I’m only here for 10 days but there’s a whole shelf of travel books I must read. This happens a lot to us. One of our repeat sits has a snug full of thrillers. I’m half way through a John Le Care. In another sit I’ve read the first couple of chapters of an Ellen McArthur biography. Can’t wait to get back to them!
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Hi @ElsieDownie 
I love this! Stu never really read books — he was a newspaper-only guy — until one day he picked up Keith Richards’ biography on a sit’s bookshelf. That was it. Hooked. Now he raids every house for hidden gems and leaves each sit with a new “must finish” title on his list. Funny how a good bookshelf can change a habit for life. 
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I LOVE looking through bookshelves and finding good books to read! It’s fun to see what other people’s reading tastes are, too, and if they match up to mine.
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I, too, love browsing bookshelves and get quite disappointed if there are only a few or no books on a sit. A regular owner I sit for was moving house a few years ago and was planning to dispose of the majority of crime novels in her wall-to-wall bookcase to charity shops. I took home boxes of those books and finally finished reading them earlier this year. I’ve been able to pass them on to other friends of mine so they’re getting read over and over.
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“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” Cicero
I am very suspicious of a house with no books in!
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I’ve been known to half-inch books from repeat sits, when I just HAVE to know how the story ends. I return them next time.
Tell no-one.
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I’ve thought about that but never had the courage.
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I love finding a good nook on a bookshelf at a housesit. A recent one had the 2 newest books from a series I’ve been enjoying. Unfortunately the sit was short so one remains only partly read.
@DieFledermaus I’ve been so tempted to do that a few times on repeat sits!
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I have been amazed at how many sits we have been to where there are no or very few books in the house.
It always confuses me! Why no books?!
Maybe should be an amenity on the list the house holder has to tick.
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Some people don’t read. But some people have increasingly read e-books.
I actually rebought many of my favorite books in digital forms (likewise with music and movies).
At home, I now have only hundreds of print books. Previously, I had thousands. It was easy for me to move them all across the country when I used to work for companies that would pay for my moves. But I changed careers and for more than a decade, I’ve worked remotely, so I’ve since paid for all of my cross-country moves. I can imagine downsizing as I get older, so maybe I’ll eventually have no print books at all.
With e-books, you can have hundreds or thousands of books within reach at any time. My e-book collection is huge, because I started reading them back in the day (starting with Project Guttenberg classics) and have added much more since. Nowadays, the print books I tend to buy are about museum collections, other artworks and such. Otherwise, I can immerse myself in books digitally.
I got an early Kindle just I was about to go on assignment for work for months in Asia many years ago. It was magical. I wish they had existed when I worked overseas decades ago. My flat was tiny then and English-language print books were expensive and scarce.
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This is true, i have a couple of friends who like ebooks.
Theres something i love about holding a physical book,but it would be much more practical to take a kindle when travelling abroad!
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I got positive vibes from a listing when I enlarged the living room photo so I could see the book titles on the coffee table. There was one by a former politician … about a land being promised …
Lovely sit that I have repeated more than once.
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How brilliant is Project Guttenberg?!
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