I used to go to this variety thrift shop that sold books. Stocked my own personal, mismatched library over like 12 to 15 years from that place, from grade school clear through to university. In my high school years I'd save my lunch money on the last week of the month cause they'd have a half price clearance sale (before they brought in new stock). I'd go Friday afternoon after school and buy a stack of 5 to 7 books. The old place burned down last year when a fire in the café next door got outta control. It felt like losing a familiy member.
but at least you get some weird interesting past editions ocasionally XD, I have to buy everything from Amazon because I won't find any weird fantasy or Sci Fi book written in English in Mexico lol
There's something charming about a disorganized, untidy shelf of books. That said, this would cause me to breakdown and cry for the next 4 weeks straight.
It's worse when English isn't your native language and some books in the series are in a different language (also reading books that were translated from English is painful by itself).
I'll add my case of foreign book: Different language, the title on the book's spine is mirrored (this goes for every english book, its the complete opposite of my language and it makes me want to cry), the artstyle is COMPLETELY different. At least they both have hardshell bookcover T-T
@@nathanbeer3338 nope, it's german :') idk how to explain the mirrored part but it's not that its read from right to left, it has more to do with the structure. While german book titles face the right direction, english books face the left (or other way around,not really sure rn)
@@aliin8763 Ah okay, I thought you meant the whole book is mirrored which is the case of my native language which is Hebrew because it's written from right to left.
@@aliin8763 same here, I have to either shelf them upside down or rebuy them and then they somehow still don’t match but now I’m also broke… it’s a pain to be honest
This felt like a personal attack lol; I've returned books that I've ordered online before just because the artwork didn't match what was advertised, and I rarely ask for books as gifts because I don't trust other people to find the exact copy I'm after (my fiancée is the sole exception, she knows I'm a freak and has accepted it)😂
Exactly hahah, I literally included pictures and what edition and color and shit it was supposed to be on my wishlist and they still bought a BLUE book with a cartoony person on the cover when I wanted a RED one with a super simple and clean design😭😭 still happy for the book ofc but like cmon
Makes me wonder how my dad acquired all such perfect series and avoided the pain I feel now. Those Stephen King books in the library man..... the uniformity they display, all neatly stacked in a row.... I'm jealous.
my grandpa had a lot of books on his shelf that were all uniform. Apparently, door to door book salesmen used to go around and sell these nice collections.
My Grandma had a mega Stephen King collection. She would buy them hardcover as they released, read them once then set them on the shelf. That and Anne Rice. I know what you mean, it looked so smooth.
I had this a lot. Though, I convinced myself that buying a book that I already own, but in a matching cover/size isn't a waste of money. It gives me piece of mind and pure bliss when looking at my book shelves.
@@djokealtena2538 I actually just bought a second single volume of LOTR, because I reread it so often, it's my travel book to keep me from over packing books as well as one of my absolute favourites 😁
Also: different cover art versions in a single series! I remember this BS when I was in school and there were American and British covers for Harry Potter which looked totally different. Of course now we have the option of buying all of them in a box set but what to do about all the previous mismatched ones!? Sure as hell can't part with them!
Every country/region usually has a different illustrator, that isn't really that unusual. What I'm wondering is where you were where both versions were available.
This happened with the Lunar Chronicles. I had the ones with the simple covers. Cinder had a foot, Scarlett had a cape, Cress had her hair, Winter had an apple, and Fairest had a mirror with Levana's face being covered by a veil. Come to find out the softcover versions have art on them showing the characters, and they look amazing, especially Fairest, but I could only buy Stars Above with the softcover art. That was annoying, and I wish I had the softcover versions of all of them.
@@rosykindbunny1313 I've never read those books, but they were big around my high school. I never really liked the cover designs, but I looked up the ones that you described and... Wow. Those covers look amazing. Why do I never see those around?
I actually kinda like having all my mismatched sets because it tells a story from all the different thrift stores you were able to buy them at at the time. And if you’re like me, you can remember when and where you bought each book
Luckily, as I grew up poor, I always got secondhand versions from friends and my local libraries. Never had a complete series, so matching ones were not even something I ever considered. It’s quite funny to see how affording all of these books still doesn’t satisfy people. I guess it figures, money can’t buy you happiness.
