikely I will ever read most of them again.

Oooh, that's brilliant, Fran. I adore books, I used to be a secondhand book dealer and had a shed full. Nowadays my personal books have been stripped down to just a few shelves in the dining room, but they all mean something to me. And I can't resist gardening books of course :)

that is fantastic fran!! i would love a cupboard like that.

thanks all! smiles, it's nice to be missed.

The books were boxed in 2008 for a move that fell through, and stayed boxed till a couple of months ago: I had to exercise heroic restraint not to delve into old friends as they emerged back into the light - four years apart is a loooooong time!

I'm logging the books to be sure that I don't buy the same one twice (which has happened), also to keep a running total of how many I have - when I get *proerly* sorted I hope to number the shelves and put that location in the file so that I can look up a book and find out where it is - the top shelves are going to take a bit of step-laddering to reach, so the less I have to do the better.

I found another two boxes of books and put them on the shelves: never even occurred to me to log them, so already my list is out of date: I'll have to print off the lists and go through the books one at a time and see whether it's listed, and add it if it's not. sigh.

I used to have books in subject, when I had fewer books and more room, but having them in size means I can get a lot more in - an A4 book on a row of paperbacks means that space is wasted above the paperbacks that could be used to get another shelf in, so they're sorted by size and by subject. So long as I remember to look on the bigger-book shelf as well, I should be ok.

I dislike ordinary bookcases, they're too deep for paperbacks, I could get a double rown on, and did think of that! Then I had about ten of those tall wooden CD/DVD units, right depth, but not wide enough, I had to leave half-book spaces at the end of shelves. This'll be better, once I get it sorted.

There's a third set of shelves behind the door, which is going to be a pain to get at - with the door closed, it's very stuffy, and halfway up the wall is the electricity meter, so we've had to shelve round that - I usually keep my spare light-bulbs, batteries, and torches near the fuse-box, so I know where they are if needed.

The only real prob is that the corners, where the shelves overlap, are going to be "dead" spaces; inaccessible. but i've got stacks of old video cases that I can use to fill the spaces so that all books are on view.

I looked at Kindle, but am not really drawn to it, either: why carry around ten thousand books, you can only read one at a time! and they don't seem to do the kind that I read, either. Most of mine are old, a lot are out of print: I suppose I could scan them in to make a pdf to read online, but ... one can't curl up with a PC!

Oh wondered where you had got to Fran now we all know, in the cupboard with the handy man aye, you have done an excellent job there, well done,

I too wondered where you were Fran. now we all know, nose in a book or two.......what more could one want! Sigh. Love your cupboard.

*s* thanks, it'll look better when it's properly sorted, at least I devoutly hope so!

I have a Kindle and I love it! I adore books and thought it would be weird to be reading from a screen instead but I don't notice it at all. I haven't got hundreds of books on there like some people but when I go on holiday I've got a nice collection to read. I think I've got 4 books on the go at the minute, all different kinds, gardening books, a novel, a travel book... It means I can carry around lots of books that weigh less than one! Most of them were free too :D Each to their own though :)

I'm visually impaired, Crafty, and have real probs with ebooks on the PC - if they're in PDF I have to zoom in so much that I can only get a few words onscreen, so have to keep scrolling left and right and try to remember the words so that I can assemble them into a sentence, like a jigsaw.

And if they're in Notepad, they're broken up - my Notepad is set to 24 font, which breals up paragraphs - Notepad ebooks seem to be assembled line by line, rather than paragraph by paragraph - by making the font size bigger, each line is spread over four or five lines, which means I have to reasemble the book, line by line.

The only way I can really access eboks is to convert them to Word, increase the font size, and *then* reassemble them line by line, often word by word! and by the time I've waded through what used to be a 300-page book and is now a 900-page book, I can't face actually reading the damn thing!

It's even worse when there are illustrations, as in gardening books - I have to enlarge each picture individually to a size where it's useful to me, format it to make the text fit around it, rather than split above/below, and then try to find the paragraph it applies to and make it stay there - not always an easy job, it keeps skating around and often takes several goes to get it in the right place. And then on to the next, and the next ... I have to *really* want to read a book to convert it!

(My standard font size is 24 - then I can reduce the zoom so I can see the whole page width onscreen *and* be able to read the contents - saves scrolling sideways as well as up and down)

If Kindle had enlarged text, rather than a zoom which only let me see a few words at a time ... besides, do Kindles only take dedicated Kindle books, or will it accept other formats? I wouldn't want to get "locked in" to one format that meant you could only read books in that format.

A marvellous use of space Fran! Well worth all the effort. We have OH's in the loft - hemade another entry and a stairway in the spare bedroom and all his 3000 are up there - I keep waiting for the ceiling to fall in or the walls to crack! Mine are in two bookcases in the sitting room - boring!

wow, I'm still a beginner comapred to him, then! I'm going to have to go through these and very reluctantly part with some - it's amazing how much the print size can vary, and some typefaces simply aren't as clear as others; no point hanging on to books that I can't read.

lol that's one reason I'm wishing for a bungalow rather than a flat - attic space!

Fran, I'm sorry, I didn't realise you are visually impaired. That must be a pain for you, having to keep enlarging text. Like you say, you have to really WANT to read a book to bother with it.

Regarding Kindle text size, you can enlarge it, but at the biggest you only get a couple of words to a page so you may start with a repetative strain injury with the amount of page clicks you'd have to do!

Enjoy your new library, I love it :)

thanks dear. I can manage most normal-text books by holding them right up to my nose and squinting a bit - of course, this does my shoulders and arms no favours! and the heavier books are a literal pain - I end up resting my elbows on my knees and hunching over, which puts dents in my kness as well.

But that's still better than dot-and-carry - memorising a sentence two or three words at a time and then reassembling them when you come to a full stop.

I do have talking books courtesy of the RNIB, but I'm not used to sitting down and doing nothing but listen; I suddenly find that I've missed half a chapter because my mind wandered!

ah, you can't beat real books on paper.

You are so right - I can't see the attraction of sitting reading a screen. And what happens when it goes wrong and you lose all your books?

I can't persuade OH to get rid of even half a dozen but I guess must be grateful that he can see to read them. Reading about your struggles to read I'm sure makes most of us count our blessings.

smiles, ill health or disability is something we tend to overlook [no pun] unless it happens to us or someone we know. at least I've still got enough vision to read and write, even though I'm using a 42" tv as a monitor!

I prefer plain and simple - no arguing with a bolshy PC and the batteries never run down on a real book!