You Don’t Need A Home Library! A Response @alisontalksbooks

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to my channel or welcome back if you're returning. In today's video, I'm doing a VR response to a video by Allison over at Allison Talks Books, which she gave it the very eye-catching title of, "You don't need a home library." Which my gut reaction to was, "Of course we do. We all want to be Belle. We all want to be Belle and Beauty and the Beast." So, it cracked me up when Allison actually said the same thing in the video. her fantasy of Belle's library, the sliding ladders. I do have a home library. I've got a number of bookcases. I've got well over a thousand books. I don't have any sliding ladders yet. I do have the odd bookstore or two, but it's not the same thing really, is it? So, in Allison's video, she looked at the idea of a home library, but through the lens of what social media can do to it and the expectations it puts on other people who might just want a reading hobby. What does social media do to hobbies? Well, it makes them extreme. It distorts them.

[00:01:06]It pushes them. I think any any hobby, it pushes it down a consumerism funnel.

[00:01:12]I think if you can talk about anything on social media, you can also monetize it. And I think that that's one of the issues around what social media does to the idea of a home library. So Allison talked about in her past being pushed to spend all of her spare income on books.

[00:01:32]She talked about wondering about whether her bookshelves and her bookcases were internet ready. Were they beautiful enough? We've got the aesthetics of bookcases and home libraries coming into play there. I mean, we've all seen the matching shelves with all the special editions on colorcoordinated sprayed edges. Very, very expensive bookshelves. She spoke about the idea of seeing rooms full of books, pushing people to buy books too quickly as well, which I thought was a really interesting point that if you're trying to fill up, say, a backdrop of bookshelves full, then you don't have time to discern your reading taste and to really bring the books into your home library that you're truly excited to read. So, aesthetics, buying books too quickly, it all comes into play. And then the stress of course of having so many unread books because you bought books so quickly, the TBR stress, which is something I've spoken about on here before. She equates how the internet distorts hobbies by talking about the latest craze of the analog bag that influencers are buying in an attempt to get offline and off their screens. The analog bag, a big bag you can fill with analog hobbies. So, knitting, crochet, journaling, but look at the sales funnels and the consumerism funnels that are there. You've got walls, you've got patterns, you've got stickers for journaling, you've got bookmarks, you've got pen journals themselves. You can talk about a hobby online. You can monetize a hobby. And I think the consumerism sales funnels are one of the key reasons why I think in our book space the home library concept can also become distorted. Do we really need all the special edition books? Do we need the beautiful floor to ceiling vast roomfuls of books? Do we need any of that to be a reader or like the analog bag being abandoned and left in the corner of the room? Is our home library just going to turn two months down the line into a I unholdled a massive 200 books video because we bought books too quickly. So these were all really interesting topics especially if you're coming at thinking about this topic from Allison's point of view which also mirrors my point of view in that we are both advocates for the book haul. I am a book buyer. I have many hundreds of unread books in my house and still I buy more books. I'm a book reader but I'm also a book buyer. I'm somebody that does want the home library with the floor to ceiling books. There is no shame in this video about anybody wanting that or anybody spending their money on beautiful bookshelves. You can see I've turned my bookshelves into fairy light lit forest glades. I am very aware that I love aesthetically beautiful bookshelves. And I listen to express some of those opinions.

[00:04:46]Absolutely no shame in doing this with your bookshelves. However, how might we check ourselves? Check that we're doing what we want to do. not being influenced by what could possibly be a distorted opinion of what a home library actually is. Alison around that idea of just chasing aesthetics said that one of the things she did was she started going to secondhand bookshops and turning book buying into a treasure hunt, which at the end of the day doesn't necessarily give you the aesthetic bookshelves. I know my bookshelves behind me, most of those books are old and falling apart, cracked spines, different editions.

