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 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.