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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

This made my heart sink. I have a sizable book collection, not nearly as nice as that one, but there are a few ~$200-1000 editions in there. Mostly though they are books I've read and loved, or learned a lot from, and when I go I fear there will be no-one to give the collection to, just as there has been no-one to loan them to. I cannot imagine just breaking up and selling a parents collection! It feels wrong somehow, like a betrayal. It could easily be justified by practicality - clearly the author made a ton of money, and will save the price of storage costs over time. I hope he at least kept a few of the most important books that his parents loved, and I hope his own children do not sell his collection like this.

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I'm in the same camp, I've been collecting old golden-age science fiction books for a whole (with plenty of others as well along the way.) my wife enjoys the same so we regularly acquire bags of books. Road-trip holidays are the worst :)

I think it's worth understanding that the joy of collecting is the collectors reward. Collections have little actual value [1] and you should understand that when you are gone your collection will vanish, likely for no money. The cost of sorting it, cataloging, selling etc is too high.

The best person to enjoy your collection is you, and the best time is now. Collecting is fun, not work. Have fun, don't worry about the collection's future, and assume it will all be burned.

[1] if you think you have value, you need to sell the valuable parts yourself before you pass. You can't expect some family member to figure out which 10 of your 1000 books are worth money.

Ideally I hope to sell the whole collection to another collector one day. He will get it really cheap. I recently bought 120 books from someone, sight unseen. He took half what I offered. I'm still working my way through them.

I love that era because most of it was rubbish, but there are hidden gems. Frankly I get pleasure from most of the rubbish as well. It's like watching old B movies.

So if you have a bunch of old sci-fi books to sell, going to a good home, for little money, drop a note here and we'll figure out how to get in touch :)

Would I recommend young readers broadening their world older sci-fi at first? Nope; there are so many more recent titles that won't put them off with outdated modalities. Reading much of old sci-fi today requires having quite some baggage to be able to appreciate them. The stories themselves remain good, but the trappings and often the social interactions extrapolate the future from our past rather than our present.

Does my home library have shelves of Asimov, Heinlein, Wyndham, Sturgeon, et al? You bet it does.

Reading Lensman now really is like watching an old B-movie — it even feels black and white.

@bruce511: I think we would enjoy browsing each other's libraries, our wives included (although our collection isn't fancy in terms of editions at all, with plenty of paperbacks).

yeah mine is 95% paperbacks. Most in somewhat-poor condition. They were printed cheap 70 years ago, and the fact they are still viable is an achievement in itself. They are getting hard to find now, partly because 2nd hand bookshops don't stock them because the condition is too bad.

I imagine younger readers would struggle to get into the genre, although I think a lot of the big classics are still accessible. Seeing Dune as a big recent movie shows, I think, that a lot of the themes were tireless and haven't changed. I'm often amazed at how some things could have been written today, with the same social angst, but were written in the 40's or 50's. Poul's insight into advertising (The Space Merchants), Bradbury's commentary on censorship and offence (Fahrenheit 451) are both ones that spring to mind. But these are not isolated examples - there are lots of others. (Erik Frank Russell's Wasp is a perennial favourite and works as well today as ever.)

> They are getting hard to find now, partly because 2nd hand bookshops don't stock them because the condition is too bad.

In the Netherlands a handful of second hand shops who specialize in sci-fi and fantasy show up at the huge yearly outdoor book-fair in Deventer. We always pick up a bunch of those old paperbacks there (in the original English obviously). This August the fair returned for the first time since the start of the pandemic shut it down — only 500 stands instead of the usual 800, so hopefully next year will be back to full strength. I would expect such specialised sellers (and large book-fairs) to exists in most countries (although the Deventer one is the largest in Europe).

Good recommendations, Dune certainly is as good now as then (I guess, being born after its release), but I wouldn't blindly recommend everything by, say, Heinlein (like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress stands the test of time, but many of his juveniles and later works are an acquired taste). Good bookshops and publishers already do a lot of that curation by their choice of new editions of older works of course.

yeah, Heinlein is not my favourite, and I find most of his stuff to be hard work. I really wanted to like Stranger in a Strange Land (because it's an awesome title) but alas it seems like every book is trying to push some specific social agenda which may have been big at the time (or maybe not?) but now just seems out of place.

>> In the Netherlands a handful of second hand shops who specialize in sci-fi and fantasy show up at the huge yearly outdoor book-fair in Deventer.

consider yourself lucky then! There's nothing like that here. Which is perhaps good for my wallet...

I have shared my experience before of helping my father inherit his father's 39,000 books. A collection that occupied three apartments and was worth hundreds of thousands even back then.

I hate books now. Hate. Please don't burden your successors with thousands of objects that are important to you and not them.

John Hodgman says the difference between hoarding and collecting is a display case.

A display case limits the number of objects that can be in someone's collection at a time. Good collectors get to a reasonable collection size and then operate on something like a one in, one out policy.

Sorry you had to go through that huge burden. I had a hoarding grandparent (not anything to that extent). It was painful to dispose of as the belongings were filled with mold and everyone got sick while throwing it away.

It's true that the things you own end up owning you. You have a responsibility to find your collection a new caretaker. Good luck :)

The books are going to people who want them. I think that in that way it is pure gain.

Of the books around my house, those that mean the most to me are not generally the most valuable. In fact, I'm not sure what I have that is really valuable, though I am confident that I have very few books I couldn't replace for $50. Yes, a first edition or two, yes three signed by the authors--though not inscribed to me.

I expect that my son will unload my books as best he can, if I don't deal with them first. I think that is well. He is an intelligent man, he reads widely, but the intersection between our areas of interest is only so large.

Don't worry. They are flammable.

Celsius 233

> no-one to give the collection to, just as there has been no-one to loan them to

You can always donate them to GoodWill.

I’ve also seen many areas where people have built little book shelves with a roof, on their front yards, right next to the sidewalk, with signs for people to take books (and contribute as well if they want).

There’s still plenty of people that appreciate, read and exchange physical books.

No, you are entirely missing the point. You are listing ways to get rid of books as if I don't know about goodwill, or the local library's book store or how to light a bonfire. The problem is that people in my life, and in general, don't give a shit about books, but they are important to me, and that contrast is painful.

In that case it seems like you could either find a way to try to break the attachment, or build more connections with (maybe new) people who do appreciate books as much as you do.

I get your pain, but unless you do something about it, it’s probably just going to continue or get worse.

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