Weekly Geeks (August 29, 2009)

Weekly Geeks is a weekly event that presents a theme (such as "redecorate your blog week" or "organize your challenges" week or "catch up on your reviews" week) each week. Here is this week's theme:

Last year, I saw a movie, I think it was called Definitely, Maybe, that got me to thinking. In this movie, one of the girls was on a quest to find a particular copy of Jane Eyre, I forget now the specific reason why. But in the process of her search, she ended up with this massive collection of Jane Eyre books, from all sorts of places and years and styles. She had a shelf that went all the way around her room, filled with these wonderful Jane Eyre books.

It made me wish I had a collection like hers, a collection of one particular title, in all it's various versions.

So, Weekly Geeksters, tell us, do you have a collection, (or are you starting a collection,) of one particular book title? If so, what's your story? Why that book, and how many do you have, and what editions are they? Share pictures and give us all the details.

Or perhaps you dream about starting such a collection. What title would it be and what would it take for you to get motivated to start collecting?

Or maybe it's the works of a particular author you collect (or want to collect) instead a certain book title?

Unfortunately, I'm not in a place where such a project would be at all fiscally responsible, but it is certainly something of which I dream with fondness. I would fall into the class of those wanting to collect early editions of their favorite books, regardless of author, but which in my case tend to come from a few authors. Unfortunately, these authors are ones such as Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Milan Kundera, who are all hugely sought after for obvious reasons. In other words, I would need a rather large cash reserve to do establish my collection as I envision it.

However, thanks to some wonderfully beautiful gifts from my husband, I'm inching along the way. I have a first edition and first printing of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, and I have a first edition and early printing of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I also snagged a first edition of Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Garcia Marquez.

But all of this doesn't touch on the books I have multiple copies of through sheer accident. Off of the top of my head, I know I have paperback and hardcover versions of Atonement by Ian McEwan, The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and Underworld by Don DeLillo. These books aren't particularly important to me, but I get rather excited at library sales. In my defense, I would love to convert my entire book collection to hardcover editions. Still, in the process I losing sight of both my limited book budget and, even more pressing, the limited space in my Manhattan apartment. Not that the realization of any of that will cure me, of course. I'm sure others share my syndrome, right? I can't be the only inanimate object version of the crazy cat lady, right?