[00:05:31]You're not going to fall into the trap, that aesthetic distortion if you are doing that. And it might be that you check yourself and you still want to buy all the special editions and you do want to have your bookshelves looking a certain way and that's fine, too. But it's a question worth asking. Allison when she checked herself realized that if she bought secondhand books she then felt that she was more part of a community of a town of readers around her because it was easier to get rid of books that weren't suiting her to take books back to charity shops to use little free libraries to donate to libraries as well. It was more of a flow state with the readers in the town around her and she liked that more than aesthetically holding on to books just for the way they looked. So the shelves weren't as pretty, but there are plus points elsewhere. And I think it's that balance between do we want this or do we want that that's well worth the conversation with ourselves as book readers. Through doing that, Allison talks about her book buying slowing down, which then allowed her to develop more of a reading discernment to understand what she likes to read and then to only bring books in that she's truly excited to read. And it's this speed of reading, I think, that really caught my attention because I've often wondered what the online representation of the beautiful home library does do to younger readers, our younger readers or readers of any age coming into reading pushed to buy books quicker than they would normally because of this often false aesthetic. even this false idea that you actually need any sort of home library at all. And I looked around at my own home library and I realized that there is time represented within my library. I am a couple of years shy of 60 years old now. I've been in this game of buying books and reading books for a long, long time. And I thought it's the time represented in my library that has grown the library. So I didn't have this library at 20. I didn't have this library at 30. I didn't have this library at 40 and 50. It's only been in the last decade, especially the fiction books, that I've developed a library at all. It's been a slow accumulation of time for me. that has put so much value into the library that I own. And I wanted to make a case in this video, not only for letting go of some of the aesthetics of an online representation of of a home library, because I am very much an advocate for treasure hunting books, but also for putting time as a factor into your home library and your book curating because I think time turns your library from a home library into a life library. And when I looked at my bookcases, I thought, my gosh, this is a life library. These books literally are a representation of my life. So, to make that case and to show you my bookcases, which are in a terrible mess, actually, because I've been moving furniture around and I haven't resorted my bookcases out downstairs. So, I'm not going to tidy them up. I'm going to show you real life, but I am going to take you around my bookcases. And I'm going to show you the way that time has turned my home library into a life library. And that might be a consideration for your book buying, whether you're buying books slowly or even whether you're buying books fast because I think both are valid. It's just another aspect, I think, of the home library that doesn't get represented that much online when we're seeing these beautiful, expensive, quickly curated libraries. So, may I take you downstairs with me and introduce you to my life library? So, welcome to my life library. This is downstairs in the lounge. Like I say, it's a terrible mess at the moment, but you can see the time in these bookshelves. I can I can see my life represented. This first bookcase in front of me is full of art books. That represents me as a teenager, first earning money, as a young adult, cycling into Hon, which is where I lived right next door to, buying secondhand books all about art, developing my love of art. I was a child obsessed with art. I then went to train in the arts and worked in the arts before I went into teaching in my mid30s. But the arts for me, the visual arts, finding out about artists has always been a massive part of my life. George O'Keefee books, what would George O'Keeffe do has been a motto for me throughout my life. And this bookcase represents that love developing. It also represents my initial thoughts that you only keep non-fiction books. Now, this little bookcase are some of my childhood books.

[00:11:02]Some of my childhood books as well that I bought recently. I think you get more nostalgic as you get older. Um, they also represent my time as a mother.

[00:11:11]We've got picture books that I read to my three kids as they grew up on here.

[00:11:16]So, when I see this bookcase, I see me as a mother. Now, let's come across to this top shelf. This top shelf is from my decade of hell when my life imploded and I felt like I was in the Truman Show, surrounded by deceit and deception. This This is my recovery bookshelf. Recovering from diagnosed PTSD after getting out of a terrible marriage. These books literally saved me. So, that's my curveball shelf. And then from them, freedom after a bad marriage, discovering spirituality.

[00:11:53]There are Christian books on here. There are Buddhist books on here. There are stoic books on here. Philosophy, spirituality, that's what you do after a terrible marriage. You also start to build a garden. There are gardening books on here. And then earth magic books. My garden led me down the path of wicker, the path of earth magic, working with the moon, being out in the garden at midnight. Yes, being that crazy neighbor. These are the books that fostered that. Fostered my spiritual path into paganism, witchcraft, magic as well. I love this bookcase. And it's messy and every single book on here is secondhand. A bit like these flowers that were made by by my kids. This isn't an aesthetic 50 pound bouquet of flowers. They're paper flowers that my kids have made for me. They're crochet flowers. And sometimes that's way more special, as in this case, than anything expensive or aesthetically bought because of its beauty. Sometimes it's the life and the love and the connections, the memory and the time in things that are more important than any expensive aesthetic. I mean, my dogs are case in point. I've got two hounds. This is Robert. Um, who is just beautiful.

[00:13:12]We've gone gray together, haven't we, Roert? He used to have like a beautiful black mask and he's gone gray just like his mom. Both of my dogs rescue. Neither of my dogs are expensive showy handbag breed dogs that all the influencers have got. They're naughty. Outrageously naughty. ridiculously fast greyhound mixes from a um from a dog rescue about a three-hour drive away from me. And yet, they are the loves of my life. They are the most beautiful dogs you will ever meet. And I think that kind of sums up what I'm trying to say with this video.

[00:13:59]It It's the same as my library. This means something to me. So these bookcases, they represent probably 30 years of my life. 30, 40 years here of different life stages. There is time in here. There isn't a fast pull for an internet. Of course, I'm a generation that was born before the internet even existed. So, it was easier for me. But, and I love this sort of raggedy aesthetic as well. So, in a way, it does have its own aesthetic. Going across the lounge, I have this shelf. Now, this shelf reminds me of post divorce, me and my little team of kids and reading with my middle daughter. We discovered YA fiction together. We read all the Lee Bardugo books, Six of Crows, Crooked Kingdom, our favorite books. We've recently started reading V. Schwab together, The Gathering of Magic and The Color of Magic. We read The Raven Boys.

[00:14:59]We read the Luna Chronicles. Uh we read um Katherine Valente's fairy tale series together. So that beautiful time with fantasy. We're about to start some Brandis Brandon Sanderson together. I found these secondhand for me. I always buy her new though. We've done Tolken together. So fantasy reading. Escaping to Mumin Valley and Mumin Land and the Mumins and the wonderful pros of Toby Yansen always reminds me of surviving divorce. I would run to Mumin Land when I was most overwhelmed.

