A year or two ago I learned of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize, which is exclusively open to young women (30 & under, in the US). Frankly I had never considered that building a personal book collection might be something other people would notice and care about, but when I read about the contestants' collections, I get it!! I love that they explicitly do not care about the collections' monetary value, it's all about "their originality and their success in illuminating their chosen subjects."

link

This is not a prize I'm eligible for, but I found it interesting. I "collect" books in the sense that I've been building and curating my personal library for 25+ years, but what percentage of those books would rise to the level of a specific Collection? Because my interests and therefore my books are all over the place... Reading about this prize made me think about my own collection a little more and start noticing more themes emerging in what I've been curating! Here are some of the micro-collections I've identified so far within the larger number of books I own:

— instructional books on mending/clothing repair, and more general sewing books that include information on mending — different versions of The Three Billy Goats Gruff (I was the Littlest Goat in a kindergarten production and am still disproportionately fond of the story) — books on gender in the French language/le langage inclusif/queering French — vintage horror paperbacks (paperbacks from Hell) — fairy tales & folklore from around the world — different editions of Peter Pan — my own personal Moby-Dick curriculum for further reading — big ol' artist retrospective coffee table books (these are exorbitantly priced if you buy them new but I pick them up for pennies all the time at library sales. Imo after visiting museums/seeing artwork in person, this is the next best way to experience it. Exponentially better than the internet) — old DK Eyewitness/Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections/Where's Waldo?/I Spy-type books (my inner child flips their shit over this kind of stuff, lol)

There are also obviously certain authors/anthologists/series I collect (vintage Agatha Christie, old Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, Nancy Drew, etc)

I am curious, what do you collect, and why??

Every time I remember that the Earthseed duology are a part of an incomplete series that Butler planned before her untimely death, I get very sad. I loved the first book and there’s a parable from the planned book 3 floating around online that makes me yearn for what the series would have done if completed.

I’m about to delve into Parable of the Talents and when I’m done, I want to try the Patternmaster books with Wildseed first, of course.

For anyone who read both of these sagas, which of the series of books did you prefer? Patternmaster does sound cool asf!