How do you build a library???

We went to the Nashville/Franklin/Murfreesboro area today, and while we were there we stopped at two Barnes and Noble and a Half-Price Book store. I love book stores. However, I didn't get anything. It's not like they didn't have anything I wanted (they had a lovely set of LOTR and Hobbit, and 1776, and the Iliad, and the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, and ... well, a lot of stuff), but everything was exorbitantly priced or they didn't have it in hardback (which is ideally how I will build my library) or they didn't have a set (I would love a set of the Iliad and Odyssey like this). Maybe I'm just too picky, but I'd sure like to have a library of nice books! I thought that it was very strange that both Barnes and Noble stores we went to only had Narnia in a single volume (that's something else I'd rather not have). I have a lot of things on my Amazon wish list right now because I am looking to replace some of my favorite paperback books with hardbacks, and I can't seem to find some of them anywhere but Amazon.

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For the publishers:

Is anyone out there a publisher in need of a few ideas??? Probably not, but I'll give some anyway:

Daddy Longlegs and Dear Enemy, by Jean Webster, need to be published as a set or at least by the same company. Oh, and make them hardcover please!

Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom, by Louisa May Alcott, need to have the same treatment.

Old-Fashioned Girl, by Louisa May Alcott, was published in '95, but if you could... I don't know, maybe make a box set with the above two books, this one, and the Inheritance, all in hardback of course. You'd have at least one buyer (if the set wasn't too expensive)!

Oh, and you know what would be really cool? An entire set, boxed (?), and hardcover of the ancient Greek mythology/plays. Perhaps you could sprinkle in a little of the Roman stuff too (the Aeneid?).

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I'm not trying to completely overhaul my current meager "library," if you can call it that. I'm merely trying to replace, with more lasting books, some of my favorites, and to add some, mostly non-fiction (my current "library" is horribly deficient in that area), books that I have more recently found interesting and good. I have several sets of paperback books that I have no intention of replacing with hardcovers (either because those books are not really worth replacing or it would just be stupid to try). I have the entire Mandie series (we came from the regular world, you know), including the newest that's supposedly and entirely new series about her college days (I know, I know, sounds great doesn't it). I'm only interested in them now because I want to see who she ends up marrying. I have all the books in this series. I have this trilogy. I have this set, although not boxed, and I'm actually looking to complete the set with books by the same publisher. I have this book, but I'm thinking about looking for the novels in separate books. Hey, at least I'm not in the market to replace a certain hardback book I once received with a leather bound one!

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So, if anyone can give me any pointers on library must-haves, or publishers to stay away from, or anything along those lines it would be much appreciated.

Also, if anyone happens to have a like new copy of this and just wants to get rid of it, I would be happy to take it off your hands! :)

A quick note

I said I'd give my opinion of Nicholas Nickleby, so here it is. I thought that it was a rather tedious book. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but I have read other books that I enjoyed much more. Of the Dickens books I have read, this is probably my least favorite, but A Christmas Carol comes close. A Christmas Carol has the advantage of being short though.

Any suggestions for non-fiction books?

A little whine

I can't quilt and read at the same time!!! It's too difficult to hold a needle and thread, the quilt, and a book, so I'm having to choose between finishing the endless quilt and the endless book! I have to choose the one that means the most to you... ummm... I mean.... that makes it appear that I'm doing something rather than just lazily sitting around. So, it's either quilt and watch a movie, or read classic literature. Neither look very good.

Ugh!

I think I'm going to have to read some sort of book on literary analysis next. You just wouldn't believe how that prospect enthralls me.......... or not! Still, I'm absolutely sick of reading books and not being able to ascertain whether or not they were actually good! I don't think even a book like that would help me very much to reveal how to figure out the world view or slant of any particular book. How could it? It has to have a slant too! I have finished reading The Wars of the Roses, but all I came away from it with was the desire for more! It seemed to ask for a sequel, but I don't know if the history in it was very good or not. I certainly don't know if the world view was good! That sort of bothers me, but.......

I'm in the middle of Nicholas Nickleby, but I'm finding it quite a bit more tedious than the other Dickens books I have read. Somehow, my opinion of Dickens books improves one I am done with them, so I defer final judgment of it until I am through, and, even then, just to say whether I liked it or not.