[00:15:36]So my downstairs bookshelves probably represent 45 to 50 years of living. You come upstairs and these are all the more recent purchases and you can see it's fiction. It's the classics. This is my Victorian bookshelf. I got to uh 55 and realized my kids are about to leave home. In fact, both of my girls left home for college and university within 3 days of each other last year. And I realized I've got to fill the empty nest with something and it's fiction. It's doing my DIY literature degree that I began to fill my time with. writing essays about fiction, reading the cannon, reading all the classics that I've known about all my life. You see here there's medieval literature, there's Regency, there's romantic literature. It goes up here to modern classics as well. people like Tony Morrison, DH Lawrence, Dice Leing, Will Cather, they're all people that I've wanted to read as as well as different time eras. So, this has been very fast buying all these bookshelves up upstairs. But I think sometimes fast buying is the right thing to do as well.

[00:17:01]I've been buying books when I see them because I know I'm planning modules for my DIY literature degree. It sounds like I'm contradicting myself. Most of these books upstairs have been brought in the last 2 and 1/2 years, including that little Gothic shelf in the corner as well. I wanted to do a Gothic module, but it's still linked to my life and the stage that I'm in, and I love it. Now, this in the corner, I think, is the closest I've come to being influenced totally by social media and book ttube because in here are book prize books and also Stephen King books. I've bought again all secondhand. Um, I knew nothing about literature prizes before finding book. So the women's prize previously the orange prize the book of prize the pulit surprise also noble Nobel prize winners for literature it's made me want to read those and I've learned about that through book also running events as a content creator on book has led me to create a lot of this bookshelf as well this is my witchy woodland vampiric bookshelf would I have bought twilight as a series in the charity shop if I wasn't n't running Fuary. I doubt very much I would to be honest. Would I have become fascinated with reading retellings and extensions of Dracula?

[00:18:31]Probably not without Fanguary. Would I have bought modern classics on vampires?

[00:18:37]Who can tell? But am I loving it? Oh, yes, I am. So, those are all of my bookshelves. I hope you enjoyed seeing even though I kept them messy on purpose. Really, I didn't want to show the downstairs bookshelves tidy if they're not tidy. I wanted to keep it real and to kind of show like a real bookcase with that element of time in it. And of course, these bookshelves upstairs, which don't have that element of slow buying time in there either. So, either I think can fit. Like I say, this isn't a video where I make any judgment on other people's book buying or even my own. We can buy fast, we can buy slow, and sometimes both are right to show you the the lack of aesthetics as well. Even though I think sometimes you can get out the other side of a lack of aesthetics and it becomes its own aesthetic in its own right, if you know what I mean. But within all the bookshelves, whether brought fast or slow, there there's thought, there's reason.

[00:19:48]There's there's actually a life stage. I think to be a reader, my hope as a reader, I can only speak for myself, is to have reading bring something to my life. And for it to do that, it's got to be relevant to my life. my um non-fiction books. They're either going to be developing a love for something I know I already love or perhaps I'm buying books to set me out of my comfort zone cuz I can see a gap in my knowledge and then I really want to love learning.

[00:20:22]But you're constantly questioning where you are in life and choosing books for you. You want your bookcases to be your life library, not a life library of somebody else's life. Which I think if you get distracted from what you want for your reading life, it it becomes somebody else's life library, not your life library. Like the amount of books I brought in the last two years has been absolutely insane because I've realized doing this DIY literature degree, if I see a book that I think might come into a module, I grab it there and then. So some of these books when I finished reading them, they might end up being unholdled. And that almost looks like I've fallen into the trap of chasing down big swades of of full bookcases, but I know questioning myself, I haven't. I'm possibly filling a void with books and book shopping. Of course, that comes into play. But I am so excited. I am so curious to finally get to the fiction books that I've never read. And it's so lovely to have fiction books on my shelves. Before book, I'd never embrace the concept of the reread.

[00:21:39]I would always buy fiction books throughout my life and think, well, I've read it now. I'm never going to reread it. I know the story and would get rid of my fiction books. So to be presented with the idea of the reread at nearly 60 has been phenomenal. And of course studying as well makes me want to hold on to my books to cross reference and find the connections and to have them in front of me to write essays from. It's all just so exciting and so wondrous.

[00:22:06]And I never thought I'd get to nearly 60 with my kids leaving home, which I've dreaded for the last 20 years. The whole time they've been growing up, I've dreaded the point of them leaving home.

[00:22:19]And if you're a mom who adores being a mom, you will know that feeling. I never dreamed I would get to this age waving the kids off, being excited about that extra time and silence that I've got because I've got these amazing life libraries around me now to fall into. So I think the final conclusion I come to is whatever you choose to do with your book buying. I think it adds so much value to ask yourself is this my life library or is this somebody else's life library and act accordingly. Whether that's buying less books or buying more books, act accordingly. make your bookshelves the most wonderful place for you and nobody else. So guys, thank you so much. I'm going to link all of Allison's links in the description box.

[00:23:16]Do go and watch her video if you haven't already. She's got the most incredible book channel. And thank you guys for spending time with me today. And I'll see you next time. Bye.