But I have neither the funds nor the knowledge to become a professional collector, and in my library, shiny young Penguins sit happily alongside severe-looking leather-bound patriarchs.
William Bowen, a former president of Princeton University, talks of a "cost disease", in which universities are investing extravagantly in shiny graduate centres, libraries and accommodation to attract students.Politically, the mood has shifted too.
It is boom time for higher education, as universities invest their students' £9,000 a year fees in shiny new labs, libraries and sports facilities to compete for students after the lifting of the cap on numbers last year.
Instead of joining the crowds, however, Mr. Abdi, 55, will be in his library, in the basement of the shiny apartment building he built two years ago.
The building's namesake and his successor, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, were dedicating the shiny, 16,000-square-foot, light-drenched building, the 58th library set in motion during the former mayor's 22-year tenure.
You tell Steam where your music library is, and it'll build a shiny new catalog for your perusal, complete with album art and artist photos.
Was sitting in a great library with little statues at a large scrupulously tidy shiny table.
He "was sitting in a great library with little statues at a large scrupulously tidy shiny table," Virginia wrote in her diary.
But no library has closed and, in Woodhall and elsewhere, there are shiny new streetlights.
One thing that libraries and school textbooks often can't offer are shiny, attractive, eye-catching editions of classic works.
