
The Book Disease: On Bibliomania - pepys
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/book-disease
======
ideonexus
This really struck a nerve with me as a board gamer. There's a renaissance in
board gaming at the moment, where new publications have tripled from about
1,000 a year to 3,000. Old, collectible games are increasing in value, and
there are now speculators who invest in kickstarters to get possession of
soon-to-be rare expansions that will shoot up in value once the game comes to
market.

There's a growing buzz in the gaming community about all of this. People,
myself included, are worried about the fact that we own dozens of games that
we may likely never play, but we had to buy them because of fear of missing
out (FOMO). Many people are refusing to buy some games altogether because they
recognize that they are completionists who will have to obsessively-
compulsively track down every hard-to-find discontinued expansion.

There are forums now discussion coping mechanisms for managing the compulsion
to buy new games (no one feels like they are playing too many board games,
just buying too many). Some people keep a ratio of games owned to games played
and won't allow themselves to buy new games unless they've played at least 80%
of the games in their collection. Others give themselves board game
allowances, where they are allowed to purchase one or two games a month. It's
really fascinating to watch, and I keep wondering how far this can go before
the bubble bursts.

~~~
twic
I have a friend whose catchphrase is "I've stopped backing games on
Kickstarter, but ...", delivered as he backs another game on Kickstarter.

------
Hitton
I would say that contemporary equivalent is data hoarding. There are people
who have archives of various media, whether (audio)books, films, music, video
games or programs in sizes of tens of TB or more. Of course they will never be
able to consume the content, but what if they ever wanted/needed some small
part of it? And it's not like it would be useful backup in case of
SHTF/TEOTWAWKI scenario either, because the popular storage methods aren't
very durable.

------
cafard
For those who wish to read about contemporary patients/vectors/what have you,
_The Phantoms on the Bookshelves_ by Jacques Bonnet and _Books: A Memoir_ by
Larry McMurtry are quickly read and worth it.

------
whaddawhat
Help, I think reading this piece gave me bibliomania.

~~~
onemoresoop
Why dont you open a libraray to the public?

------
novalis78
Is it still bibliomania if your criterium isn’t bindings or editions but
scientific, historic and mathematical subject matter?

~~~
ivankolev
As an exhibit, I have collected a large-ish library of the exact topics you
mention, and I'd say it is becoming hard to manage. Nothing beats books for
long term storage of information though, so I still indulge couple of titles
per year, but hold the books I buy to increasingly higher standards.