Ikr!! I'm too poor to buy even books.I read on ebook.I'm just happy to read.Though sometimes I buy books.But It's really impossible to satisfy yourself when you wanna read all the books in the world.
I'm fine with just having all the books, you just sometimes look at your shelf and cringe as you realize that one of the books has a completely different design. The book itself is fine, but since it's basically decoration while you aren't reading it...
Unpopular opinion: I actually prefer for the books in my series to all looks very different because then it looks as though every book was one I found personally, and it would look more like a collection which I have been growing and caring about. If all your books look the same it just looks like you bought them all off Amazon in one go. Besides having different covers means it looks like I'm a diverse reader when I'm not.
I feel you! Sometimes publishers just change up the design and size while the series is being released. Or the originals go out of print and they completely change up the new releases. It makes it hard, frustrating and really stressful to be a book collector. Almost like you HAVE to buy the whole series at once in the same design to not get your shelves messed up. But that's expensive :P Great channel btw, I subscribed.
At least they're uniformally... Un-uniform. These kind of shelves look like more like a reader's shelves to me than someone who only has pristine box collections!
I feel like everyone has such a weird Tolkien collection specifically, just so so many editions of those books it inevitably will just be a mess in the end.
My family thrifted a lot of books when I was a kid. The Narnia books were a jumble. Two of them were Harper Collins standard paperbacks, two of them were the Harper Collins miniature paperbacks, one was a Scholastic paperback, and two of them were pre-1998 US paperback copies (if you know the history of those books, you know that the author actually made some minor improvements to the US editions and then Harper Collins reverted back to the original UK text for some reason when they acquired the rights in 1998). This also led to my parents getting confused on what order the books went in because of the two different orders on the backs of the books.
I thrifted for years before I managed to get all of the Narnia books in the hardbacks I read as a child. It's like a treasure hunt. :-) We borrowed all the books at the public library when I was a kid.
This is especially hard on me because I got most of my books came from the thriftstore. The covers are from different decades and the covers and sizes are different.
YAY for some reality here. No need to be a nerd either. Can't say how many times we grump looking at all those booktubers that seem to have all those perfect looking shelves behind them with matching expensive books that always look brand new no matter how many times they say they've read them. My shelves are often "where will this fit". Most of my series are mismatched. Probably because I'm a reader. I mean seriously. Like Wheel of Time I started buying the arty Orbit publications in the 90's and later they went and stopped doing art covers so the rest of my set became chunkers with covers that looked like text on wrapping paper. Sheesh. As much as I like matching sets I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars replacing books I've read on new fancy 10, 15, 20 book sets when I can spend that money on buying more books I haven't read.
I feel that, especially since most of my books are thrifted byt at the same time, I like how... alive those books feel. Like there is a bit of a story in the book itself and especially with series with different editions together, it's like holding pieces with context. Especially with second hand books, they feel pre loved and with persinality. Idk there is something charming about mismatched book colections
Meanwhile us audiobook listeners have to worry about the narrator voice actors losing their touch or changing midway through the series and ruining the voice of the characters.
The only way I've been able to get over this is by ignoring what series my books are a part of and sorting them all by color. That way all of the heights are jumbled up and it looks kind of like a library. It works for most of them and I own a ton so it forms a nice gradient. I can still find the books easily because I spend so much time with them of course I know the exact color of their spine 😉. It's a little bit ocd of me (I'm always tweaking the order to make it look better) but it is sort of a solution 😝
Yes!! This is EXACTLY what happens to me! I have a collection of fifteen book from same series, and only ONE of them is hardcover and it drives me crazy!!
I have this lovely box set of all the Narnia books, and I've had them for years, and I convinced my sister to start reading Narnia. And guess what! SHE LOST PRINCE CASPIAN AND NOW THERE'S A GAPING HOLE IN MY BEAUTIFUL BOX!
This is the most relatable thing I've seen in a long time. All of the Tolkien books I own have Alan Lee illustrations on their respective covers and Tolkien's name printed in gold letters... all except The Return of the King, which has an image from the movie and no gold letters.
