I’ve never really done much with Instagram, except be vaguely baffled by it. Hopefully, that will change.
A couple years ago, my partner’s uncle passed away (cancer is a bitch.) In addition to being a really awesome person, Gethyn had spent years and years cultivating a wonderful SFF book collection of around 4000 physical volumes and–so legends say–nearly 10,000 ebook volumes on his kindle. (We can’t access his kindle to check that, though.)
Not only did he buy and read all these books, he *remembered* them(!!) and that has always blown my mind a little bit. You could pick up any book lying around his house, ask “What was this like?” and he’d give you a quick run down, plus his own opinion. Even if he’d only read them once (and only towards the end of his life, did he start to reread rather than read new.)
When he passed, there was some discussion of selling the collection; it would have netted about £4000 (so, roughly £1 per book). The thought of all his treasured books shunted off to a secondhand bookstore was a bit killer, though, and we asked to take them instead. To keep them in the family, as it were.
We have finally moved house where we have the space to unpack/store Gethyn’s library, and I’ve started to sort/shelve them. The main priority is to make sure they all have shelf space in some form or other.
I am also cataloging the books through pictures, with annotations, and sometimes reviewing them (if I read them). This is where Instagram comes in. If this sort of thing interests you, then you can find a growing list of book covers/book titles on my Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/sunyi.dean/ or follow the sidebar links. I hope to put up 1-2 books per week… which will only take me a million years lol, to do them all. I hope that it will be another way to keep his collection alive, and bring it to a wider audience.
Thanks for reading, and happy book-cover browsing.
sunyi dean 