16 Feb 2015

The Dream Book Collection, Or Why I’ll Be Broke for the Rest of My Life

We all have one right? That idea of the perfect book collection, and I don’t mean the fact that we want floor to ceiling bookshelves (because who doesn’t?) or matching hardback covers. I’m talking about the actual books we desperately need to have in our collection. Today I thought I’d share the books that I just need to own, some are particular books or authors while others are just certain genres or ideas.



Firstly, there are a few authors that I have to own all of their books one day. For example, Agatha Christie, Emile Zola, Sylvia Plath, Daphne Du Maurier, F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’m sure none of these surprise any of you. These are some of my favourite authors ever so I desperately need their whole collection. There are also a few auto-buy authors for me, but that’s a whole other post.

There’s a never-ending list of books that I want in my possession, but here are just a couple that are on my list of things to buy when I’ve met my ‘Read 10, Buy 1’ challenge/when I actually have money. EVERY MOVE by Ellie Marney, The Winner’s Crime by Marie Rutkoski, Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick, The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater (I’ve read all of these, but GAAAH, I NEED THEM!) Finally, I also really want to get my hands on the sixth book of the A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket – I’ve read this too and I owned it once upon a time but then I let it to the person I used to be friends with and I never got it back.



Genre-wise, I really need to add some more poetry, plays and short stories/essays to my collection. I’ve been picking up a couple of these throughout the past year or so but I just don’t own enough. I really like picking these up second-hand because I don’t like paying $20 for a poetry collection that’s only 50 or so pages long. I need some recommendations for this – I currently own some Sylvia Plath, John Dunne, John Keats, Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare but I don’t know what else is worth picking up. 

Sort of similar to that, I’d really like to own more classics. By this, I mean like proper Greek classics and myths. I totally blame the booktuber Jean BookishThoughts for this (if you haven’t seen her videos then I totally recommend them.)

I’d also like to own more fairytales, fables etc. Specifically, Hans Christian Andersen’s as he’s Danish and that’s kind of my obsession right now. I think the children’s literature course I’m doing will really help with this, and hopefully I can collect a few more children’s classics to my shelves.

Also, I’d like to get more comics and graphic novels – luckily Michelle is helping me spend all of my money out with this.

The last two I’ve got are kind of connected. If you’ve been here a while you probably know about my obsession with Wales and Denmark, so yes I want to buy more books both set in those countries and just about them in general. The last part is travel guides – I really, really love travel and so I want to pick up some travel guides and mark things off as I see them and add things I like and etc. This isn’t related to this post, but I’ve been thinking about doing a ‘Bookish Guide to Europe’ when I go over there later this year – would anyone be interested in that? Or hearing about any non-book related Europe-y things?


Now’s your turn – tell me about your dream book collection! Are you going to be as broke as I am or do you have more self-control?