A lot of people likely have a similar ASOIAF collection. You can fairly accurately guess when someone started reading, by what was out at the time, by how many hardbacks in their library, - if they could wait the extra months for the paperback to come out. Personally, have Feadt and Dance. And my Dune collection is all over the place as I have some of my Dad's from the middle 70's where they changed the cover every printing it seemed like.
I am glad to discover this cool channel and be one if its first 300 subscribers. In one year's time, we will be considered as the "first disciples" of a channel with 10.000-s of followers
I feel this pain so hard! I get all my books from thrift stores, yard sales, and the occasional goodwill and my bookshelf is a mess with old and new prints jumbles together in what is really an organized bookshelf. Complete mess 🤣
I definitely feel this type of pain every now and then. Mostly from some books in a series I have being hardcover and some being paperback. I don't worry about the cover art because I make sure to have a consistent series collection. I watch out for covers of books that have a movie or TV show coming out, I do not get those covers. Don't get me started on inconsistent sizes for certain books in a series XD
Literally. I was searching for the edition of the book that matches the one I already have from this series, and IT’S NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. And my mum is like “do you need the text, or the cover???” She doesn’t get it…
yeah for getting back into reading again in the last year I'm starting to feel the pain, thankfully with the ASOIAF example they did come out of a paperback version of "a dance with dragons", at least it came of the boxset I got lol
This is something I funnyily enough love about my book colection. It tells its own story, some series I have all matching because I bought them all at once and other were gotten piecemeal. Some are hardcovers because I got them when they came out and other I am very late to reading. Sad that people cringe at something I find so nice and cozy about books as a hobby
At least you got every book. There's no pain like seeing your shelf and having one volume missing. No matter how you try to hide it, the hole will always be visible. Your heart will always knows its missing.
And this is exactly why I always go for the collection or the box set of a book series when I want one, at the end of all if I don’t like it, well I sell it and relieve myself of the unmatched covers pain…
I've only just started getting into Brandon Sanderson, and so obviously already have all the Cosmere books in paperback already. Tempted now to only buy future Cosmere in ebook until paperback versions come out specifically to avoid this
Unlike what Saruman said, we have not chosen the way of pain. It is thrust upon us by circumstance. Thrifting is a good way to go for building a collection quick--if the goal is simply to read. Of course, piecing together a trilogy or series can be a challenge. Even Amazon can be frustrating at times, in the uniform book department.
Yes!! No one understands why I will literally rebuy a book that I already own so that I can get the cover/edition to match the rest. Although some series, like my Harry Potter one, is half paperback (books 1-3) and half hardcover (books 4-7). They at least all have the same colour scheme and look the same, plus the old books hold memories and I can't bring myself to replace them.
Same... like the same exact issue and HP books too. I've come so close to spend the $150 to all new hard covers of the series, I dunno how many times. I always talk myself out of it because not only do I have the original books I bought on release but the Stephen Fry audio books too. So it feels like I'm investing money into something I own twice, lol.
I totally feel your pain on this, it's unavoidable and I've just made my peace with it...however I have learnt to appreciate the variety. Odd books are also a sign of their success if they continue to be reprinted.
As someone who has lord of the rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars legends, and other books that don’t match each other, I feel your pain. It almost makes me want to buy copies that match each other.
I love that Michael Whelan cover on Second Foundation with Arkady on the cover. I have that as the wallpaper on one of my computers and rebought the Whelan cover versions a few times over the years. Also I bought the illustrated Barnes & Noble "A Song of Ice and Fire" (Game of Thrones etc.) hard covers but I think they only put out the first three that way. Argh.
As a french who likes to read her books in the original version when it’s english i have now the added issue of country of origin. Ofc my old french translations aren’t gonna match the books in english but then it’s also often a coin toss if I’m gonna get the US or UK version when I’m ordering online. Even when I’m ordering the whole series at once. Sometimes amazon just lies to you about it. And good luck finding bookstores selling (more than a handful boring) books in english around where i live.
Too true!! I had HP1 in paperback and HP2-6 in hard cover and then could only find HP7 in paperback. So I like that it's a nice mirroring but also hate it lol.
Omg this is literally me as well. I am fortunate enough to have the Penguin Harry Potter covers so they're all uniform. This is why boxsets are a must!
I laughed AND cried at the same time cause, man… same. 🤣 Especially, when you get into a series and buy the paperback, only to buy the hardcover when the new book comes out.
