Piper Nuelle

I wrote a blog post yesterday about my 25 reads for 2025 challenge, where I obviously have to read 25 books for this year, cover to cover… I made a slight jokey comment about how if it was collecting 25 books for 2025 I most probably would have won that prize already, but it got me thinking… Do some people collect books as a hobby? Not just read books as a hobby? And can they be classed as two totally different hobbies?

The answer… A resounding YES!!!

Take my sister for example, she likes to read but she doesn’t read all the time, yet she is constantly buying new books, she even has book subscription boxes that come to her door monthly with special editions and signed copies inside. She has around three large bookcases in her home, along with shelves and other forms of storage. All three bookcases and the shelves are rammed with books upon books, her ‘To be read’, pile is as tall as she is… Yet she only reads about one book a month, but will buy at the very least five but maybe more depending on what she finds.

So I asked her why and she replied with…

“Sis, I just love books but some I never want to touch, open or ruin, they are too beautiful to even read! I buy them, look at them and admire them, I smell the pages to get that new book aroma into my system, then I place it on my bookshelf and watch it collect a fine layer of dust which I then clean monthly. I love to rearrange them, pile them on the coffee table at times, switch them over when it’s a different season. I just love books”.

She even has multiple copies of certain books, she will buy the average Joe edition to read and ruin, then she will buy the hardcover, specialist, limited edition to keep and forever look at on her shelf. To her it’s like Pokémon, she’s gotta catch them all!

I guess in a way, I too can relate to her, but I’m not as obsessive over them. I will buy a lot of books, and I love to collect certain sets of books, certain series of books, but… I will only ever own one version and I will open it and read it. There are some of course I have bought because I love the look of the cover and I want to leave it on display and I will treat it like a Queen when reading it, but it will still get read. And… My ‘To be read’ pile is big, but no where as big as hers lol.

There are also many others out there that do the same thing, they literally just buy a book because it is a collectors item book, or because it looks pretty and special and looks good on display. So, I completely think that ‘YES’, Collecting and buying books is a completely different hobby to reading them.

Here are the books I have bought and or collected this year, some of which I have already read, and some others that are in my TBR pile and I will at some point get around the reading;

1. What you are looking for is in the Library – By Michiko Aoyama
2. The Pumpkin Spice Café – By Laurie Gilmore
3. The Cinnamon Bun Bookstore – By Laurie Gilmore
4. The Christmas Tree Farm – By Laurie Gilmore
5. The Strawberry Patch Pancake House – By Laurie Gilmore
6. This Girls a Killer – By Emma. C. Wells
7. Bad Publicity – By Bianca Gillam
8. Caraval – By Stephanie Garber
9. Alone – By Mercedes Prunty
10. Lone – By Mercedes Prunty
11. One – By Mercedes Prunty
12. The Convenience Store By the Sea – Sonoko Machida
13. Dracula – Bram Stoker
14. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
15. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte
16. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
17. The 6 Minute Entrepreneur – Sara Davies
18. Room 13 – Robert Swindells
19. Powerless – By Lauren Roberts
20. Invisible Women – By Caroline Criado Perez
21. Write it all down – By Cathy Rentzenbrink
22. The Nail Salon – By Natalie Tambini
23. Careering – By Daisy Buchanan
24. Antigone – By Sophocles
25. Pet Sematary – By Stephen King
26. Fifty Shades of Grey – EL James
27. Beneath the Lemon Trees – Emma Burstall
28. The Comeback – By Lily Chu
29. The Boyfriend – By Freida McFadden
30. The Creeper – By A.M. Shine
31. The Publicist – By Natalie Tambini
32. Hell House – By Richard Matheson

Wowsers!!! After looking around my study and along my bookcases I can see that I have actually bought and collected quite a few books already this year. And, that if I try to read all what I have purchased I would surpass my reading challenge amount… But, if not, I have bought way more than I can read in a year lol!!! Maybe I need to slow down on my book spending habits.

I do have to admit, a couple of the books are actually ones for my University degree! A couple of them were to support a fellow Indie author who has self published her own books and she also helps me to manage my blog, so I guess its a case of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. One was purely out of curiosity due to its success and I want to see what all the fuss was about. One was from my childhood and I desperately wanted to see it again. And a couple were technically gifted to me by a friend so… Not all my fault for them being adopted by me and coming into my life.

There you have it, my take on the question, is collecting books and reading books two completely different hobbies. What’s your take on the question? Let me know.

xo Piper xo