Mother called us Heinz variety when I asked what our ancestry was, so I still think of myself as an American mixing bowl, stirred not shaken.
When I research, I buy EVERYTHING and fill the house. Husband absolutely panicked when I started collecting books on 18th century religion and left them open on every surface that had room. Someone who owns sermons written in an unreadable shorthand of my 6th great grandfather brought them to see if my “genes” would let me make sense of something he couldn’t. They couldn’t. Of course.
I bought the books my great grandfather took with him when he ran away from home. My most all consuming passion is to understand and to just keep stuffing information into my overstuffed head until it leaks out. Right now, I’m stuffing Toulouse-Lautrec. I’m trying to organize all of his paintings by decade. It’s coming VERY slowly.
We have a limited number of bookshelves, and if the books outgrow it, we take them to the library, the church sale, or the used bookstore: “The Book Lady.” Otherwise, we’d have to give the house to the books while the family camped in the yard!