'The wheel of time' thing is exactly what happened with me. Actually, I live in bangladesh. Finding any books of real version is almost impossible but if you get one you have to sell your kidney for this. So ,that makes only one way left 'pirated books'. Don't think that the pirated are priced low. So , I brought 'the eye of the world' from a page. Before ordering i told them again to give the Tor cover . But guess what they gave the version 'where a guy is hanging with the ships piller' cover. They also did it with the 'the way of kings' . I wanted the yellow cover but they gave the white cover. 'Twok' is still bearable but 'wot' is totally painful. Sharing this may reduce my pain.
I haven’t read for fun in a while but I just started the expanse series and I did the same thing. Bought the 10 year collectors hardcover versions for the first 3 and then the paperbacks for the remaining 6
I recently rebought the first two books in the Inheritance Cycle (Eragon) so that they would all match. I didn't realize the author was actually writing another entry in the series. The new book matches a DIFFERENT set of covers for the series that have come out since. Oh well, at least they are the same size.
That was actually me with ASOIAF. I have owned three copies of A Dance with Dragons overall. One to match the other paperbacks after receiving hardcover for Christmas in 2011, then I picked up the leatherbound box set of all the books. It’s a mighty need for the matching sets, man.
I actually have my dad's old copy of The wheel of Time series and I went out and rebought a couple of the books so that they would have the original cover
I have a thing for owning books that I love as hardcovers, but they are sooo expensive compared to paperbacks. Whenever I can get one cheap, I'm so happy and don't even mind that it doesn't match the others, though ideally it would be sweet to have a fully library with matching hardcover series.
The pain is real lol 😂. I remember a few years ago when I was buying the Harry Potter series I was buying the newest cover versions at the time and my dad kept trying to buy ones with a different cover and I was like no dad they have to match lol 😂. It’s a book nerd thing if they don’t match it drives you crazy. I also wanted the new ones because the artwork was cooler and more my preferred art style. Don’t get me wrong hardbacks are amazing and durable but paperbacks rule in terms of comfortability for me. Xx
"At least they are the same size, if nothing else." Lol! That IS a comfort. Also, I have alleviated the problem of having my Tolkien books all different by getting them all amassed into one book. It's one heck of a brick, but it serves its purpose.
The pain is real! ALSO! When books are available with the same cover art but in different sizes (who else has a ruler on hand every time they order books online?). Or same cover art but different design on the spine. Or you're collecting a beautiful translated edition of Asimov's Foundation and Robot stuff but for some odd reaso two books aren't available in that edition and then you pick up an English version instead that also doesn't match but at least you can sort it into a different book shelf because you separate by language.
When the second book of your favorite duology comes out and the publisher of the first book don't print the second book so now you have two books with different fonts on the covers and one book is exceptionally larger than the other.
I felt this way when I was trying to get all the original covers for the Lunar Chronicles series. I didn’t want them in hardcover because I had gotten accustomed to paperback. But they had changed the covers for the paperback. Well I didn’t like the new covers (and I know the person worked hard on the art style, but I just didn’t like it all that much). So, I ended up having to get used covers. One came in a plastic bag….but I was happy. I had all the original covers. But I feel this. I need my books to be consistent. Either they have the same cover, or they have to be either all hardcover or paperback. There is no in between.
So true y'all. I buy my books from the same bookstore, book 1～3 was from the same publishing company, then book 4 the bookstore sticker it from a different company and the size and art style of the book just don't fit the rest.😢
The worse part is when you buy a Bookshelf but it is only small one because your flat is not that big. Then you must guess how you put the shelf together and the room between it just to figure out that SOME Books don't fit in the shelf. So you have to lay them inside. It looks awful and hurts my eye every day.
This reminds me of when I got the Foundation series in mass market paperback with the 2004 covers except the cover for Second Foundation was the newer one made to promote the Apple TV show💀
The fourth one is truly painful, I owned the first edition printing of The School for Good and Evil series (very pretty illustration book cover for the first few series of the book), then there's the latest publishing of the books along with the latest release tittles they've change the book covers and the new book don't even matches the aesthetic of my older ones. 😭 (Also i hate the change of the book covers)
