Booking Through... some day or other...

I do wonder if I'll ever manage to do Booking Through Thursday on an actual Thursday... signs aren't good. But they say that any day can be Thursday, so far as Booking is concerned, and I couldn't resist this week's set topic. Here it is:

Do you have multiple copies of any of your books?
If so, why? Absent-mindedness? You love them that much? First Editions for the shelf, but paperbacks to read?
If not, why not? Not enough space? Not enough money? Too sensible to do something so foolish?

Being a twin, duplicates are a necessary feature of my everyday life. And there, dear reader, I may have found the world's worst excuse for buying too many books. What did I just say?! Too many books! Must wash my mouth out with soap.

It will probably surprise none of you to discover that I do have mutliple copies of some of my books. And not a small number. They fall into three rather specific categories, which are helpfully illustrated by photographs. The first is connected to Persephone Books; as you may remember, I've been a fan of their lovely books for a few years - and, as a complementary collection, I often buy earlier editions of their reprints. Only if they're cheap, mind. I may be book-mad, but I set myself some (very flexible) limits.


Category number two happens to be AA Milne - one of my favourite authors, especially when I was starting to buy books at an Olympic rate. Somehow I've managed to accumulate quite a few duplicates here, usually because I like the covers, or the newer one is cheap, or I want to keep an uncut version of Michael and Mary, or Snow Books print a lovely new edition of one, or... you see, always a reason.


And the final category just happens to be... er... miscellaneous. Books I love.


Miss Hargreaves couldn't just possess one corner of my bookshelf, could she? And I bought a second copy of The Waves because my first fell apart, but I couldn't bring myself to throw away the first. Hostages to Fortune just kinda happened, and I 'needed' a second copy of Portraits because I'd scribbled notes in the other. The Mapp & Lucia series - well, I'd coveted the Folio editions for a while, but decided I couldn't afford them and collected the Black Swan paperbacks, but later found the Folio ones for, erm, not a huge amount of money...

My plea is guilty. Any one else want their crimes to be taken into consideration?