Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose

I used to hoard things. 

Those things could be pretty much anything (like having 15 lipsticks while only using 2 of them, or having 8 vases when I never bought flowers) and in most cases I wasn't even passionate about those things, I just liked to hoard them.

Some people might call it collecting, but I know there's a line between collecting and hoarding. You're not supposed to ''collect'' everything you kinda like. You're not supposed to forget those things almost right after you buy them.

And like I've said before, I used to fill something inside me by buying things. I didn't have a hobby, I was quite lonely, I felt misunderstood and I think I didn't live my life the way I wanted to. I was living, but I wasn't experiencing things I've always wanted to experience.

Now, I'm happy with my life. I have a job, a nice place, an amazing and loving boyfriend, and most importantly - I'm doing things! I'm trying to experience everything I can. I don't have the need to buy things all the time anymore. Sure, I still buy pointless things, but I don't dream about what I'm going to buy next and I try not to live through the material world. I want to be present in this world I'm living right now and I don't think it's possible if you try to fill something with shopping all the time.

But there is one thing. I don't know, maybe it's not unhealthy or anything to collect (or hoard, however you wanna put it) something. Like a thing or two.

My weakness is books, that's one thing that I can't seem to get rid of. I read them, but mostly I buy them. I like the feeling of owning a bookshelf full of books, I love to hold a book in my hand, I like turning the pages, I love visiting bookstores. And I love buying books.

I took photos of every single shelf in my bookshelf (I still have like 20 books somewhere else in our apartment but those books are comic books or something else than novels and memoirs). I marked the books I've read in red so you can see what I'm talking about. 

 

1. Rosemary's Baby 2. The Disaster Artist 3. The Secret Book of Frida Kahlo

4. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

5. George's Marvellous Medicine 6. Coraline

7. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 1-5 8. Valley of the Dolls

9. We Have Always Lived in the Castle 10. Night Film 11. Yes Please

12. Naoko 13. Audition 14. In the Miso Soup 15. Piercing

16. The Housekeeper and the Professor 17. The Night Circus

18. The Double 19. The Great Gatsby 20. The Virgin Suicides 21. Bowie: A Biography

22. The Goddess Chronicle 23. Interview with the Vampire 

24. The Journals of Sylvia Plath 25. The Power of Now

26. The Master and Margarita 27. One Hundred Years of Solitude

28. The Moomins and the Great Flood 29. Requiem for a Dream

30. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 31. In Cold Blood 32. A Court of Thorns and Roses

33. Cinder 34. Repeat It Today with Tears 35. Snuff 36. The Little Friend

37. Tell the Wolves I'm Home 38. Spirit Bound 39. Fight Club 40. Life After Life

41. The Imam's Daughter 42. Go Ask Alice 43. We Disappear 44. To Kill a Mockingbird

45. Book of Ghost Stories 46. How to Marry a Finnish Girl 47. The Kiss

48. Undiscovered Gyrl 49. The BFG 50. Not the End of the World 51. The Secret History 

52. Middlesex 53. The Goldfinch 54. Scars 55. Scarlet 56. The Master and Margarita

57. My Year of Meats 58. A Tale for the Time Being 59. Out 60. Coin Locker Babies

61. Lolita 62. When Marnie Was There 63. Notes From Underground 

64. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass 

65. Ariel: The Restored Edition 66. The Red House 67. Invisible Monsters Remix

68. Slasher Girls & Monster Boys 69. Unissakulkija 70. Varistyttö 71. Varjojen huone

72. Vampire Academy 73. The Bell Jar 74. The Secret Garden 75. Nancy

76. The Picture of Dorian Gray 77. Blood Promise 78. Frostbite 79. Emily of New Moon

80. Dear Diary 81. And Then There Were None 82. Girl, Interrupted 

83. En tahdo kuolla, en vain jaksa elää 84. My Cat Yugoslavia 85. Malala 

86. Not That Kind of Girl 87. The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

88. The Society of the Crossed Keys 89. American Psycho 

90. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories 91. Confessions 92. Bloodlines

93. Let the Right One in 94. The Pleasures of Men 95. Stardust 

96. Boy in the Stripes Pajamas 97. All the Light We Cannot See

98. Inkeri palasi Ruotsista 99. A Million Little Pieces 100. See You in the Cosmos

101. Big Little Lies 102. Lolita 103. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? 104. Why Not Me?

105. The Girl with Seven Names 106. Naive. Super 107. How I Live Now

108. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories 109. A Clockwork Orange

110. Diana 111. Extremely Loud & Incredible Close 112. Flowers for Algernon

113. Zoo Station 114. Pablo Neruda's Selected Poems 115. Funny Girl

116. The Girls 117. A Thousand Splendid Suns 

118. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea 

119. The Happiness Project 120. The Happiness Project (in Finnish)

121. The Outsiders 122. Bossypants 123. Tyttö, sinä olet... 124. Shadow Kiss

125. Last Sacrifice 126. A Tale of Love and Darkness 127. Moominsummer Madness

128. The Wild Things 129. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

So, that's 58/129 (or 59 because there's two copies of Lolita). 

Yeah, I think that's kinda bad. I buy books, forget to read them, and buy some more. 
I'm not defending myself (or I might just a little), but I work with books and I sometimes buy them for really cheap. Who can resist books that cost almost nothing? I can't clearly.

I usually give away the books I didn't like that much, but I still have a few books in both Finnish and English, so I think I should arrange my bookshelf once again and get rid of some of those pieces. 

And I definitely should start reading books I already own.