Aside from literature, which I love, I have found that I have quite a fondness for owning textbooks, both physical and digital. (Reading them is a whole different story, though)
I have a textbook for Non-Classical Logic, Rock-Forming-Minerals, both of which I don’t even begin to comprehend as I lack the fundamentals, General Physics, General Maths, Zoology, Lichen, Insect Morphology (didn’t even know about that one anymore), Invertebrates excluding insects, Freshwater Biology, a bunch of species identification keys, Inductive Statistics, etc. etc.
Some of those I obviously need for university, but most are stuff I just found for free somewhere and took or downloaded with the intention of learning something.
I always have this scenario in mind of society collapsing, but it won’t be a problem for me because I have a lot of things to learn. Does anyone here have a similar “condition”? Haha
I collect them (and read them).
I always look them up online but physical textbooks are so fucking expensive, so I always convince myself to not buy them. I do have some random textbook pdfs, but it doesn’t really feel like I “have” them
Math books from geometry to calculus 3 and everything in between you name it. Usually pick up something from HPB when we’re out book hunting.
I’ve started collecting vintage textbooks and reference books, and they’re so cool. Personal favorites are a home medicine guide from the 1920s, a home ec textbook from the 1950s, and a book on horseshoeing from the 1890s
The problem with hoarding text books is the information going out of date. They’re very likely not the best sources to be learning from just a few years after publication, although you’ll get more life out of some than others. As collector’s or historical interest items though, very fun!
That depends also on the topic. For mathematics, for example, textbooks never really get out of date.
For zoology, botany, etc. it doesn’t really as well, as they have been established fields for a long time. There might be taxonomic changes and scientific name changes over time, though.
The most “susceptible” to obsolescence of my textbooks is probably the “Molecular Biology pf the Cell” one, as that is a field where there’s a lot of changes and new insights still.
Sort of. I own a bunch of physical textbooks related to field, as well as many more digital textbooks that are essentially standards for difference aspects of my profession (Books on anatomy, pharmacology, cell bio, biochem, etc). I actually do still refer to these from time to time.
Outside of that I do keep technical books and such related to a lot of hobbies I have like botany, gardening, and cooking.
I am guilty of collecting textbooks lol. I absolutely love books in general and have a dream library I’ve been working on for a few years. While the majority of my book collection are books I reread often, others I may reread every few years and some I’ve read once with no intent to reread and Im even guilty of having a few I’ve never read and honestly don’t know if I will ever read. I definitely love my textbooks though, and they range in subjects for sure. I just love knowing if I need information on something I have a book I can go read. Makes me feel better others do this too!
I keep textbooks for subjects related to that which I study and could possibly have use for in the future, but not for subjects I don’t care about.
I have an enormous amount of textbooks on marine biology- a special emphasis on fish (my field of study) but I also have quite a few textbooks on parasitology, virology, bacteriology, biochem, molecular biology, and aquatic microbiology.
I think the more you understand outside of your immediate field, the better you get at it. In my free research time, I spend time trying to slowly learn environmental chemistry to better understand how further pollution will affect my seafaring friends…. So far, not very good outlook.
I hoard usually plant ID books and bird ID books.
I love old grade school/middle school Language Arts textbooks for ‘writing’. When I’m feeling lazy or uninspired and want to force myself to get a few pages of anything down, I flip one open randomly and do a little kid writing assignment
Glad I’m not the only one! I am in Computing Science field. However, I am intrigue in other topics, and own textbooks in Finance, Quantum Physics, Neuroscience. And I do read them for fun and treat them as exercise for my brain.
I always love it when I read a well-written physics or engineering textbook. I recently started Kip Thorne & Roger Blandford’s Modern Classical Physics, it’s so great.
Intelligence can be a curse. I often find myself doing unpaid literary work because I am pondering things and trying to figure out the solution to weighty matters. I can see that a lot of other people have the same problem. I often need to remind myself that nobody is paying me to save the world. Most of the people who are hell bent on making the world a better place have no idea how anything even works. When you do improve your understanding of the world you live in, you had better keep it to yourself because nobody wants to hear it.
I have a few on hardcover but I only purchase older ones, say pre-1970.