My piles of books are having babies overnight, I swear. The stacks keep growing. My shelves are all double-layered, with a few extra paperbacks squeezed in on top of all the neat, orderly books. I have bags of books on my office floor, which will remain where they are until I get some more shelves or until the magic book fairy turns my living room into a Tardis-style library that’s bigger on the inside.

I do take books out of the library. I lend my books (reluctantly, and only after extracting severe promises to maintain my books’ pristine conditions). I sell the books I can live without back to my local friendly used book dealers — although I often walk away from these transactions with more used books to take back home with me. I give away the books I really don’t want any more, and sometimes the ones I’ve picked up but then never really felt like reading. And yet… my shelves runneth over, my house is filled to bursting with books, and I keep getting more.

So what’s a book lover to do? What do you do with your books after you’ve read them?