How I Became An Accidental Book Collector

I have always considered myself more of a book hoarder than book collector. Just ask my wife. She will quickly point out we have always had far more books packed up in boxes than shelf space to store them. I tend to buy books and then keep them without really thinking about whether they are something that needs to stay in the house forever. Certainly I will read that book again one day, right?

A couple of years ago things started to change. We had downsized to a smaller house a while back and didn't have nearly the bookshelf space we had before. Our old house had built in bookshelves in both the living room and upstairs family room which is of course exactly why we bought it. Since we had moved to our current house I've slowly been purging books and other stuff that we simply don't have space for any more.

Then about a year ago I joined Instagram. I was aware of it but never really saw how it would fit in with my social media consumption. I joined primarily because my wife and daughters were on it doing different things and I wanted to be the supportive father and husband and be able to give them support for their posts. Somewhere along the way though I started looking at different feeds and discovered a whole subculture of Instagram wholly devoted to books. This was a game changer. Now I follow a number of these accounts where people post pictures of their books. It opened up a whole new world to me as I was largely unaware of some of the artistic treasures that existed out there in the wild.

This also coincided with my desire to read more of Agatha Christie's novels as well as other classic crime fiction. I do a lot of reading for pleasure as a diversion from the day to day stresses of work. I had become a fan of Christie largely through watching the entire series of Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet. I had read the occasional novel here and there and thoroughly enjoyed them and so I wanted to start branching out and reading her other works.

Around the same time I stumbled across an Instagram account that has become one of my favorites: The Year of Agatha. The account was started by two Christie fans who read through the entire canon of Christie's novels in a year and blogged about the experience. But they also collect vintage Christie novels and post the photos on their Instagram feed. As I started browsing through the feed the first time I was instantly struck how many different versions there were out there of her books and how striking the covers could be.

The real kickoff to collecting occurred back in March. While my wife was away with her college girlfriends for the weekend, I spent a lazy Saturday afternoon at Too Many Books in Roanoke, VA (a store I would highly recommend visiting while in the area). As you can see from the photos below, I came away with quite the start to my collection.

Now all of a sudden I had a mission: start collecting Agatha Christie novels. I was already purging books and other stuff I didn't want but now I could take that to used books stores and leverage it for credit for stuff I did want. I have been pleasantly surprised at being able to find older copies of her books. For the proof all you have to do is scroll through my Instagram account where I have been posting photos.

I have long been a fan of used book stores because (a) I like to read a lot, and (b) I'm cheap and don't like to pay a lot for books. Thanks to my new found pastime shopping at used books stores has gone to another whole level.